Call me nuts, but PC language cripples us

One problem with our effort to sanitize the language of all that might offend is that it leads to lunatic results. Just ask the music reviewer at the Los Angeles Times. Last month he reviewed an opera by Richard Strauss, which he described as “a glorious and goofy pro-life paean.” A diligent copy editor replaced the controversial term “pro-life” with the inoffensive “anti-abortion.” This resulted in not one but two embarrassing corrections explaining that the opera has nothing to do with abortion. —Margaret Wente
—Call me nuts, but PC language cripples us (The Globe and Mail)

I remember reading of an incident in which all instances of the word “black” were changed to “Afr0-American.” The result was that an article in the business section referred to a company’s finances as being “in the Afro-American.” (Thanks, Jim.)