#3. Political Incorrectness

I'm not old enough to remember the good ol' days when everything was so much simpler and better. The Yankees won the World Series every year and the only thing you had to worry about was whether your boyfriend or son would come back from Korea alright. You had unending television options with three channels, and you could watch the raunchy dance techniques of Elvis Presley. What can top that?

Well, political incorrectness, of course.

Black people were called Negros or Colored People; Asians were Orientals and the spoon was invented so they could eat glape jello (true story); homosexuals had a disease; little people were midgets; women were not people. As I said, much simpler, better times.

And of course, political incorrectness still does thrive in the backwards parts of the country that are shielded from mainstream America and its values, like Biloxi, Miss., Casper, Wyo., and Dallas, Texas. But for the most part, it's as dead as the squirrel I swerved to hit on my way to work last Thursday.

Downtown Casper, Wyo., not to be confused with Vancouver, B.C., which is just a smaller-scale replica

No, political correctness has taken over and has come to dominate American life.

Mexicans are no longer lazy spics. Now they are lazy Mexican-Americans.

Women no longer look snappy, unless you want to be sued for $12 million, have your reputation destroyed, lose the cubicle adjacent the bathroom, and have your wife no longer make you a sandwich while you watch the Bills-Patriots game at 1:00.

And rappers are no longer thugz and playaz and gangstaz. No, now they're just flat out niggaz.

None of it is fun.

We (and by we I actually mean the heterosexual, middle-aged white male, married with children, one living parent, and season tickets to the NHL, so in essence, not me) have to be extremely careful of everything we say so as to “not offend,” because if we “offend,” we are “S.O.L.” and “unemployed.”

Look at Don Imus, for instance. He goes on radio and calls a bunch of nappy-headed hoes a basketball team and gets suspended and ultimately fired. Sure, they were a basketball team, but we can no longer assume that any black adult not either in prison or in KFC is a basketball player. Making such an assumption “offends.”

*Michelle Obama and Tiger Woods were at KFC

Or we can look at Jimmy The Greek, who when he was not creating a chain of Greek fast-food restaurants in Western Canada, was on CBS saying such outlandish things as “the black is a better athlete” and “the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.” No, with political correctness, what Jimmy the Greek should have done was cut a big black check for $10 million as an apology for slavery and give it to the great-great-great-great granddaughter of a houseslave who once knitted Martha Washington's stove mittens to show sympathy for the anguish that slavery has caused on that great-great-great-great granddaughter, just like every other rich white male has been forced to do.

Canada has a fast-food Greek chain, further proof that Canadians have no taste buds

We can't make jokes about Indians any more (and last I heard, the International Association on Political Correctness changed them back to being called Indians again), but we can put on our college applications that we are “Native American” (how crude) just because 18 generations ago someone in our family passed around Pocahontas like she worked for Eliot Spitzer and we are distantly descended.

We can't say that Jews control the economy or that Koreans have funny voices or that Californians are pompous fruitbags or any other fact out of fear of offending.

Californian

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I like political incorrectness. I want it back.