On Insults

[Today, a piece that I originally wrote 3 years ago.]

The American lexicon has evolved, over the last decade, to have absent from it terms that can hurt people; I am, of course, thoroughly thrilled at such a happening. Such derogatory terms as “faggot”, “Wop” or “Mick” are no longer used, except by the coarsest of speakers, for fear of insulting “homosexuals”, “Italians” and “Irishmen” everywhere. I am pleased beyond belief at the deep, or at least surface-level, progress this highlights. But if our language is being smithed to prevent accidentally hurt feelings, then what the hell do I call someone when I mean to malign them and everything they stand for?

One solution proposed to the significant problem of insulting an individual instead of a group is to drop hurtful terms for their stereotypical characteristics. Dropping “gay” for “effeminate”, however, creates an affront that sounds forced and technical, and does most definitely not assign to the pejored shady morals and weakness of character. Indeed, replacing “Scotsman” with “Frugal” changes the character of an attempted insult so much as to sound congratulatory to the insulted for his ability to keep track of his fiduciary well-being, and forgets to suggest that he wears, late at night, the “tightest of woolen sweaters”. Thus, political correctness has disarmed my wit and taken from me my one mode of self-improvement in this world.

Hence, I have decided upon a course of action that I must undertake to rectify this problem. With my method, I intend to do for the English language what men such as Kipling , with the Indians, and our own Stanford, with the Chinese, have done in the past. I intend to set out on a voyage around the world, and find an heretofore undiscovered tribe of native people. They will then bend to the power of our “self-propelled howitzers” or, as they refer to them, “marching fire-ants of death.” Once enough of them are killed, the rest shall bend to our 21^st-Century Manifest Destiny, an empire on which the sun sets only rarely.

The vanquished will supply us with a new cadre of insulting terms. Long after the Sex Workers Union deprives us of “cheap whore”, their delightful and primitive face-markings will give us a term for any gaudily-made-up woman. We will cast their men alternately first infertile and then savagely over-virile, as our needs suit us, on the brink of a bar-fight to challenge a drunkard’s convictions. Their children we shall view as wholly stupid, through-and-through, which shall reinvigorate conversation on playgrounds of our country from Maine to Washington, California to Florida, and provide our children a new reason to study their language.

Eventually, it is certain, “tree-huggers”, such as the Sierra Club, Amnesty International and Dendrophiliacs United, will grow wary of our treatment of these poor creatures. As such, they shall eventually be assimilated into our culture and assume the same place as every other minority in our “melting-pot” society, i.e., they shall claim their own strip of land and not associate with anyone else. Their lawyers and own anti-defamation league will strike from our tongues their name as an insult, and innumerable sports teams shall be renamed. I write this, therefore, to offer to future generations a blueprint for finding a new butt for their jokes, and young men with a new adventure to take up for the betterment of their people.