The world we live in today is in many ways better than the world we were living in, say, yesterday. Great advances in technology have made life worth living. I don’t know how people actually got by without having some device that allows people to contact them anytime and virtually anywhere, but I just can’t seem to imagine a world without them! But with this increased quality of living comes something that puts people like me in great danger of being forgotten forever. I’m talking about the worldís new penchant for absolute political correctness.
In today’s society, I’m seen as an OK person who just can’t adapt to the rapidly changing social climate. Or at least that’s what they keep trying to tell me. However, I know that popular opinion paints me as a complete monster that enjoys devouring babies. Eating any babies is bad news, but the public has given me a really bad rap. Of course, they wouldnít come out and call me a baby eater ñ theyíd use the term “infant digester,” but you get the picture. The point is that today the thought of doing something so politically incorrect will no doubt have me lined up for a lobotomy.
That lobotomy wouldn’t be such a bad idea though. I mean, I’m all for change and it’s rather obvious that I’m holding society back. People like me, Eminem and those homeless people who yell out whatever they please are stains on society. We need to come together and realize what we say can hurt people’s feelings and that’s just not kosher in today’s world. We’re dinosaurs, born in a time when making someone feel bad to feel better about yourself was OK and not discouraged by numerous videos in health class.
It’s gotten to the point where I donít even realize I’m being rude anymore. Take the word “retard.” In my happy little world, everything is retarded and everyone is just some stupid retard. For example I may say, “Wow, my last statistics test was wicked retarded!” Now, I mean not to slander the mentally challenged, as I have nothing but respect for them. But you’ll have to excuse me about the usage of this word. You see, I was born and raised here in Massachusetts and that word is just an accepted part of formal slang, and not meant to offend the disabled. Well, it was accepted slang up until a few years ago.
Unlike the rest of the state, I just can’t seem to stop using the word in such a negative, insulting way. It’s especially tough, because even when I appropriately use the word (as a musical term, for instance), I get blasted looks of disgust. But please don’t hate me – itís just the way my brain works. I think it may have some deep-rooted psychological problems pertaining to negativity. So what it boils down to is that it’s not my fault, because I’m just a psycho.
But I need help and want to change! I’ve learned so much from this newfound PC society that I can see the error of my ways. If it werenít for the new way of thinking, I’d still be going around thinking all Russians are communists. That reminds me, I must apologize to the young woman who sprayed me with that mace last year because I said, “Hey [female dog], come here.” I had no clue that [female dog], broad, ho and skank were all unacceptable terms for women. This, however, does explain why I’ve been having trouble getting a date.
It’s just so tough for me, the crazy, child-eating Neanderthal, to comprehend the tiny changes made to the language to accommodate everyone’s well being. For instance, I still call flight attendants stewardesses. I know how absolutely offensive that is, but I just can’t be helped. Or the fact that I use the general term mailman instead of the shiny new term mail carrier. That’s an absolute affront to women (sorry, womyn) everywhere. Knowing full well the negative impact of my verbiage on society and just now realizing a lobotomy would just make me a retard (sorry, it just slipped again), I’ve come up with a way to rid the world of my kind.
Do you remember Hoovervilles, the quaint little shantytowns named after then-president Herbert Hoover during the beginning of the Great Depression? If not, they were basically small villages of homeless people who constructed small tin huts to house themselves and their families. Well, why not bring those back for the new millennium? All you would need to do is find every politically incorrect person who, like myself, cannot be reformed. You then strip them of all their money and belongings and shuttle them to a designated area in each state. Preferably, this area will be a large dump of some kind so we can all find sufficient material to construct a city and if we’re lucky, some food you cruel, wasteful people (oh, sorry, I mean eco-terrorists) have thrown out.
We’d be free to roam within our domain, being as rude, crude and politically incorrect as possible. However, this would get lonely and we’d probably want someone who is not one of us to mock. Because we’re an endangered species, you can open these un-PC villes up to the public as national parks or zoos. Imagine the revenue of something like that – a place where people could see just where our world may have ended up if people like us were actually free to roam the streets. We could even do something like a “scared straight” program, where sarcastic, politically incorrect kids are brought in and we do our best to show them the error of our ways through mockery and verbal abuse.
We, the politically incorrect, are truly a plague on this society. While many have fought to wipe us clean off the planet, we’re still here. But that’s not to say we feel bad about being such emotionless jerks. I mean, why do you think Andrew Dice Clay disappeared from the entertainment scene – because he wasn’t funny? No, it’s because he could admit that he had a problem and withdrew himself from the world!
So round us up and put us away, as we’re of no real worth to you. Mr. Clay and I will be fine as neighbors in small tin huts. In fact, I can’t wait to see how he insults me when I knock on his door to borrow some sugar.
Quintin Marcelino, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. His email is quintinmarcelino@ hotmail.com.