Politically correct speech has stifled a very large segment of the natural human instinct to make fun of other people. Anyone telling an ethnic joke must now begin by looking around the room to see who will be insulted.
An especially egregious example of this is the enforcement of politically correct speech on the UW campus. One of the few legal reasons for ending tenure would be to prove I had done something as offensive as using the N-word or even complementing a female colleague on her appearance. Of course, this policy rules out jokes about the Irish, the Jews, and probably about people from Tacoma. Some of my best friends are from Tacoma!
Desperate for some form of ethnic humor, I decided several years ago to think about jokes I could make about the ombudsman. After all it is the UW ombudsman whose job it is to act as the enforcer of politically correct speech. Anybody feeling improperly spoken to is supposed to bring their complaint to the ombudsman. The resulting actions can be dire. We have an impressive organization called UCIRO that consists of attorneys who claim the right to investigate violations. Apparently the need to suppress the pernicious habit of referring to somebody as being sexually attractive, it’s so important that UCIRO claims the investigative powers of the FBI, the Secret Service, and the KGB. At the beginning of a UCIRO investigation, for example, the putative perp is warned that he or she may not contact an attorney and the investigators refuse to tell their subject who has made charges and what those charges might be.
All of this has led me to feel that there is a need for humor involving the ombudsman. After all, Ombud’s people are not yet an ethnic group so Ombuds jokes must, I assume, still be permitted?
My first joke, written about 10 years ago, was pretty simple:
“How many ombudsmen does it take to screw up a lightbulb?”
Ans “One. Any ombudsman can screw up anything!”
I have told the story many times. I always get the same response. There is a nervous laugh and then people look around to see who might be listening.
Recently, however, I have had to revise my joke. The University has decided to change the title of the ombudsman to the “Ombud.” From what I see in the Wikipedia, this is an example of politically correct revisionist speech. The three letters m-a-n have become verboten at the end of a word. We are linguistically desperate to find replacements not only for such terms as congressman and mailman but for humanity itself.
So, what do I do about my joke? Is the plural of “Ombud” “Ombuds?” If I open my joke with the question how many Ombuds does it take to screw up a lightbulb will anybody find that funny?
Probably not, I think my best bet is to continue referring to the Ombud with the sexually inappropriate term.
However, I may have a new joke.
“Do you know what else the letters in Ombud spell?”
DUMBO.
I’m quite sure UCIRO attorneys don’t investigate violations. I’ll bet 100.0% of their investigations are of alleged violations.
“sexually inappropriate term”
Did you mean “gender-biased term”?
We rabbits are victims of malicious hate speech, too. Some people keep referring to us as “rabbit stew.”
True enough. I personally reject the claims I make that rabbits are furry relatives of cabbages
not at all gender bias is a form of affirmative action.
That is an idea. I wonder if I ocul get an FOIA to accumukate a table of all their investigations over a year, the budget, and the percentages of outcomes.