PC language, or thought? By the way, I liked the challenge, sometimes they are fun ;)
Let's take language first, as I find it more interesting.
One thing everyone knows, but writers really get their faces rubbed in if they are half way decent at their craft (or have a decent editor who shouts and screams at them to improve their writing - thanks Jason, Sue, Marina and Jo!), is that words have weight and power beyond the ink on paper or pixels on screen, due to social, sexual and cultural associations. Each word carries an emotional index, based on context and modifiers, that can be absolutely devastating to the audience when used wrongly. Or correctly.
If I call a person obese, it is a cold clinical word, describing a condition of the body. Sure, uncomfortable for the listener, but so cold that it is hard to take offense at.
Fat is descriptive but very insulting.
A frigging beached whale is gonna get me a (well deserved) good hard slap in the face. Endomorphic usually makes people scratch their heads.
All technically mean the same, but the emotion evoked is different in each case.
If people who share a similar sexual orientation, physical body type, handicap either physical or mental wish to change what they are referred to as they find the current words demeaning or upsetting, that is fine with me. I make a mental note and just carry on.
Very short people I am happy to call Little People instead of Dwarves, though the image that still throws up in my mind is the tiny, often malicious fairys my nonna told me of as a child.
Languages evolve and change all the time. You can no more stop it than you can the tide, nor should you even try. It's cool. As long as they don't try to co-opt or ban the use of the entire word in all it's contexts as insulting. That then interfers with my right to work and use the most appropriate word in the most appropriate place. I dislike that a lot.
As for PC thought:
Not impressed and never will be. It seems to me to be 1/3 newspeak and 2/3 condescension.
Then this is used to set up fairly arbitrary divisions between people on what can and cannot be said or done, making it worse. You have surely read the odd news story of some schools banning Christmas cards and carols as being non-inclusive or offensive in a multicultural neighborhood. These things never seem to come from the people that are supposedly offended, but rather from well meaning city hall workers with a serious case of the (predominantly) white guilts.
Like absolutely everyone does, I categorize the people I know. As good or bad neighbors or friends, trustworthy or not, competent or useless at a specific task. That is it. Who needs more? Most folk don't and that is what gets them upset about the PC stuff. People are not hypenated. They are simply people, similar or different from you.
Of course, it can lead to some interesting times if you actively live like that.
Had a good friend, Terry, come to stay a week last summer, being in the area and wanting to get in a bit of fishing and yarning. We were very close friends in college and have kept in touch a lot by phone, and more recently email.
I have told my lady god knows how many stories about the shenanigans we used to get up to in the lab and in the bars, usually having her crying with laughter at how totally ridiculous we were.
Terry arrived, and my lady was rather annoyed and concerned to see me come in with him arm in arm - I had never once, in all those tales, mentioned to her that Terry is stone blind. It simply wasn't important enough to me to mention.
Of course, he found the whole thing completely hysterical once he found out about it and teased me unmercifully. He's one f*ckhead who'll never change.
Thank God.
I dunno - bit of a ramble, but does it answer your question? It was fun to try to, at least.
Does Terry read your advice columns?
He reads - well, listens to, everything I write. Here, the other places I write for, novels and non fiction.
Usually well before publication. And criticises it unmercifully.
I return the favor, editing his stuff before it goes out. (speech to text is not quite as good as text to speech yet.)
My biggest problem with this site...I love your writing, and would really like to be able to see some of your other work, but sadly the whole pesky 'mystery' part of Mystery Man means it may never be. :-(
yes thats the only bit that bothers me too. darn Mystery..
as a writer i completely understand the mysteriousness behind MM. when you put pen to paper and send it in the world, it's sometimes scarier than sending your babies off to kindergarten the first day. terrifying even, especially when you think you've done something really well. whenever i get something back marked up with red edits i always moan about my babies bleeding lol he's much more accomplished than i am so perhaps maybe less scared, but i do get the mystery. pen names and ghost writing goes back centuries. women had to use male pen names in the first half (and sometimes even in the second) of the last century because they didn't think they would get published fore the mere sake that they were women. harper lee, author of my favorite book, classic example, her name is actually nell harper lee. bronte also had some male pen names. the point is that the power in writing is in the message, not necessarily the author. for all you know, you could have read stuff of his already and don't even know it. : )
I have lamented that as well. As an avid reader, sometimes I wonder if I have read something of his when a style reminds me of MM, but I usually assume that it's just wishful thinking on my part especially since I have no way of knowing if he writes the type of books I usually read.
Ahhh..., the mistery of it all.
(spelling sucks..., as always, lol)
Sorry, it is part of the contract.
I know what you mean about words being banned in any context. I used to moderate for a handful of websites and was constantly stopping fights because someone described someone with mental conditions as "retarded" and everyone else freaked out. Yeah, watching someone trip and calling them a retard can be offensive(and that use seems to have taken over the entire meaning of the word), but it's still a widely understood clinical term.
Same with the Christmas taboo thing. We used to have a Secret Santa thing at my high school, but one of the (Christian) teachers demanded it be changed to "Secret Pal" to avoid offending people. Our Jewish teacher thought it was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard and continued to call it Secret Santa. :P
Have you written for Cracked before? I thought I saw once that you had.
(Or at least, the author was named "Mike M." or something like that, and it linked to Guyspeak for his other writing. There was no one named Mike here at GS, so I figured it was another psedonym of yours.)
Would that have been Michael Swaim by any chance? He was Funny Guy here before Amit took over the job, and he's a regular on cracked.
OMG, You answered my question! :) I just posted it here, but never thought that you might accept the challenge. Then I completly forgot about it and nooow, here i see it answered. 10x.
I am happy to see that i am not the only one thingking that some people really suffer from a severe form of 'white guilt' or catholic guilt or any other form of irrational guilt! We always try not to offend others by constraining ourselves and creating even more frustration. I just wonder when all this is going to end...
Btw, the story with Terry gave me a good laugh. I wish you'd give us more details :) But then again, your are MYSTERY MAN
Cheers!