Re: “My compromise offer to the politically correct,” Feb. 16 Jon Caldara column.
As a writer and editor, I would think a person who identifies as “a Denver Post columnist” would have a better understanding of the importance of words than Jon Caldara exhibited in his insincere compromise offer: “We boorish ignorant anti-PC bigots will acceptwhateverterms you hyper-sensitive social engineering snowflakes want to describewhatevervictim group or situation you want. … [But the] new term must be shorter than the one you want us to stop using.”
No one is “mandated” to use what he derisively calls “politically correct terms.” In our still free society, we can learn to respect others’ wishes regarding how they prefer to be identified, or we can insult them as hyper-sensitive snowflakes and whine about how many syllables they expect us to use. Jon, how many syllables in “libertarian-conservative”?
..ٳ,Longmont
Jon Caldara takes on political correctness in the case of his own son, who has Down syndrome. There was a time, 50 years ago, when the term “educable mentally retarded” was used to describe the developmentally disabled. Boy, that EMR label is, by Caldara’s definition, totally PC, because it had too many syllables. But that was before PC was ever heard of. About 20 years ago, I had a classmate who spoke out rabidly against the nascent PC movement. He was disgusted by it. He was all but laughed at, but he stuck with it. Now I hope he sees that he was, um, correct. PC is disgusting.
Cheryl Murphy, Commerce City
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