Post-Crescent Editorial
May 11, 2001
You can see it in Oshkosh, where the school board has been debating whether to retain the potentially offensive team nicknames of Indians, Spartans and Trojans.
Wednesday night, the board opted to seek more review from the individual schools, and take a new look at the issue in 2002.
We can get behind changing the "Indians" to something less racially insensitive. But "Spartans?" Isn't a "Spartan" life supposed to be a good thing? And "Trojans?" We're not sure who'd be rubbed the wrong way by that.
But political correctness doesn't always make sense. It's sometimes more important to the PCers to say something - anything at all - than it is to make common sense.
You can see it, too, in the Rodesh Shalom Day School in New York City, where pupils will not be allowed to make presents or presentations for Mother's Day or Father's Day. The school's director said that the practice could make the children of same-sex couples "uncomfortable."
Oh, please. Did it not occur to the school's administration that banning this relatively harmless classroom activity could irritate the children of opposite-sex couples? Are they not "uncomfortable" now?
"Families in our society are now diverse and varied," said the school's director.
They sure are. But here's a newsflash: Every child on this planet world has a mother somewhere. To deny that fact, in the name of political correctness, is taking the easy way out.
Wouldn't a kid in a home with two gay male parents eventually wonder how she got there? How would the PCers address that one?