Anyone ever see Top Gear? This British television show features three car enthusiasts with very different tastes who put various road cars through their paces and wax euphoric or otherwise about same. They are quite entertaining and as purely amusing television goes, it's more clever than most.
I was shocked to learn that one of the hosts, Jeremy Clarkson has been widely decried by disability charities and the people who love them for cracking wise about the faculties of a vehicle:
Jeremy Clarkson's has angered disability charities and carers by describing a car as "special needs" on BBC2's Top Gear show.
The TV presenter was comparing two Ferrari cars when he said the older one looked like a "simpleton".
He then added the car, called 430 Speciale, should be the "430 Speciale... needs" in Sunday's show.
Was that on the tacky side? Unquestionably. Should he have refrained from saying what he said? Probably. Is this enough of a big deal to warrant such a flap that people decry him as insensitive? Uh, I don't think so.
I'll bet that pretty much everyone you meet has some special situation in their life that gives them hardship and grief. Many grapple with an illness on a daily basis. Some are malformed. Some people go through life with ghastly, debilitating cases of assholitis, and do they get a little ribbon on tuxedo lapels at Tinseltown award ceremonies? No! Do women sit around on The View talking about how hard it is for these folks, glycerine tears threatening to crest the banks of their perfectly made-up eyes? Nope. Let's face it- there're enough hard knocks to go around. I'm sorry you're dealing with whatever grievously crappy hand life has dealt you, but we all get our serving of sucky pie, so tuck in and quit whining already.
In fact, in the English language there are so many privileged, protected classes of phraseology these days that I'm amazed we can still communicate at all without stepping on toesies and becoming defendants in various lawsuits. Surely the very plinth of our civilization will buckle under the o'er-weening melodrama of feigned wounded classes.
