These days you can’t say boo without stepping on someone’s politically-correct toes.
I’d like to rent a biplane and fly over the countryside with one of those banners that says, ‘Get Over It!’
Like with Christmas. You can’t say, “Merry Christmas,” you have to smooth over peoples’ feelings and say, “Happy holidays.” What? Now Christ is politically incorrect?
It’s a Christian holiday, so we say Merry Christmas, not that hard to understand.
Oh, save me from political correctness, or PC.
And what about that word “haole?”
Yeah, yeah, some say it means a guy without breath, others say a foreigner, everyone’s a linguistic expert. Take it easy, in everyday usage it just means a white guy. It’s a simple description like saying, “there was one haole talking to a couple locals.”
Some even think that “locals” is some kind of stereotype. They’re locals, big deal.
There are real bad buzz words that you shouldn’t say, like the N-word, the F-word and a few words that are too gross to even mention. We need a few boundaries.
But the tentacles of the PC creature are entangling us everywhere.
More and more we are being shielded from reality. We are coddled by a process I call “nicefication,” making everything nicey, nicey. Some universities are forbidding free speech because new ideas might hurt someone’s feelings. Gad.
Where’s Abbie Hoffman when we need him? Or Thomas Jefferson?
Society must protect its citizens. You don’t have a right to harm yourself or others. But society gets carried away with what they think is harmful. We need harm, facing it was what lifted us from living in caves to living in condos. It’s how we evolve.
But I never agreed with that saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” No, what doesn’t kill you makes you worn-out. After wrestling a bear, you’re not stronger, you’re tired as hell, but you’ve learned something — never wrestle a bear again.
Overcoming pain makes us feel good and gives us self-esteem, ask anyone who’s ever run the Ironman. Ask a surfer who rode a 40-foot wave at Sunset.
Ask me, who clicks through maybe 40 channels a night with the remote. What a workout.
Now society is “nice-ifying” football and some places are getting rid of sports programs. A mistake. Getting run over by a linebacker makes for a better person. You overcome, you challenge and test yourself. Football’s a good thing.
And the feel-good idea of kids playing sports where everyone wins with no losers, there’s no feeling of triumph. They’ll never know how it feels to win.
Society is nice-ifying books, and movies. Now they put PC warnings on Disney Movies. In “The Song of the South” a kindly black man can’t sing “Zippidee do da” and Snow White can no longer live with seven small men. What’s next? Lilo has to turn in Stitch for being an illegal alien?!
It’s all good. This holiday season say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, up to you. Whatever you say with aloha will sound just right.
Dennis Gregory writes a bimonthly column for West Hawaii Today. His email is makewavess@yahoo.com. Don’t miss his Aloha Show, 8:25 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on channel 54, and 7:55 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday on channel 53.
