Monday, December 05, 2005

When Words Mean Something Different....

Funny letter in the National Review Online this week:

"Dear Jay,

My mother is a kindergarten teacher. Her class is drawn from a comparatively lower-income neighborhood. After Thanksgiving, she put out the Christmas books (i.e., Night Before Christmas, plus various other "Happy Holidays"-type stuff for diversity's sake). Yesterday, child comes up to her. "Teacher, there's a bad word in the new books." Puzzled, Mom goes to check them out. The bad word he points to? It's Santa Claus, saying "Ho, ho, ho."

So, there you go — jolly ol' Saint Nick's famous phrase, courtesy of gangsta rap, is now an epithet.

How much should civilization weep for a five-year-old who reads the word "ho" and thinks
"whore" instead of "Santa"???

Merry Christmas."

Sad, really.

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