by Ethan A. Winning, Copyright ©1994, All Rights Reserved
Orwell's 1984 was off the mark by only ten years. In 1994, thanks to the politically correct, psycho-babble and double-speak have hit us harder than any of the oxymoronic Washingtonian representatives could have done in a year of congressional records.
I realize that you're reading "The Personnel News" because HR is your major area of interest. What has psychobabble to do with personnel? Fair question. This new language form will, if you're inclined to knuckle under to it, create hours of extra work in attempting to formulate and formalize policies, procedures, and forms. That's in addition to trying to be "correct" in memos and, more important, in trying to persuade peers and seniors who have already been brain-washed. As I said in another article on this topic, if we professionals actually go along with this garbage, we will have a great deal of difficulty in communicating: in fact, we could be left speechless, stuttering and stammering trying to please all and pleasing no one along the way.
Not serious you say. Who cares? It's just another fad which will pass. Well, and I kid you not, the L. A. Times - or at least one of the Big Brother/Sister/Him/Her/Its on that paper - doesn't think so. In February, that august newspaper prohibited the use of a number of words in its "Guidelines on Ethnic, Racial, Sexual and Other Identification" memo to staff writers (and probably the want-ad section editor or telemarketers as well). These words include: co-ed, deaf-mute, deaf, bra-burner, mailman, mankind, man-made, biddy, crazy, normal, divorcee, gal, ghetto, gypped, handicapped person, hillbilly, Hispanic, Indians, inner city, lame, male nurse, pow-wow, queer, and WASP.
As a person of the masculine persuasion with a certain fondness for the American English language, I just couldn't help myself but to reiterate my problems with this type of offal.
Actually as young adults, my male sibling and I, used to talk about such things. My brother was a Lit major and graduated suma cum everything. We were so advanced for our ages that we were the first on our block to have a bumper sticker that said, "My sons are honor students [and probably geniuses] at Betsy B. Winslow School."
So I called my male sibling who happens to be a well-known author and linguist. He also happens to have been the International Division Personnel Manager for an entertainment giant (no, not Hulk Hogan). My brother's name is Bob, but in order to protect him, I won't use his last name which is the same as mine.
Me: Does you remember...
Bob: Oh, we're going into dialect today...
Me: Okay, do you remember when we were kids... after a hard day of playing cowboys and Native Americans...
Bob: You saw the L. A. Times.
Me: Yeah. By the way, how's Schotz, your HR assistant?
Bob: You mean the one that used to be deaf?
Me: No, I mean the one who's comprehensively hearing-impaired.
Bob: Well, she still has that handicap...I mean, disability...uh...impediment... Oh, hell, she still can't hear, but it
doesn't seem to affect her work. What's really bothering me is that she's a recent divorcee and the break-up has affected her work.
Me: Think about that. She's a recent divorcee?
Bob: Oh, right. Well, her husband...uh, spouse...uh, ex-spouse...the guy she was married to was the divorcer, and that makes her the divorcee. Anyway, she's going through a legal process of dissolving her marriage, and it is affecting her work. The other day she actually referred to James Cisneros as "a Hispanic!"
Me: What's wrong with that?
Bob: First of all, "Hispanic" taken an "an". The Times didn't say what to call Hispanics, and she was filling out an EEO-1 report. We've got 235 persons of that lineage, and we didn't know how to classify them.
Me: Well, where'd you put them?
Bob: This might answer your question: for the first time since 1968 we have twenty-eight percent "White" and fifty-two percent "Other."Me: You know, this is really lame!
Bob: Hey, watch your language!
Me: Okay, okay. It's just plain crazy!
Bob: What was I just telling you.
Me: I said this was crazy. I didn't say that she was crazy.
Bob: She is craz...nuts.
Me: Well, she certainly isn't normal.
Bob: You're really asking for trouble.
Me: But "normal" is a psychological word.
Bob: So are "crazy" and "imbecile" and "moron." Let's just say
she's abnormal. There's no prohibition against that.
Me: What do you expect for someone from Tobacco Hollow, West Virginia.
Bob: Yeah, she's a real hillbill...uh...hillwilliam.
Me: Hey, bye the bye, are you still going to retire next month.
Bob: Am I ever. Yesterday, I had a pow-wow with one of the big chiefs, a real bra-burning biddy witch.
Me: You just couldn't wait to get all those into one sentence, could you?
Bob: Nah, I use those terms in every day speech. And, in this particular case, she has the skin grafts and broom to prove it.
Me: Still, one might truly take offense to that.
Bob: Well, one thing for sure, she's never been man-made.
Me: That's it! George and Judy will never print this. Your verbiage has really gotten us into trouble this time.
Bob: It's my verbiage, but it's your word processor.
Me: I'm going to submit it anyway. Hey, I have to get this out before the mailman gets here.
Bob: Don't you mean the unisex epistle deliverer?
Me: No, I mean the Claven who's been dead from the neck up... uh... terminally self-actualized from the zygomatic arch northward... since he/she got this route.