30-Sep-96 -- Until recently I never dreamed that pejoratives for our neighbors to the North even existed.  I never heard the end of ethnic slurs against Mexicans when I lived in California for 13 years, although my very Caucasian high school teacher used to call the state “American-occupied Mexico”.  However, my father made the mistake of using a word he heard one evening to “kid” a Canadian woman who had married one of his military buddies.  He called the woman a "Newfie" in jest.  Little did he know that she would not speak to him for the next two years.  Apparently the nerve was hit when this woman, from Newfoundland, Canada -- that part of Canada stretching over the Atlantic which is almost universally-held to be inhospitable – since the term was used primarily by Central and Western Canadians to describe those people who had chosen to live in such a barren, out-of-the-way province which has its own unique time zone.  I found out many years later from my now ex-wife that Newfoundland, where she lived for several years, is indeed barren and a place where time has forgotten.  It was the kind of place, she described, that you couldn’t let you dog wander onto other people’s property without expecting it to get shot.  This is what happened to my wife’s family.  Now I see how militias get started.  Rural bullies.  

However, times have changed, I’m told.  I met a Canuck (just kidding) over the Summer who told me that the stigma that used to apply to Newfoundlanders (that’s New FOUND-landers to you stranger), is now just a term of affection, adopted by the younger generation as an acceptable label to describe their unique positioning in the world.  Still, St. John’s is a long way from 90210.  What I conclude from all of the above is that, contrary to what political commentators are fearing, some of the new “rules” for being politically correct are being relaxed instead of becoming more burdensome (see my first article On Political Correctness in which I described the burdensome use of “differently-abled” to describe what we used to call “handicapped”).  How many more labels will just roll off people’s backs?  Admittedly, Newfie is a relatively obscure former slander, but it is a step, at least.  I’m sure there are more clever and derogatory terms for separatist Quebecois -- or is that “Quebeckers” to Anglophones?  Lets not go there.

Our jurisprudence is of course full of incorrect speech.  We still use illegitimacy in the legal setting, no matter how hard Oprah and others strive to ban its use in everyday language.  I guess it is just to convenient to say the word.  In Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), the Court got away with saying that “three generations of imbeciles is enough” when speaking of sterilization of mentally disabled people.  In the same way that illegitimate is an improper way to describe any child, no children are the result of “artificial insemination” anymore.  The correct term for “AI” is “Alternative Insemination”.  I don’t see the harm in that one because just as I would hate to label a “crack baby” instead of an “addicted baby” and an out-of-wedlock  as an “illegitimate child”, I would not want any child to be called “artificial”.  I only foresee reversing a couple of decades of speech as the challenge, especially when the acronym stays the same!  Nevertheless, I wish us luck with that one.

A colleague of mine in the MIS Department of the large law firm we work in recently had an incident with an attorney which made him boil.  He was helping a secretary recover her mouse and keyboard when he suggested that the terminal be “rebooted”.  The attorney, who has been known for touting her 140 IQ, came out in mid-conversation and said, “Oh, you’re just turning it off and on again?” to which my colleague simply answered, “Yes, in layman’s terms, that is what I’m doing” (emphasis mine).  Before he could catch his breath he was told, “What did you say?!  It’s layperson!!  If you ever use another sexist term like that around here again, I’ll lay you out!”  I have not found the word “layperson” in any dictionary to date.  Readers, please tell me she was out of line and that you won’t practice law like that?!