The most offended person in the room

Ok.I detest political correctness. I love straight talk. Partly because the Good book says “Let your yea be yea.” Check. I also like straight talk because I don’t like the bewildered way I feel after listening to political-correct stuff. Double-check.

Political correctness usually causes one of two responses—I walk away mumbling as I scratch my significantly graying head, or I break into hearty laughter. But lately I‘ve been doing a lot of both, and it’s not easy to walk, mumble, and laugh at the same time.

Let’s face it. We live in a world where spin doctors abound. In this strange world of political correctness, yea doesn't mean yea, no doesn't mean no, and words are twisted into an alphabetic teething ring to pacify the most offended person in the room. Kind of a pedantic pacifier. Here are a couple examples. Cue Paul in Romans 1, “Thinking themselves to be wise they became fool...."

Portland Oregon, September 2012. In her zeal to conquer racism, Verenice Gutierrez (principal of Harvey Scott School in Portland) declared war on a vile offender of racial harmony. Sounds good, I guess. In fact, Verenice was determined to ferret out racism even if it is “sandwiched” between students’ kitchens and the school cafeteria. Her target? Peanut butter and jelly. “Huh!??!!” “HOW CAN PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY BE Raci……!??!!” Because she says it is…

According to Verenice, PB&J “is a subtle form of racism.” She added that Somali and Hispanic students might not eat such sandwiches so she initiated training exercises among staff members to fight against this “white privilege.” Sorry Skippy, your racially charged sandwich spread is expelled from school until further notice! Had Verenice done some actual research, she might have discovered that peanut butter was partially invented by George Washington Carver. Diagnosis? Absurd political correctness. Conclusion: People like Verenice are not very nice.

Dayton, Ohio, November 23, 2012. JCrane Inc. was lifting new HVAC units onto the roof of Sinclair Community College. Since the college remained open during the project, JCrane took great care to install fencing, barricades, and warning signs to ensure that the public would not be endangered by the heavy-equipment work going on above their heads. All went well until the second morning of the project, when a Sinclair employee called the foreman of the crane company. The foreman was told that they needed to stop all work immediately until the “sexist” sign they had set up on the sidewalk was replaced. The offensive sign in question? “Men working” (I’m not making this up). Initially the foreman thought it was a prank and the workers (seven guys) kept working, chuckling at the sublime joke. They stopped laughing when a college construction department guy showed up in person and demanded that they stop all work immediately! His said his “boss” was having a fit. His boss was Elizabeth Verzi (who works at the college) and she was the most offended person in the room! Maybe in the whole city…

The crane company foreman and the union pipefitter foreman met with the disgruntled feminist (Verzi) to resolve the issue. The meeting didn’t go well, unless you enjoy being yelled at, told you are a sexist, and berated for having a “Men Working” warning sign out by the sidewalk to alert pedestrians. After the “meeting” the two foremen walked away thoughtfully. One said, “I’ve never seen a woman talk like that. She just seemed evil.” The other one said, “We are working with the devil him(her)self here.”

Faced with the prospect of working with this woman for another few months, the pipefitter foreman drove back to his office, turned in his keys and truck and quit. On the spot. A man in his late fifties with over twenty years in the Pipefitters Union, this woman was the end of his career.

Diagnosis Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media and academia, which stubbornly clings to the belief that it is possible to pick up fresh excrement by the clean end.

On the surface, political correctness sounds ludicrous. And it is. In this strange muddled world the homeless are called under-housed and pirates are called seafaring entrepreneurs, the bald are folically–challenged and the fat are horizontally gifted. But at a deeper level, it is an ideology at war with the Biblical principle of honesty. For many, it becomes their religion and "evangelism" is accomplished by force and control (see Great Controversy chapter 35, a wonderfully straightforward book).

We see shameful situations created in our schools and universities in America that have fallen prey to Political Correctness. Some professors, students and publications are being attacked for expressing a point of view that differs from that imposed by a fanatical far left, under the guise of Political Correctness. Furthermore, in schools and workplaces we see that "diversity" has degenerated into reverse discrimination, where often the less qualified are admitted and the incompetent or unethical cannot be fired (see La Sierra for details).

Lamentation I've heard via teachers that some schools are doing away with GT (gifted/talented) classes. This would, of course be so kids in the regular classes don't start crying every day. At that age, most students are either too cool or too lazy to want to be in the egghead classes. And the nerd kids that actually want to learn should be given every opportunity to excel, even if that means segregating them from the students who would rather start fights or put pencils in their noses.

Sports are the same way. When I was a kid, you actually had to try out for sports teams (though you didn't necessarily have to be good, since I made the little league baseball team). Apparently nowadays, to avoid hurting kids' feelings, some sports leagues make the teams take anybody. While this may lead to some awesome videos on the FAIL blog, I don't think it's the best thing for the kids. That goofy kid may actually be good at something, but if we keep telling him he's good at everything when he's not, he'll never figure out what his talents are until it's too late. Then we'll just have one more hobo (er, I mean "Under-housed person") out there walking around with his knapsack full of cornbread. And food-stamps.

Conclusion Political Correctness (PC) originally flowered in academia and spread like a virus through the government and corporate worlds. It has devolved into a tyranny of the most offended person in the room.  It now stands at the door of the church and knocks, and will be invited in by a liberal academia who often say “We want a place at the world’s table.” If we go down that road, we will lose the core of our message and mission—a message that is based on hard but essential truth.

As illustrated above, PC complaints now range from the sublime to the ridiculous, and they are stifling the honest assessment and debate of issues in our world. I’ve tried to play nice, but I genuinely don’t care if you’re offended by this article, my men working signs, the Great Controversy, or my Bible.  And, please don’t worry about offending me in the comments section.