Add "Babe" to Your List of Derogatory Extremist Slurs

I mentioned the other day that political correctness has run amok and I stand by that statement.  When (and why) in the world did we all become so sensitive?  Even our speech is now controlled by the nanny-state.

Case in point:  Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection links to this story by Adam Clark Estes in The Atlantic.  Remember him?  Estes is the fellow who mocked the death of a Cornell student who died from H1N1 in 2009.

As Professor Jacobson points out today, in that 2009 article Estes made an error in judgment with his mockery.  "It happens."  Indeed it does.

In the eyes of Mr. Estes, however, it seems to be a case of "do as I say and not as I do."  Estes is all over Rush Limbaugh for referring to writer Tracie McMillan a "babe" and an "authorette."

Limbaugh's thesis (one Estes seems to have missed), was that there is no "war on women" as the left claims there is.  To illustrate that point he highlights Ms. McMillan's book, The American Way of Eating.  Limbaugh doesn't really say anything derogatory about McMillan personally; he called her forthright, pointed out her credentials and that "she knows her way around a kitchen."  Is that an insult these days?  I wouldn't think so.  Maybe it is to Mr. Estes.

Estes loses sight of the fact that Limbaugh's main point was that there isn't a war on women, but "a war on freedom," which is being waged by the left.  That "war" extends right down to the food you eat.  I haven't read Ms. McMillan's book but she seems to be making the case that good food is the domain of the affluent.

Estes also finds fault with the fact that Rush points out Ms. McMillan is "a white woman."  I'm not sure when that became derogatory, either.

It is this excerpt from Rush's commentary that seems to irk Mr. Estes:

What is it with all of these young single white women, overeducated -- doesn't mean intelligent.  For example, Tracie McMillan, the author of this book, seems to be just out of college and already she has been showered with awards, including the 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.  Social justice journalism.  This woman who wrote the book on food inequality, food justice, got an award for social justice journalism.  She won a national prize rewarding journalism that measures business, governmental and social affairs against clear ideals of the common good.  Her degree is not in food or nutrition.  She has a B.A. from New York University in political science.  She's a political scientist.  She's a journalist.  She has received awards for social justice journalism, and she has a book out on food justice.

Is that derogatory?  Mr. Estes has trouble deciphering it:

It's hard to comprehend exactly what Limbaugh is try to say. He suggests that McMillan is overeducated but not intelligent, naive and out of her league. McMillan isn't offended, necessarily. She seemed more concerned with the rhetoric Limbaugh's promoting. "Calling me out for being a single woman and suggesting that having put me through university on my own dime makes me an over educated person," she said, "that's pulling out some really bad tendencies in American thinking."

It all seems like a manufactured crisis to me.  It doesn't even sound as if Ms. McMillan is as upset about the language as Mr. Estes is.

As for the Democrats, well, they're using Rush's language as a fund raising opportunity.  Sen. Claire McCaskill, candidate Tarryl Clark, and  Rep. Janice Hahn have all used the Fluke kerfuffle as a money making opportunity:

Sen. Claire McCaskill was so disturbed by Rush Limbaugh’s description of a law school student as a “slut” and “prostitute” that she decided to repeat his rhetoric, featuring it in a fund raising appeal sent to thousands of supporters around the country. The tactic has paid off nicely for the Democrat’s re-election campaign.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Back to political correctness...apparently these days you can't call a girl a "babe," point out that she's white, black, Asian or Martian;  "authorette" is apparently derogatory as well.  I suppose "anchor babe" is, too.

If you want to get into derogatory slurs, it seems to come more from the left as from the right.  A leftist called me "pathetic" on my own blog just this week.  Derogatory?  Well, I wish she'd called me a "babe" instead.

Mr. Estes needs to put his copy of Rule of Radicals back on the shelf and stop making a crisis where there is none.

Shooting from the Hip

Let's just "shoot from the hip" here and point out that this increasing paranoia of gun metaphors is getting ridiculous.  The "double barrel" effort of the left to paint every phrase and nuance as a cue to some nut job extremist or as a sign that Republicans are crazed gun toters is turning our discourse into a "tinderbox" of perceived missteps and inflammatory rhetoric where it just doesn't exist.

The Hill points out that Mike Pence wants to repeal Obamacare "lock, stock, and barrel."  Writer Mike Lillis suggests that this is Pence's refusal to restrain his aggression.  (To be fair, Lillis also points to Rep. Steve Cohen's comparison of Republicans to Nazis.)

While the left wants to depict the right as the only ones who use gun metaphors, we've seen that's simply not the case.  So, keep your powder dry, people.  Get off the hair trigger and keep your objective in sight by first remembering that some of these expressions are now just common American vernacular and your new perception of them doesn't change that reality. 

Get a grip.

On Presidential Euphemisms

Oh please..."wee-weed up"? How presidential. Gag.

That was narcissist-in-chief trying to explain his tanking poll numbers.

What does that mean, exactly, anyway? "Wee-weed up"?

I'm guessing when he says that "Washington gets all wee-weed up" maybe he's talking about the lame-o Democrat plan to split the ObamaCare bill. Or maybe he's talking about Nancy Pelosi's command that she - SHE - will not pass an ObamaCare bill without the public option: “'There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,' Pelosi, a California Democrat, said at a press conference in San Francisco today."'

Maybe what's "all wee-weed up" is the collection of personal information via flag@whitehouse.gov. That was indeed pretty fishy. And pretty wee-weed up.

I'd suggest that Obama suggesting he's God's partner in life and death decisions is pretty wee-weed up.

I also think that calling abortion "reproductive care" just so ObamaCare can pay for them and dodge controversy is pretty wee-weed up. Some euphemism.

But, I guess "wee-weed up" is actually a euphemism for the state of Obama's term of office. Because I can't say what it really is.

(More at Memeorandum)

Gimme a "V"

Thank you Slate Magazine. As an English teacher I have been wondering about this word:

"Where does the expression to vet come from?

It's a figurative contraction of veterinarian. The fancy word for animal doctor originated in the mid-17th century. The colloquial abbreviation dates to the 1860s; the verb form of the word, meaning "to treat an animal," came a few decades later—according to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest known usage is 1891—and was applied primarily in a horse-racing context. ("He vetted the stallion before the race," "you should vet that horse before he races," etc.) By the early 1900s, vet had begun to be used as a synonym for evaluate, especially in the context of searching for flaws.

Through the early decades of the 20th century, vet was primarily a Britishism. It became fairly popular in the United Kingdom during the 1930s, especially to indicate the examination of candidates for military positions, as well as the inspection of manuscripts or public speeches prior to delivery. In his 1936 biography of G.K. Chesteron, William Richard Twitterton wrote: "[N]aturally each article of mine was vetted for libel with a microscope." Over the next couple of decades, it gained traction across the Atlantic. Time magazine appears to have used the word vetting for the first time in 1945... The word first appears out of quotes in that magazine in 1959

William Safire first tackled vetting for his "On Language" column in 1980. In response to a reader's complaint that Newsweek used the word twice in two weeks, Safire noted that "some dictionaries have it" and that "the Britishism is in vogue use in America today." He dedicated a second column to vetting in 1993, which is right around when the New York Times started using the expression with great frequency—in reference to Bill Clinton appointees, among other topics."

(Image credit: havenworks.com)