Politically Incorrect

Inspired by a comment questioning the name of Edmonton's CFL team (The Edmonton Eskimos), I realized that this rant against the increased prominence of political correctness is long overdue.

There are several terms that are loaded with negative stereotypes that lead to marginalization and perpetuate a negative stigma. Many of those terms are quite prominent in older TV shows and books because at the time they were deemed acceptable. I think that in general the trend to decrease the common place nature of words that have derogatory connotations is a good one.

Most of these aforementioned terms are deemed politically incorrect by modern standards. (Most of these words tended to be racially charged.) However, recently there has been a trend towards making everything politically correct and the PC movement has really gone to far. (This may or may not coincide with a bunch of womyn started whining and now everything is bad.) Currently, almost any adjective is technically politically incorrect:

-people aren't celebrating Christmas, they're enjoying the holiday season (fair enough, yay religious inclusively);
-people aren't mailmen or chairmen, they're letter carriers and chairpersons (ok, so gender neutrality isn't terrible);
-people aren't "The elderly" or "Old people", they're "seniors" or "older people" (this is getting silly);
-people aren't juvenile delinquents, they're troubled youth or children at risk (really!);
-people aren't from Macau or Taiwan, they're from "Greater China" (less politically charged but I think it's more offensive);
-people aren't short, they're vertically challenged (this is too much);
-people in Britain aren't failing exams, they're deferring success (wtf?);
-people aren't stupid, they're a freakin' pain in the ass (ok that's a truism).

I think that this over-application of political correctness can be best illustrated with an example from the Simpsons (yay Simpsons):

"Pizza day will now be known as Italian American Sauce Bread day."

There needs to be a balance between preventing the perpetuation of negative stereotypes and being able to call a spade a spade. But until then, I shall continue to be politically incorrect by cheering for the Eskimos (eating my earlier words) and getting mad at people who call ombudsmen ombudspersons (or ombuddies).