Dartblog

We can all agree on the ridiculousness of the effort a few years back by certain congressional Republicans to rename french fries as Freedom Fries. To my mind the only thing that tops that pointless gesture is the Dartmouth administration’s effort to re-christen freshmen as first-year students (except, of course, when President Wright was speaking to older alumni. L’argent oblige.). Look.

Faithful readers will recall that I have addressed this point in the past, but a different section of Mountains Beyond Mountains (page 100) gives me hope that our new President will unwind the linguistic aberrations of the past decades:

They [Paul Farmer, Jim Kim and Ophelia Dahl] talked about issues such as political correctness, which Jim Kim defined as follows: It’s a very well crafted tool to distract us. A very self-centered activity. Clean up your own vocabulary so you can show everybody you have the social capital of having been in circles where theses things are talked about on a regular basis. (What was an example of political correctness? Some academic types would say to Jim and Paul, “Why do you call your patients poor people? They don’t call themselves poor people.” Jim would reply: Okay, how about soon-dead people?”)

Good stuff. Bracing, even, in our soft-headed environment. President Kim understands that PC talk is just the conspicuous consumption of the chattering classes.

Said the trendy intellectual to the rube: “Of course, I disdain your ostentatious Cadillac, but hey, check out my sensitive vocabulary.”

Might we hope for the return of Freshman Trips?