January 24, 2016
Donald Trump
Source: Wikimedia Commons
OXFORD DICTIONARY SCOLDED FOR “SEXISM”
Michael Oman-Reagan describes himself as “an activist, artist, and scholar of social movements” whose “activism works for justice, broadly defined,” and he looks exactly like what you’d suspect a fella who describes himself that way would look.
The hyphenated-surnamed activist recently unleashed his Twitter lightsaber and wielded it against the evil Death Star that is the Oxford English Dictionary, scolding and chiding and shaming and reprimanding it for the unabashedly “sexist” manner in which it deployed sample sentences in its definitions. He objected to the fact that its definition for “rabid” included the example “a rabid feminist.” The word “shrill” mentioned “the rising shrill of women’s voices.” And “psyche” was explained with “I will never really fathom the female psyche.” Best of all, “housework” was elaborated upon with the delicious phrase “she still does all the housework.”
Representatives for the Oxford English Dictionary were initially defiant, then they rolled over, exposed their pink bellies, and burped up the usual fawning apologies that they were going to take a whole new look at how they may be hurting the feelings of some fat, ice-cream-gobbling hag in Omaha who owns 14 cats and hasn’t seen a penis in 20 years.
BODY COUNT: “RIGHT WING EXTREMISM” V. “ISLAMIC EXTREMISM”
A professor of history at Florida State College has crunched the numbers and claims that widespread recent reports that “right wing extremists” in America are far deadlier than “Islamic extremists” is a bunch of hooey, poppycock, balderdash, flapdoodle, and bunkum.
Professor Andrew Holt explains that the two gaping flaws that render such claims meaningless are that they fail to account for the number of fatalities from the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11/2001 and the cumulative number of terrorist attacks worldwide. Holt says:
Indeed, if you include the death totals from 9/11 in such a calculation, then there have been around 62 people killed in the United States by Islamic extremists for every one American killed by a right wing terrorist (a 62 to 1 ratio if you divide the slightly over 3000 deaths due to Islamic extremism by the 48 deaths attributed to right wing extremism)…. If we move beyond America’s borders, then the disparity becomes far greater, with somewhere around 90% of the world’s terrorism related deaths attributable to Islamic extremism, and only a fraction of 1% attributable to right wing extremism.
ARIZONA HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS POSE IN T-SHIRTS THAT SPELL OUT “NI**ER”
An “Appalling Yearbook Photo” featuring six giggling white high-school girls standing in a line with their T-shirts spelling out “NI**ER” has drawn wrath and scorn and outrage and calls for elaborate and exquisite and downright sadistic punishments to be rained down upon the girls’ insensitive and hateful heads. Although the girls received a five-day suspension, this was not nearly enough suffering for the flesh-hungry hordes of social media. No, these girls needed to be shamed and ruined and have their spirits broken and have every future potential spouse and employer know that during their high-school years, they had the audacity to pull off an absolutely indefensible and horrific stunt such as this.
Personally, we think this is a severe overreaction. There is nothing at all wrong with the word “nipper”; in fact, we find it somewhat cute.
