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nal. If you’re a reptilian lowlife on your way up, stop getting fucked and start doing the fucking. Read the Wall Street Journal.

CRIPPLED, UGLY AND STUPID

In an earlier book. Brain Droppings, I wrote some things about politically correct language, but left out a few areas. I neglected three important groups of people who have had this awkward, dishonest language inflicted on them by liberals: I omitted those who are crippled, ugly or stupid. And so, to address these earlier omissions, I’d like to make a brief return visit to that playground of guilty white liberals: political correctness.

Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people’s language with strict codes and rigid rules. I’m not sure that’s the way to fight discrimination. I’m not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.

Therefore, those among you who are more politically sensitive than the rest of us may wish to take a moment here to tighten up those sphincter muscles, because I’m going to inject a little realism into the dream world of politically correct speech. Especially the words we use to describe one another.

CRIPPLED LIBERALS

Perhaps you’ve noticed that when the politically correct, liberal rule-makers decide to rename a group of humans they view as victims, they begin by imparting a sense of shame to the group’s existing name. And so, somewhere over the years, the word cripple has been discarded. No one mentions cripples anymore. ?That’s because, in yet another stu

The same is true of the ungainly phrase differently abled. I believe that if a person is going to insist on using tortured language such as differently abled, then he should be forced to use it to describe everyone. We’re all differently abled. You can do things I can’t do, I can do things you can’t do. Barry Bonds can’t play the cello, Yo-Yo Ma can’t hit the curveball. They’re differently abled.

It should be explained to liberalspatientlythat crippled people don’t require some heroic designation: it’s a perfectly honorable condition. It appears in the Bible: “Jesus healed the cripples.” He didn’t engage in rehabilitative strategies to improve the conditions of the physically disadvantaged. Can’t these liberals hear how unattractive this language is? How poorly it sits on the ear? Personally, I prefer plain, descriptive language.

For instanceand this is a suggestion that will bother some, but I’m serious about itwhy don’t we just call handicapped people defective? We don t mind talking about birth defects; we don’t flinch from that. We say, “Gunther has a birth defect.” Isn’t that a concession to the fact that people can be defective? Then what would be wrong with calling those people the physically defective? At what point in life does a person with a birth defect become a person who is differently abled? And why does it happen? I’m confused.

UGLY LANGUAGE

Then there are those who don’t quite measure up to society’s accepted standards of physical attractiveness. The worst of that group are called ugly. Or at

least they used to be. The P.C. lingo cops have been working on this, too.

And to demonstrate how far all this politically correct, evasive language has gone, some psychologists are actually now referring to ugly people as “those with severe appearance deficits.” Okay? Severe appearance deficits. So tell me, psychologist, how well does that sort of language qualify for “being in denial”? These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it will not be a surprise for me to someday hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.

Back to ugly. Regarding people’s appearance, the political-language police already have in place one comically distorted term: lookism. They say that when you judge a person, or rather, size them up (wouldn’t want to judge someone; that would be judgmental) if you take their looks into account, you’re guilty of lookism. You’re a lookist.

And those valiant people who fight lookism (many of them unattractive themselves) tell us that one problem is that in our society, those who get to be called beautiful and those who are called ugly are determined by standards arbitrarily set by us. Somehow, there is some fault attached to the idea that we, the people, are the ones who set the standards of beauty. Well, we’re the ones who have to look at one another, so why shouldn’t we be the ones who set the standards? I’m confused. I would say the whole thing was stupid, but that’s my next topic, and it would sound like a cheap transition.