The American Spectator

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(Page 3 of 15)

br> -- Michael Tomlinson br> Jacksonville, North Carolina /p>

I find myself conflicted regarding the latest submission from Ms. Fabrizio. On the one hand, I am thoroughly disgusted by the vulgarity of modern public discourse. The regular use, by women, of words that I was raised to believe shouldn't even be used by men in the presence of women, still causes me serious angst when in a mixed gender group. The repetitive use of inanities such as "like," and "you know," and other such phrases drives me to distraction, and keeps me from paying any attention to the substance of your speech. It would seem that the vast majority of our citizenry has completely lost the concept of the differences in words when you use their possessive, and/or plural, and/or past tense forms. In short, American English spelling and grammar (as opposed to simple typos) has generally escaped our population. I could go on and on agreeing with Lisa about her thesis in this article.

On the other hand, we have a First Amendment problem in our society. Whether you wish to call it Political Correctness or some other catchy title, it is a very real problem. Now I personally would like to see this uncalled for name calling and callousness of discourse rooted out, and a return to civility and manners. I am quite afraid that, before that can occur, we are going to have to wrest control of linguistic judgmentalism from the exclusive province of the left. We, similarly, need to erase this proclivity, particularly on the left, to be offended. We have tens of millions of citizens that spend almost ever waking moment just looking to be offended, somehow, by something. We need to return to the attitude with which people were raised in an earlier time -- the attitude of "get over yourself." I am afraid that, until we can break this "I am offended" attitude of our society, we will NOT be able to fix the civility or manners problem.

This is not a foreign problem. Racist attitudes will continue to fester as long as whole racial classes spend endless hours seeking to find and root it out of our memories. Racism in law is gone. De facto racism is really fairly rare. The rest of it is people who are determined to be offended.

Sexual proclivity bias is hard wired in our genes. If homosexual lifestyles are not aberrant, then why is it the human species is unable to reproduce itself via homosexual union? Why do I even need to know what you sexual proclivities are? If all you want is to be allowed to live your life your way, then why do you need to be in my face about it? Why? Because it is all about you being "offended" by my utterances that are not even addressed to you.

Have you ever noticed that it is the people "offended" by sexual issues and connotations in public society that spend the most time thinking, talking, and, yes, doing sex? I can remember a time when my mother, on hearing Ann Coulter's remark, would simply say to me, "Forget it, son. That woman is no lady, she is just trash. We don't say things like that." Course I also remember when a "faggot" was any male person that was a "wuss," or girly man, regardless of his sexual proclivities. But I also remember when any person born outside of wedlock could be called a bastard without anyone getting their panties in a twist.

p>Well, my point is that, just perhaps, we need a period of desensitizing from the right before we can get a grip on public discourse. br> -- Ken Shreve br> New Hampshire br> Pondering the conundrum /p>

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