Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Ken Reading, PA on January 10, 2009:

Shouldn't they change their name to "American Family Buttociation"?

Posted by David, Nanoose Bay, British Columbia on January 10, 2009:

Re: embarrbutting

I remember in the early 90's when our local college (oh, yes... a bastion of free speech!) hired a programmer to modify the word processing programme. It was an era of fervent and fudamentalist feminism running rampant at the college.

The programme was modified so that no one could type any phrase that could be taken as a negative reference to girls or women - too much free time on somebody's hands, I said. Well... many women I talked with who were in a creative writing class were bedeviled by this programme. If one wrote the phrase "the old hag (or witch) answered the door of the cottage", one had to come up with a new word for "hag" or "witch". If one wrote in quotes, " isn't she bitchy, today?" whether spoken by male of female, a word change was necessitated. The word "fireman" had to be changed to "fireperson" even though, in the historical text, the man was a fireman feeding coal to the boiler of a ship. (witching hour, bewitching, haggle, switch, etc. all ran into problems). People who think like this should not be in the education field.

Words for males were not affected. Suffice it to say, after numerous complaints by students, the filters were removed and..... so were the relevant staff! They went north and proceeded to terrorise linguaphiles of both genders, I hear.

Posted by Marlene - Florida on January 11, 2009:

Re: the "cleaning up" of our language - Randy - this would make your Cbuttingham - don't particularly like the sound of it!!! Much prefer the original!

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Watch the video, and watch for my name to show. :-) -rc

Posted by Judy / wurtsboro NY on January 11, 2009:

I am sure you know of the mention of "True" in Wordsmith this weekend. Of course I read both and enjoy each immensely. I noticed that you mentioned Wordsmith this past week...coincidence or something else?

Both of the publications are very worth anyone's time and learning.

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Not really a coincidence: AWAD was my Bonzer Site of the Week last week, and I'm sure Anu noticed the traffic and/or had the write-up pointed out to him several times. He returned the favor by pointing people to this page, entirely appropriate since an amusing language-based story was named "Weirdest" of the year. -rc

Posted by Michael in Cornwall, UK on January 12, 2009:

As examples of really serious cleaning up, has anyone ever come across a reference to Buttne Wenger, the manager of the English Premiership soccer team, Buttnal?

Posted by Paul, Oklahoma City on January 12, 2009:

I think the Third Runner Up: Committed to Rage and the Second Runner Up: Turnabout is Fair Play should both be nominated for the Darwin Award.

Posted by Tom, Port Townsend, Wash. on February 5, 2009:

"Political correctness" is being forced upon the language by people who probably don't understand English all that well in the first place. Meanwhile, I find these accounts breatillating. I wonder about a line from an old song that might well wind up "...when our hearts were young and homosexual" (from "Old Black Joe," I believe, although that may have since been changed to "Old African-American Joe"). I suppose next a crotchety old man such as I will have to be described as a groinety old man.