My US$.02:

I do empathize with the desire to go to lengths to avoid offending others, especially through a semantic misunderstanding. It seems to be an American behavior. A similar thing happened with a Hindu friend of mine and her wedding invitations that had the "svastik" on them. In Hinduism this is an auspicious symbol. However, drawn at a different angle, it is a Nazi swastika. My friend asked me if her Jewish friends would be offended. This is what I told her, and it applies here as well: If a listener/reader does not have the common sense or the manners to ask for clarification before jumping to the conclusion that the intent is to offend them, they are the ones with the problem. There is no "d" at the end of the "n-word". Granted the word niggardly is not used frequently in modern-day conversation, it wouldn't kill anyone to do a little research before going ballistic. It annoys me greatly that the PC-patrol is so hyper-sensitive to every little minutia. Get over it!! Find a hobby. Or, as Jim Carrey said when he introduced Eminem at last year's MTV Video Music Awards, "If we all just spent a little time and talked [about these issues] with our kids, everything will be OK."

I have zero patience for people who cannot use their language of choice adroitly. If you would rather I refer to a boat rather than a ship because the latter word sounds "dirty" to you, you may rest assured that I will be on the next boat away from where you are.

(N.B. "you" here is not meant to refer personally to Anders or anyone else.)

Good comments, Graham and Valerie :-) Thanks!

You know I was thinking about this the other day, in fact it was before I began reading the PC posts that I've read the last couple of days.

I realize that there is a perception that Americans are arrogant and that we think everyone on the internet is an American, so I hope I don't perpetuate that perception with this entry. But I can only comment on things that I see in my culture, which unfortunately happens to be gangstah-America.

I'm not going to lie, today's American youth scare me. I read a pitiful article a few months ago about a black guy describing his plight. He said "when I walk through a parkinglot and a whiter person sees me coming, they instinctively lock their doors, how do you think that makes me feel?" I wish I could have spoken to this man at this moment so that I could perhaps explain to him why this ocurrs. Several reasons:
1. Don't try to dress like a gangstah, and then blame me for believing your deception.
2. Don't try to pretend like you don't glorify, poppin' caps in folks, and demean women by referring to them as "b*****s" and "ho's". What do you mean how can I judge you? You think it might have something to do with that Snoop Doggy Dog t-shirt you're wearing? Or your Tu-Pac Shakur tatoo on your bicep?
3. It is a fact that people get carjacked, raped and killed every single day in America. I have a fiduciary responsibility to my children to protect them, and it adds a little extra measure of security for me to lock the doors when I see someone, ANYONE approaching. I owe it to them. I care more about what they think of their father, that what you think, and your poor wittle feelings.

I kind of went off on a tangent there for a sec, but let me get back to the main trail here. When I was thinking about our society, I was fantasizing about what it will be like in 100 years when our vocabulary in the English Slanguage, is reduced to 137 main words.

Most of which are slang, and 40 of which do not yet exist as words. Just like the words 'chillin', gnarly, dweeb and phrases like "what's the dilly yo?" "Hey B, why you steppin to me?" "naw dawg, that wadn't me."
"look here freak-ho, why you trippin?"
"I'm the Mack-daddy" "you such a bustah, you's frontin' foo"

And I was wondering if there would be entries in the dictionary like:

Man. (archaic), see: Dude
sometimes used as an expression "Man! that was great." (archaic) see: "Damn!"

Most intriguing. And I have to agree with you on this. It's weird how suddenly everyone just becomes PC just because someone said "I said so, just do it". How Nike-esque.

This is awfully similar to the "master/slave" controversy involving computer drives... I must say, that incident has infuriated techies all over America.

Link:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/index.html

There is something similar going around in Sweden right now - an ice cream named "Nogger", for nougat, is accused of being racist. The Swedish word for the ethniticity involved is "neger", and it is no way near as emotionally charged as its US-English counterpart. Nor is it spelled identically, as you can tell.

The controvery sparked over a new version of the Nogger ice cream, "Nogger Black". As can be seen from this Reuters release: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-04-15T120129Z_01_L15617235_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-SWEDEN-ICECREAM-DC.XML - the group also claims that the advertisements involved make an immediate link to "black culture" by containing "grafitti".

The advertisement in question is a drawing in chalk, on a black surface (asphalt, blackboard, liquorice?) of a valentine with the text "Nogger + liquorice = true". It's about as much "grafitti" och "black culture" as a .. well, a chalk drawing.

Mmm, I just wanted to say that...yes, political correctness and censorship are a bitch, but you rarely hear people over here complain about it. The reason that we are so careful over it is that we are one of the countries to get the most shit over employing past policies that many other countries had adopted. Practicies like slavery and imperialism. Don't get me wrong, these aren't things that I am advocating, it's just that Americans seem to get more bullshit over it than the other countries who have often used one or another manner of illicit means to expand their territories or to build their nations. Countries as modern as the U.S. even. Us being the predominant super power get the most crap over it. It all leads back to sociopolitical positions in my opinion. Because America is henceforth the only super power (since the end of the cold war and the fall of Russia) it tends to get all the backlash while other countries seemingly ignore their own past.