The Multiculturalist Language Police
Been meaning to get around to this, as it’s been on my list of essay subjects, quite correctly in the category of “Things that make me nuts.”
Having harrumphed thus far into the topic, let me admit that it’s really two topics irrationally and inescapably entwined, both of which escaped my attention until I saw an article about Dianne Ravitch’s book (The Language Police) discussed at CNN.com. Amazing the things that transpire when you duck out of the country for ten or twelve years. Who’d a thunk that school book publishers would have dumbed down textbooks in the misguided quest for political correctness, quietly removing “polo” and “yacht” as elitist, “blind” as offensive and even “boyish figure” as sexist. The list goes on and I can’t wait to see it, though my copy is enroute from Amazon.
Multiculturalism is claimed as the origin of such foolishness, a modern egalitarian theory that gives equal value to all cultures, backgrounds and human conditions and insists upon that equality to th…