I'm presuming, Maxine, that you mean the poltical correctness post, right? Susan's point, I am sure, is that if you tried to get a reference to defectives in an American paper, you would fail. It would be deemed politically incorrect. "Cripple" is out for the same reason. The lame, the halt and the blind are now some kind of abled (oh, I'm sounding politically incorrect myself, I fear). So she was simply noting that there seems to be less of that in British newspapers. That's how I saw it, anyway.
The defectives point was simply a mild gag about the fact that we seem to have the most dysfunctional youth in Europe. I simply expanded this to imply that, as we are all watched all the time by CCTV, we are all defectives. This kind of joke - derived, somewhat, from Auberon Waugh - is actually much more anti-discriminatory than PC as it says we are ALL defective.
I'd be interested in your take on that Bryan Appleyard post, Frank. I didn't really get it.
ReplyDeleteI'm presuming, Maxine, that you mean the poltical correctness post, right? Susan's point, I am sure, is that if you tried to get a reference to defectives in an American paper, you would fail. It would be deemed politically incorrect. "Cripple" is out for the same reason. The lame, the halt and the blind are now some kind of abled (oh, I'm sounding politically incorrect myself, I fear). So she was simply noting that there seems to be less of that in British newspapers. That's how I saw it, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe defectives point was simply a mild gag about the fact that we seem to have the most dysfunctional youth in Europe. I simply expanded this to imply that, as we are all watched all the time by CCTV, we are all defectives. This kind of joke - derived, somewhat, from Auberon Waugh - is actually much more anti-discriminatory than PC as it says we are ALL defective.
ReplyDelete