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Re:A History of Political Correctness by gaius on Sunday November 10, 2013 @04:59PM (#6708630)
There is a kids TV show here in the UK called Blue Peter, it's been running for decades. I'm not sure who Blue Peter actually was (the show is presented by a man, and woman, a cat and a dog) but anyone British will have watched it regularly growing up.

One day back in the 80s Blue Peter decided it was going to do something about discrimination against what were then known as "spastics" (I will use the term as it is historically correct). So they got someone on called Joey Deacon (see, I can still remember the name) to show that they were just normal people despite their physical condition.

It backfired spectacularly. The next day in the playground, "Joey" was the insult of choice. Now this may just be because kids are stupid and cruel but there is a lesson there: you can't do social engineering by clumsy attempts to manipulate language. It just doesn't work. So (for example) nowadays when we hear that a kid has ADHD, everyone just rolls their eyes and knows perfectly well that is just the PC way to say "bad parenting".

Re:A History of Political Correctness by tptacek on Sunday November 10, 2013 @10:20PM (#6709756)
I have no idea how to parse this comment. Calling someone a "spastic" seems horrible. Kids in schoolyards looking to score points at the expense of the disabled are horrible. Assuming that a kid with ADHD is the victim of bad parenting seems like a terrible idea. Following your idea to its logical conclusion, it seems like we'd still be calling black people the n-word; after all, much of the use of that word in the first half of the 20th century was probably intended to be neutral.
Re:A History of Political Correctness by gaius on Monday November 11, 2013 @01:39AM (#6710291)
It seems horrible now but it was the normal term at the time; even the charity was called the Spastics Society. And you only have that reaction because you've bought into the PC game.

But my point is, PC doesn't really work. Everyone "knows" what is really meant by any of the PC terms.