Death of a salesman...ahem...person.

You love to wordsmith, which is a wonderful and creative quality.

Most of the time.

In its most sinister form, word-smithing is known as Political Correctness. It started out innocently enough when we started calling the garbage man a “sanitation engineer”, implying that the guy hanging off the back of the truck in the boots and the smelly clothing graduated Suma Cum Laude from Princeton, and he’s just doing this work now while he awaits acceptance into Stanford Medical School. This soon morphed into more clever phraseology, pinning anyone to the wall without the current manual. Out of touch with the newest and best words? You will surely suffer at the hands of the PC police.

An “Oriental” person became “Asian”, people of color in this country adopted Africa as their native homeland, even if the closest they ever got to Africa was a vacation day at Bush Gardens in Tampa. This gave rise to the hyphenated name…African-American. Funny, but I’ve never heard a black man from England call himself African-cockneyed, or is cockneyed no longer acceptable? The most recent manual I have is the PC-PC version 2.1, (available through Microsoft, which will soon be called “Teeny-weeny gentle”) but I’m sure we’re far beyond that now.

Soon thereafter, hyphenation took on its own split personality – yes, pun intended. Thousands of women all over America decided they couldn’t possibly stand on convention, and Susie Thomas became Susie Thomas-Bernham-Blue, which conveniently rhymes with I’m-JL4-so-bite-me-too.

And now we have a new list of words that for years were harmless and ineffectual, but are now considered treasonous, blasphemous, a whole lot of other ous’s, as well as being down-right criminal, depending upon your position or status:

“Flip Chart” has to be changed because evidently it offends Philipino’s, or at least those that can’t spell. Feel free to re-read if you didn’t get what I said.

In Glasgow Scotland, it is no longer proper to order “Black Coffee”. It has been legally established that “black coffee” is racist. I’m thinking “Columbian-Dark” would be a good substitute, incorporating the finest elements of color, nationality, and hyphenation.

“Mennaissance” has replaced “Metrosexual.” Since I neither am nor know what a metrosexual is or was, I’m not going to waste my time worrying about a mennaissance man.

In this country, there are those in political authority who want to call “Illegal Immigrants” “migratory populace.” Is your head spinning yet, Buckwheat? Well, I’m not done.

Back to the British Isles, a newspaper in England is trying to defer from using the word “terrorist”, while substituting it with “Misguided Criminals”. Of course. And a rapist is simply someone with lousy penis aim.

The common computer terms, “Master and Slave” have been deemed offensive, because they “bring back memories of the early days of America.” Last time I looked, Strom Thurmond finally passed away, and he’s the only person I can think of besides Dick Clark and Bob Barker who would or could have any actual memories of 150 years ago.

And I saved the best for last:

Thousands of NOW veterans are again pushing for the word “history” to be called “HERstory”. Apparently, women also made up the past (who knew?) and they want their just deserts.

Subsequently, I think the term “mathematics” has reached its zenith as well, and I propose we now call it, “Addsubtractdividametrics”, giving the proper recognition where it belongs.

See you all later...unless of course I meant to say, "at a time in the future".

Valium please.