[By Merlin Lessler]<\/p>\n
I just noticed that the official media, TV and radio have started referring to homeless people as \u201cUnhoused.\u201d It might have been going on for some time, but I\u2019m slow to notice changes in language by the politically correct crowd. <\/span><\/p>\n Unhoused? If those \u201cexperts\u201d who correct our vocabulary considered homeless to be a cruel term, then why not force on us a nicer designation: CAMPERS! TRAVELERS! Not UNHOUSED. <\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t get it. But there it is, a new change in language. It just makes me wonder: who decides these things? Is it an organization? A secret cabal? A branch of the federal bureaucracy? Who? <\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m an old coot. I know it. I\u2019ve been labeled a Senior Citizen. But, call me what I am: an old man. I don\u2019t know who came up with that one; it\u2019s been around for decades. I find it insulting, like us elders are too fragile to be called what we are. And please, do not evolve the language into a new term, the UNYOUNG. Old geezer is better than that. It gives me a chuckle.<\/p>\n This politically correct policing has been going on for decades, getting more intense every year. Some of it was overdue, but these days it is taken to extremes. Like when listening to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, defend spending $189,000,000 to provide internet-enabled tablets for all the prisoners in California prisons. But he didn\u2019t refer to them as prisoners; he referred to them as Justice Impacted Individuals for whom he was providing digital equity.<\/p>\n I am fearful of this revisionist labeling because I have a balance problem, unfixable, but easy enough to deal with. If the bureau of political correctness took that on, I would be called Unyoung and Unbalanced. Please, just call me Old Coot.<\/p>\n