5.06.2007
Department of Euphemism Abatement
[Posted 8:32 AM by Roger Kimball]
Here is an idea I offer gratis and for nothing to all those socialistically-inclined politicians looking for novel ways to tax people. What I have in mind is a tax on the public utterance of politically correct euphemism. Why not? Great Britain used to tax windows, for heavens sake. Why not euphemism? Like the tax on tobacco, this tax would have the triple advantage that modern bureaucrats look for in their efforts to expropriate your property: it would 1. fill the government’s coffers; 2. deprive people of more of their hard-earned dollars, thus increasing their dependence on the state; and 3. reinforce everyone’s sense of self-righteousness–though in distinction to the tax on tobacco, a tax on politically correct euphemism would conduce only to one’s practice of truthfulness, one’s mental as distinct from one’s physical well being.
I had this splendid idea when reading a story in today’s Australian newspaper about French preparations for riots in case Nicholas Sarkozy should, as almost every poll predicts, win the French presidency. Let me put my cards on the table and say that I very much hope Sarkozy does win. He would be the first non-anti-American French president in my memory. He also, unlike his rivals, seems to have some appreciation for political and social reality. Would his victory spark riots? Maybe. Everyone knows that one of the most popular French recreations is striking. The French government contemplates raising tuition for college by 3 euros a semester: Outrage! Everyone strikes. A scheme is floated to allow people to work more than 35 hours per week: Incroyable! Everyone strikes. Someone suggests that something must be done to fix the welfare system before it completely implodes: Can you believe it?! Everyone strikes. Striking has been a national pastime in France for decades. A relatively new innovation, however, is the widespread tendency to riot, accompanied by car burning. Two years ago, readers will remember, riots, avec car burning, erupted in many parts of France after a couple of Muslim teenagers were accidentally electrocuted. Theodore Dalrymple, writing in The New Criterion, set the scene:
Two young criminals, who with others were interrupted by the police while attempting to break into a warehouse, thought they were being chased by the police (whether they actually were being chased has yet to be established) and took refuge in an electricity transformer, the modern equivalent of medieval sanctuary. To gain access to the transformer, they had to climb over two walls replete with warnings of danger. There, they were electrocuted to death.
(Read the whole thing here–registration may be required.) Result: thousands upon thousands of toasted Renaults.
But I digress. Here’s what caught my eye in the Australian:
Fears of a repeat of the rioting that swept France two years ago intensified as the final opinion polls pointed to an overwhelming victory for Sarkozy. A crowd of up to 40,000 Sarkozy supporters was expected on the Champs Elysées in central Paris to celebrate the result. Police believe that gangs of youths from the suburbs might confront them.
Sarkozy has promised a “fraternal” republic but said last week that he did not regret having described young delinquents as “scum” in 2005 in remarks widely believed to have ignited the rioting.
(The whole story is here.)
There are two phrases worthy of note. The first is “gangs of youths,” by which, of course, the paper (perhaps quoting the French police) means gangs composed mostly of radical Muslim teenagers and young adults, aided and abetted by other radicalized elements. But “gangs of youths” is so much more pleasingly non-specific: it doesn’t put the onus on any particular “youths”–that might be discriminatory–and it allows one to sound hard-headed and realistic (“We’ve got theses gangs of youths threatening us, Mabel!”) while actually avoiding facing up to the realities of the situation altogether. Humphrey in Yes, Prime Minister couldn’t have devised a more anodyne phrase.
The other phrase worth noting moves in the opposite direction on the spectrum of candor: I mean Sarkozy’s description of the car-burning miscreants as “scum”– impolitic, possibly, but definitely le mot juste. And this leads me to the second and final part of my proposal for the commonweal. Just as The Australian (and the French police, if they originated the phrase) should be taxed for describing Muslim thugs as “youths,” so Mr. Sarkozy should be rewarded somehow for having the courage to call things by their right name. I admit that administering the system would be complex, but after all the French invented the word bureaucracy: I am sure that a new government Department of Euphemism Abatement would be able to rise to the challenge. And what a service for the rest of Europe–the rest of the Western world–they would perform by acting to curb euphemism while also encouraging candor!
Update: A savvy friend proposes this excellent addendum (the best, or at least most gratifying, sentence is the last):
Actually, we could take it a step further by borrowing a concept from the global warmers, who propose a cap and trade system for using carbon dioxide emissions. If you want to use a portion under your allotted cap, you can sell it to someone else. Under this regime, we could have a cap and trade system on politically correct utterances. The government could allocate a sum of such utterances, and CBS could sell some of its unused portion to Rush Limbaugh, etc, or even to Don Imus. Al Sharpton might even get an allocation either to use or to sell. There could be a commission appointed which decides who gets how much of what, and what constitutes a politically incorrect utterance. After a time, we might reverse it and do the same about pious pronouncements concerning equality so that the person who says that a cheese pizza is as good as Shakespeare would have to buy an allotment of such utterances from those who would rather die than say something so politically correct as that. Under such a regime, of course, colleges and universities would have to allocate a large share of their endowments to underwrite the writings and teachings of their faculty members.