Society - Who's the Faggot Now?

Free Speech is now officially a rotting corpse. Isaiah Washington, an actor on “Grey’s Anatomy,” has become another willing victim of the Cult of the Politically Correct, ascending to the evil pantheon alongside Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and Rosie O’Donnel. Though there can be no doubt that the offenses committed by the men on this list were intended to be abusive, Rosie was merely careless. And therefore it is right that these men have publicly apologized and agreed to reassess their values while Ms. O’Donnel has merely shrugged.

Still, I lament the loss of the Stoic American. The Cowboy and the Soldier who merely grunted at superficial slights, the Dustbowl Matriarch with leathery skin, and the resilient American Negro—they are all now shadows of a distant past. In their stead are talking torsos behind podiums, spewing outrage or apology. Our modern heroes are unremarkable protagonists in made-for-television dramas about people who fight picayune injustices.

And it’s all just so … anti-aesthetic. This current zeitgeist that obsesses over personal suffering strikes me as an assault on the rugged dignity we once represented. I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with being strong and hard and crass at times, meeting like for like, without responding to mere words as if they were mortal wounds.

Just to be clear on this, it’s necessary to emphasize that I’m not talking about assaults by people who intend to inflict terror and true injury, fag-bashers or skin-head rednecks who surround an Asian woman in a car with her baby beside her. Such people should be hanged by a mob, or at least publicly humiliated and run out of town on a pole. Certain aberrant behaviour, by necessity, must be combatted.

It’s this assault on the general status quo that worries me so. The colorful speech of the past is now laden with psychological word-mines that can explode unexpectedly with any footfall. The new milieu is a regime with robotic thought-police on ubiquitous patrol. The insectoid PC drones prowl public thoroughfares and private recesses, seeking out the bad seeds of society, those who utter the prohibited syllables of an overthrown dynasty. When their minutely attuned attenae detect the slightest murmur of The Proscribed Words, words like ching-chong and faggot and nigger, alarms shriek across the globe. The machines clamber together and form a donut around the perpetrator, their metallic limbs pointing censoriously at this single focus. The wailing permeates the offender’s cranium, inflicting discomfort and unrest. Coded messages are beamed out to the social network: This Will Have Economic Repercussions.

Surrounded, and with no way out, the deviant falls to his knees and pleads mea culpa. He asks for mercy, but the sentence is binding. “You are guilty of thought crimes. Crimes are evil. Therefore, your thoughts are evil. Your mind must be changed.” With head bowed, the pariah walks through the throng as a path spreads before him. Their appendages now point in unison toward his destiny: The Counseling Facility.

So it is, and so it shall be. The Cowboy has been laid to rest.