Commentary on a comment

Due to wedding and family stuff it has been a few days and I would have preferred to comment on it while it was fresh in my mind but I will settle for now.

Vocabulary is of vital import. Any serious scholar of George Orwell's Animal Farm can speak long and well of how disappearing vocabulary is a means of population control. By removing various words as options and by selecting others then truth can be manipulated and, more importantly, the population can be shifted into following a prescribed behavioral pattern.

Restricting speech, whether via official or unofficial censorship, is a powerful means of control. It is one reason the Bill of Rights contains protection of free speech. When repressive governments come to power one of the first things they do is restrict certain words or thoughts from free expression. When repressive populations come to power they do the same thing.

Study the French Revolution, for example. Woe to the person so foolish as to say something that offended. The guillotine was hungry for those loose of tongue, whether pro-monarchy, pro-religion, anti-revolution, or a host of other crimes. Verbal crimes.

We are approaching that today. Certain words have been declared crimes. You can be accused of "hate speech" for saying certain words.

Note I am not debating the intelligence of those views, simply someone's right to hold them. In a world of "tolerance' people are remarkably intolerant of views contrary to their own and this is one prime example. In a nation of freedom (allegedly) you are not free to hold minority views...or, for that matter, to hold views that are in the majority but opposed by a vocal minority.

And it has gone so far that sometimes even when someone is NOT saying something angry, bitter, malicious or hateful but is using a word other people use when they are being angry, bitter, malicious or hateful then he gets painted with the same brush.

How bad would it be if someone said something accurate about someone else getting tired and suddenly had to apologize for it?

Oh, wait...that happened to Billy Packer.

Packer, for those who don't know him, is a 70-something year old sports commentator. He is from a different generation. He uses words and phrases from that generation. They don't always mean the same thing.

We used to collapse in gales of laughter at a similar thing said by Harold Buckles. He must be about 90 now...and in his world a cigarette was known as a fag. So he would talk about how repulsive it must be to women to see men walking around with fags in their mouth. We knew what he meant...didn't stop us from laughing.

But we also never felt the need to apologize for him. He said what he meant to say and said it correctly, albeit archaicly.

Not so CBS. They did feel compelled to apologize for Packers comments even though they admitted in their apology he did not say anything wrong...but people could take it wrong.

Due to the time lapse between observing the quote and now I make no claim this is exactly accurate but it is a reasonably close approximation of what Packer said:

"In a race he would be a poor partner because he would get fagged out".

This phrase is in no way, shape, or form offensive to any accomplished linguist. He simply said the guy would get tired. I know it. He knows it. CBS knows it. But there are a lot of idiots in the world today so his "potentially homophobic slur" as one overwrought blurb declared it to be has caused a firestorm and brought forth an apology from CBS.

Huh? For what? For him actually having some sort of vocabulary? For him using a phrase that has been outdated, much like many other phrases I hear. But it was neither wrong nor offensive to anyone who bothered to pay attention in school.

I find it very offensive that CBS apologized for his comment or that discussions have been held about further reprisals EVEN THOUGH HE SAID NOTHING WRONG.

If that is not a huge and wrong step in the culture wars then the wars are, in fact, over. And everyone lost. In a very Animal Farm way we have lost not just our language but also our freedom.