Today I was teaching a class on Microsoft Outlook. One of the activities we run through is the adding of holidays to your Outlook Calendar. We picked the set of holidays for the United States. I had the students look through their calendar for Christmas, Memorial Day, and so on. One student piped up with, “where’s Boss’s Day?”

I answered that the holidays are mostly just the officially-recognized ones, not the made-up holidays like Grandmother’s Day or Secretary’s Day.

I was then corrected by one of the female students sitting next to me. “It’s Administrative Assistant’s Day.” I tried to make a joke out of it, but this person was actually offended. I mentioned that I never understood why “secretary” was an offensive word, I guess if it has more syllables it’s not offensive. She responded that many people feel “secretary” is a derogatory term.

Now, I’m a pretty liberal guy, but where I part company with the Left is in the issue of Political Correctness. Now, I can understand why terms like “nigger” and “mick” and “kike” are looked down upon. Those are terms specifically invented to deride a person. I think “African American”, “Irish American”, and the like are a clumsy fix, though. Unless you just came here from Africa or Ireland, I’d just call you an American. Besides, wouldn’t Charlize Theron be an “African American”? But people have a need to classify other people, so I guess these terms will do.

But then simple descriptive terms suddenly became derogatory. “Blind” became “vision-impaired” and “deaf” became “hearing impaired. “Secretary” became “Administrative Assistant” and “Stewardess” became “Flight Attendant”. Why are these terms necessary? There’s nothing derogatory about saying that someone is blind, is there? It’s true, isn’t it? Using a fancy new term to describe your job does not change the position, does it? “Stewardess” or “Flight Attendant”, you’re still a waitress-in-the-sky.

Also, why are some terms changed because of their supposed derogation, but others are not? Blondes are still “blonde”, not “flaxen-tressed”. Tall guys are still “tall”, not “limbo-challenged”. The president is still “president”, not “court-appointed crypto-fascist dictator”.

My theory is this: those people who cry for a change in terminology are the ones who feel derogatory toward themselves. The boss never thought the secretary was anything but a hard-working assistant deserving of respect; the secretary thought she was somehow not good enough, so doubling the syllables in her title somehow makes up for that. Perhaps we felt sorry for the blind man, but we didn’t think any less of him; he thought less of himself and obfuscated his handicap by calling it “vision impaired”. (Vision impaired? You have no freakin’ vision to impair! You’re blind!)

That’s why the tall blonde presidents never thought to change their title; they were quite secure in being tall, blonde, and president.

That’s my one-fiftieth of a dollar.

Russ Belville

Follicly-marginalized metobolism-impaired adipose-tissue-retaining carbohydraphilic pigmentally-deficient Franco-American information technology applications knowledge transfer consultant.

(balding lazy fat junk-food-junkie white French computer teacher).

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