Good. I’m glad to see they’ve come around. But I can tell you for a fact that a year or two ago Target’s newspaper ads and promotional brochures) were advertising “Holiday Trees”, and nowhere in any of their advertising did the word “Christmas” appear. I wasn’t able to find an example through a Google photo search, but if you’d like an example other than trees, take a look at Target’s ‘holiday’ press release for the 2015 season. If you can find the word Christmas anywhere in it, you’ll be doing better than either my browser’s search ability or mine. The word ‘holiday’, however, does appear…17 times.
Or maybe they’re doing it for the very reason a couple of them had already explained, which was that they’d been instructed by their employers not to wish their customers Merry Christmas, and so were at a loss as to how to respond.
It sounds like you’re talking about a different article. I pulled out my Absolutely MAD DVD and slogged through several years worth of Dave Berg’s Lighter Side of … (Not “A MAD Look at …” ) and not come across the one I remember yet. I haven’t looked at the ones after he stopped having a unified theme each month. I did find one in January 1974 called “The Lighter Side of the Holiday Season” that had a similar strip. In that one a guy is complaining about the neighbors gaudy decorations because it minimizes the effect of his gaudy decorations.
Sometimes I go on a rant about the stupid wilted parsley draped across the edge of the garlic potatoes and folks think I’m criticizing the whole surf & turf.
I think it is both wonderful and overdue that people have a heightened measure of concern for what might be abrasive to someone else.
I think it is a warm and hopeful thing that we have made some progress towards understanding that not everyone is exactly alike and that differences from us, differences from the normative, differences from what we’re accustomed to, are not the same thing as inferiorities, failures, wrong ways of doing and being.
I am glad to see that there’s a new awareness of how being a part of whatever is normative provides you with privileges and social accommodations that less-typical misfit people don’t get to participate in, and that regardless of whether that’s inevitable or not, it’s not particularly fair and equal.
I am honored to occasionally get to be a participant in the process by which formerly silenced and marginalized minorities get to speak and actually be heard. I feel like I’ve done so little in my life to make that opportunity happen, and scarcely do enough to avail myself of the opportunity created by others.
I am made optimistic and even passionately fervent about the ultimate good nature of our species when I look at our trajectory towards a more inclusive and less competitively hostile way of interacting. We’ve got so so so so far to go but I would not want to live in the social world of my ancestors and the norms and behaviors of their times.
My complaints about “political correctness” are nearly all focused on knee-jerk autopilot behaviors, thoughtlessness, casual dismissiveness towards other human beings, and overly easy designation of people as evil oppressor types. If our progress is to be taken seriously, then that accusation should stand out as a rather horrid thing to label someone as; who among us who cares about this stuff would ever want to be perceived that way? The charge is tossed out as if it were the equivalent of calling someone “wanker” or “jerk”. WTF???
There’s an excellent example in the media here at the moment of the perils of not being supportive enough about gay marriage.
Telstra is Australia’s largest phone company and previously a prominent supporter of Mardis Gras (a huge gay and lesbian pride parade in Sydney).
One of Telstra’s large clients is the Catholic Church, who have expressed concern over Telstra’s previously public support for gay marriage and reportedly threatened to take their business elsehwhere.
Telstra have said they will continue to support gay marriage but will now not be publically waving the flag for it anymore; the result has been howls of outrage because how very dare a phone company not champion the cause enough.
To be fair, there’s a fair element of “how very dare they not champion the cause enough possibly because the Catholic Church doesn’t like it” involved too - but the fact remains, a large company has made a business decision not to publically participate in the gay marriage debate even though it is on record as continuing to support gay marriage and they are getting flogged by people for not being progessive/supportive enough.
And I have zero tolerance for those less tolerant than me. At least that’s how the anti-anti-PC crowd sometimes comes off. It’s no small leap to go from non-PC to intolerant to straight up bigot. And there are few things worse in society than a bigot. It’s not a label one can easily shake.