@wolfpup McWhorter might not be a crank, but he is a right-wing culture warrior. And frankly so is anyone you’ve watched on Bill Maher. That show’s entire schtick is crying out that young blue-haired feminists are destroying the internet/world/USA/TV/McDonalds/cold beer…
Literally a show for cranky old men.
Interesting. One of the old standards of the Internet, RFC 2042, sets forth the standardized e-mail addresses organizations should use to allow management and technical contacts. “webmaster@<organization DNS name>” is one of the standard e-mail addresses. Although "www@<organization DNS name> is offered as a synonym.
If you’re selling anything, you don’t want to offend anybody, so bye-bye to “master bedroom.”
Still it’s a shame that this false derivation has become so widely accepted while other actually offensive terms remain in usage.
It might be the actual derivation – the bedroom that the master of the house stays in, right?
Anyway, I agree that other actually offensive terms should no longer be in usage.
Would this be an opportune time to raise my issues with the Mint Julep?
The list probably disappeared after much pointing and laughing. But the underlying initiatives appear to still be there, including an existing document that cites the goal of “challenging oppressive language in ourselves, our programs, and our community.” It really doesn’t especially matter if this particular initiative got any traction. McWhorter cites it as an example of trying to drive language change that is sometimes downright comical.
Strange how I could “assign” anything just by quoting exactly what McWhorter wrote. The whole point of this discussion, lest anyone forget, is to refute the notion that there aren’t institutions trying to drive language change, and that it’s supposedly all bottom-up organic.
A review of the article in Language Log, incidentally, has the same quotes, and notes:
McWhorter persuasively shows that we are entering dangerous territory when we are told that we must take metaphorical language literally and avoid it if the expression’s surface signification is likely to offend someone.
Oh, really? You mean right-wing extremists like Bernie Sanders, Frances Haugen, Tim Ryan, Medaria Arradondo, Ruben Gallego (Democratic Congressman from Arizona), Paul Begala, Ari Melber (MSNBC journalist), John Heilemann (MSNBC) and Russell Brand? 
And, of course, John McWhorter. Those are just from this year’s season so far.
From Wikipedia:
McWhorter characterized himself as “a cranky liberal Democrat”. In support of this description, he states that while he “disagree[s] sustainedly with many of the tenets of the Civil Rights orthodoxy”, he also “supports Barack Obama, reviles the War on Drugs, supports gay marriage, never voted for George W. Bush and writes of Black English as coherent speech”.
You did more than just quote him, though. You also commented on what McWhorter is talking about in the cited article, and how it supports your argument in this thread. It’s your commentary on McWhorter said that I’m taking issue with, as your commentary does not seem to be strongly supported by the article you cited.
C’mon, I wasn’t born yesterday. 99% of Bill Maher’s schtick is Old-Man Yelling at imaginary college liberals and SJW youth. That’s his entire deal. Has been it for a decade now. And guess what? McWhorter’s whole schtick is “those darn liberal college kids!” too.
There are a lot of celebrity guests on Maher’s show, but of his political guests, he gets on a surprising amount who share this odd focus.
That’s fair. I was focused on the fact that in the first post I quoted him without further comment, but, yes, later I editorialized a bit, though I thought it was fully in keeping with his views. Victor Mair over at Language Log seems to feel the same way, per the quote I provided before.
The truth here that I would agree with is that both Maher and McWhorter have little patience for contrived political correctness. And that describes me, too. But that’s not what you said, nor is it what you’re saying now, which is a completely absurd distortion of Maher’s show. Maher’s political guests are usually a good mix of liberals and intelligent conservatives, and the conversations are usually interesting and informative. Every once in a while he’ll bring on a complete crackpot, and that gets all the attention from critics, but those are rare and certainly don’t determine the character of the show.
Yes, it was already given, and I disagree with it. If some a-hole wants to misuse the word “monkey” to insult people, I don’t think it logically follows that the word “monkey” should be universally banned from use when referring to the animal known as “monkey.” Can I say I went to the zoo and saw some monkeys? Or that I saw a nature show about monkeys? Do I have to use the Latin name for them?
You can use the word monkey whenever you want. You can even say monkey pox. It’s hasn’t been banned.
You know who agrees with you on this?
Literally every human on Earth, including all the people who thought we should rename “Monkey Pox.”
I’m pretty sure that “the bedroom that the master of the house stays in” is the actual derivation. They probably weren’t thinking of the master of the house as being the master of slaves, though – only as being the master of everyone else living in his own household; not in the sense that he’d enslaved them, but including the sense that he could make major decisions for them, and that they weren’t equals to him.
Which is IMO also a problematic connotation, for reasons I think I went into in the other thread.
Exactly. To reiterate, @wolfpup, I did not call McWhorter a crank; the stuff I’ve read by him is just not especially interesting to me. I was calling McWhorter, as represented by the quotes you selected, a crank.
While he might or might not be a crank, he’s absolutely not someone whose opinion on politically-motivated vocabulary changes is authoritative or compelling. Continuing to cite him, or to defend his honor, won’t prove persuasive.
For him to have even brought up this Brandeis list pretty much proves it. We had a thread on it when it was first reported by the Washington Examiner (right-wing rag). Brandeis University considers 'picnic' to be oppressive language
As was pointed out in that thread,
Nothing more. Basically just brainstorming ideas about what terms could have underlying meanings. For McWhorter to have dredged it up to somehow prove a point show extreme disingenuousness. @wolfpup, you should know better than to accept something like this without digging deeper.
From that other thread:
Something McWhorter should have done.
Yes, it’s completely unambiguous that the origin of the term is to refer to the room that the master of the house sleeps in. Someone even dug up the original Sears catalog blurb to support that in the other thread.
And yes, that meaning of “master” is also problematic. It’s not a huge problem, especially in households where the parents sleep in the master bedroom and their dependant children or servants are the only other people who live in the house. But it’s kinda weird in other situations.
I usually watch clips and not the whole show but what his own thoughts on the purpose of the show sound genuine enough. He believes the left and the Democratic Party concentrate on the wrong things and fight the battles that will lose them elections and ignore the battles that will win them elections. He has stated he doesn’t criticize the right and the Republican Party in the same way because they have become irredeemable and on the side of evil. When you look at it through that lens you may not agree with his points but it makes it more understandable.
This is your first post, not “later” (my emphases):
You were editorializing from the get-go.
So, you want to … take it back?
I’ve rarely seen Maher say anything except: " exasperated sigh why has the woke offenderati destroyed all sense in the world? sigh Well it stops here! I will say what I want and my pronouns are FU children!"
Then cue laugh track. There is no other joke nor point. How are people so enamored by the same joke being told to them over and over and over and over… (that the world is changing into something weird, different, and scary 
due to clueless and stupid youth and I’m not going to allow it!)
Perhaps he should criticize the Republicans more, but ultimately I don’t see why his entire gimmick is to demonize progressive young people. Its like he’s so terrified by youth that he can’t even sit down to talk to any young progressives to push back against his strawmanning and chicken-little fear mongering.