Life without Excel
would be a living hell
And that’s the truth. 
You have your terms reversed. “Homicide bomber” is championed by the same people who profess to disdain PC, not the people who champion PC.
The “PC crowd” (such as they are) are willing to accept “suicide bomber” as an indicator that the person who detonated the explosives was willing to kill himself or herself to deliver the explosives. The “homicide bomber” crowd wants to emphasize the victims and whines loudly that using the word “suicide” bestows the notion of martyrdom on the bomber. “Homicide bomber” is almost exclusively the preserve of (some) members of the political Right (who are, by definition, not members of the “PC crowd”–although they are clearly as attuned to playing with words as the “PC crowd” is.)
As to the OP, I would be curious to see a link to an example of just what all the pissing and moaning is about. I doubt that it is as prevalent as the OP pretends.
(Of course, while I doubt that I would bother agreeing with the OP’s opinion, I might have been more receptive to considering that opinion had there been any sign of English grammar in the post.)
I’d’ve thought postperson was a corpse.
And preperson was a fetus.
Live and learn.
I disagree a little bit with tomndebb; “homicide bomber” is a classic example of Political Correctness. The fact that it’s used by Fox News and friends just shows that Political Correctness is not a monopoly of one side of the political spectrum (quadrant of the political plane, region of the political space, hyperdimension of the political tesseract, etc).
Oh, I agree that it is a classic case of politically inspired language abuse. On the other hand, the phrase “politically correct” has already taken on a more specific meaning of “Left-wing inspired language manuipulation.” The phrase now has a meaning beyond its etymology. Similarly, we can find examples of the actions of Semitic Arabs being called “anti-semitic” since that word gained currency meaning “anti-Jewish,” or (in a more neutral setting) the phrase “Classical music” is generally used to identify most European orchestral genres, despite the existence of a particular “classical” period in musical history, and (going in the opposite direction) “Fundamentalist” has been expanded to include peoples of many religious beliefs beyond those of the early 20th-century American Christian movement to “preserve” biblical understanding.
(I admit that it would be fun to see a few of the more obtuse Right-wing zealots sputter and fume at being called “PC” for their use of the “homicide bomber” phrase, but it would probably just go over the heads of those who needed to understand the point.)
As has already been mentioned, the term homicide bomber is an example of right-wing PCness (if PC is taken to mean twisting the language to benefit your side). I see both sides as being hypocritical here. If the right-wingers have such disdain for the leftist PCness, they should consider their own terminology. And if the left-wingers are so pro-PC in other instances, they should be using “homicide bomber.”
Try using the term “Oriental” on various threads and see if we don’t still have our PC types running around loose.
Gee, maybe because those people find it offensive? Is using the word Asian that hard?
Try it: “A” then a “S” then “I” followed by “A” then finally Mr. B’s right hand man, that’s right “N”. Only 5 letters, rather then 8! Everyone wins!
See what I mean?
No, nobody does. Sorry. Go for the 5, not for the 8.
Its not “PC” not to use a derogitory term intentionally, it’s common decency. I don’t think you really want to join the spew offensive terms around, get roasted as a bigoted shithead, then claim the “anti-PC” forces are conspiring against you types do you?
I really don’t think Oriental is a term of hatred or bigotry. Just some academic types decided it was, and some excitable types came along for the ride, and now suddenly it’s in league with nigger, kike and wop … riiiiight.
I don’t think people who use the term “oriental” hate Asians or intend to denigrate them via the term at all. Making it out as such is pure PC bullshit.
Political Correctness per se is, of course, utter bullshit, but I believe it has opened a lot of people’s eyes to the fact that some terms are hurtful to some people. I think the idea of PC has actually helped much more than PC ever will.
Really?!
The word Oriental doesn’t seem to have any negative reactions here or maybe I’m missing something. For instance Chinese restaurants in particular often use the word Oriental in the name of the premises.
At least Oriental gives some idea as to whether you’re referring to eastern or western asia. Surely to call someone ‘asian’ is even more insulting and generalising - like calling someone ‘african’. It would be ideal if people could automatically and instantly tell the difference between someone from Japan and someone from China or Malaysia or Thailand or Vietnam without hearing them speak but realistically people don’t always have the ability to do this straight off. It would be offensive if for instance someone had a malaysian friend/ aquaintance who they knew was malaysian and still referred to them as being of ‘oriental’ origin.
Is it OK to say ‘east-asian’ or is that un-PC too and if it is OK well why isn’t ‘oriental’ OK since all it means is ‘eastern’ .
When I go to the European continent/ non-english speaking countries people often can’t tell whether I’m Irish or English but you just tell them and it’s fine.
Anyway I’ll quit this hi-jack now before it becomes a fully-fledged rant.
Sorry.
Nothing to apologize about. The impression I received that is was in fact people of Asian descent that found the term offensive. I was surprised to hear that at the time. But, rather then pointless offending someone when another term is more common, I just remembered not to use it. But then again it wasn’t much of an effort for me. I will see if I can drag up a cite.
Only overly PC Us’ers use the term Asian. My wife says “oriental”, I’ll correct her next time, just for you, though, even though I’m white, she’s Japanese and that would probably make me look like a condescending jackass, “Honey, you’re insulting yourself!”
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard “chairperson” much recently. People seem to have reverted to saying “chairman” or “chairwoman”, or even just “chair”. Actually I agree with the intent of gender neutral job titles, but find most of the “person” constructions awkward. “Firefighter”, “flight attendant”, and “server” are fine in this regard.
Having said that, I did cringe when one of the children in a comic strip–I think it was “For Better Or Worse”, was talking about her day and said that she’d made a “person” of snow.
Please let the dictionary people know- they seem to have disagreed with you.
I’ll get right on the phone. I was just saying the term “Asian” has not really taken root in the rest of the world the way it has in the states. I believe in Europe, Asian refers to natives of the Indian sub-continent only. A good portion of the world still uses the term “oriental” with no malice intended, and non taken. It is not at the same as nigger, kike, wop , polock…