9 thoughts on “The Language Police”

1. Taranto picked up on this Friday.

   And while city leaders publicize “brown bag” lunch meetings as a way to designate a bring-your-own lunch time event, the term has a sorted history.

   Needles to say, he has some fun sorting that out.

2. The language police are everywhere. About 20 years ago when my sister was stationed in Germany, there was a stink about weather reports using the term “black ice”. Why, well, black ice (non-shiny ice on a roadway that’s hard to see until it’s too late and is the cause of many accidents) is negative and you shouldn’t allow any negative association with the color black. Honestly, where do they find such fools?

3. If someone told me I can’t say ‘black ice’, I’d be tempted to play dumb and change it to ‘African-American ice’. That is the appropriate solution for most alleged misuses of the word ‘black’.

   1. That reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story about the two bins for recycling paper at MIT: white paper, and “paper of color.”

4. Feh – where I’m from we had real language police which actually go around investigating and fining people. Look up the Office de la Langue Francais http://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ . Get back to me when your so called language police start doing that.

   1. People have been more than fined in some cases. They’ve been fired.

5. “black ice”

   Reminds me of Sheila Jackson Lee’s demand that Hurricane names be more racially diverse, and she won that argument. We can all be happy when the NWS honors Trayvon…

   1. If they name a hurricane “George” (after Mr. Zimmerman), they’ll have three ethnicities covered.

      1. I think George has been retired with the 1998 Cat 4 Hurricane Georges, but I agree with your point.

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