Honestly, I don’t know if this true or if we have time warped back to April 1. You decide what you think.
Sorry Seattle residents, but citizens are no longer allowed to brown bag it, because city officials have decided that the words “citizen” and “brown bag” are offensive. The Office for Civil Rights has circulated a memo encouraging government employees to stop using those terms. Memo author Elliott Bronstein suggests using “residents,” “sack lunch” or “lunch and learn” instead. (Because everyone will start asking co-workers “Are we hitting Subway or did you lunch and learn it today?”) Bronstein says that brown bag could be misinterpreted as a reference to skin color, while citizen isn’t inclusive enough. “A lot of people who live in Seattle aren’t citizens but they are residents,” he said. “[Citizens] doesn’t include a lot of folks.”
The source is MSN.
UPDATE: This interesting bit from The Examiner which also reports on Seattle’s latest restrictions. Please pay attention to the last sentence from the novel 1984.
KOMO also noted that Washington lawmakers have voted to remove gender specific words in official records.
“Freshman are now ‘first-years,’ journeymen are ‘journey-level,’ and penmanship is simply ‘handwriting,'” KOMO said.
…Seattle isn’t the only city concerned about potentially offensive terms.
“Dinosaurs, for example, conjures the topic of evolution, which could rile fundamentalists and birthdays are not celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Halloween, meanwhile, suggests an affiliation to Paganism,” …
… dinosaurs and birthdays were banned from student tests in New York over concerns they “could evoke unpleasant emotions in the students.”
Words that suggested wealth were excluded, as well as the word “computer” along with any mention of homes with swimming pools.
In his classic novel, “1984,” George Orwell wrote of a society where thought is controlled through language, and the implementation of something called “Newspeak” that ultimately destroyed words, thereby eliminating “thoughtcrime.”
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” Orwell wrote in his novel.
Contributor, aka tidbits. Retired attorney in complex litigation, death penalty defense and constitutional law. Former Nat’l Board Chair: Alzheimer’s Association. Served on multiple political campaigns, including two for U.S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-OR). Contributing author to three legal books and multiple legal publications.