Politically Correct Heckling

Politically Correct Heckling
It is now official. Seattle is the most politically correct city in America. Way over there, on the silly side of the Cascade Mountains, political correctness has even invaded the last, most hallowed bastion of political incorrectness, the ballpark. Last week, when the hated ( Oops, I mean visiting ) New York Yankees arrived to play the Seattle Mariners, fans who arrived at Safeco Field wearing t-shirts bearing the phrase, “Yankees Suck” were told to turn the shirt inside out, cover it, take it off, or leave the ballpark.
Like a university administration, the Mariners’ hierarchy is proud of its thought police: "We may lead the league in ejections from the ballpark, but not because fans are misbehaving more here, but because we don't tolerate much," said Mariners’ spokeswoman Rebecca Hale. "This is about appropriate behavior. We have a code of conduct, a policy for language on clothing and banners and signs. Our feeling was this was not promoting what we want."
Yes indeed. They don’t tolerate. Seattle is a great bastion of liberalism and liberals are notoriously intolerant.
There are rumors that, in the near future, female fans will be required to wear burqas. I understand that, since the collapse of the Afghanistan fashion market, burqas can be acquired quite cheaply on Ebay. Men will have to wear beards. Tofu will serve as a substitute for hot dogs. Herbal chai teas will replace beer and pop. All will chant “ohm” in observance of the seventh inning meditation.
It may be worth reviewing the etymology of the phrase, “you suck.” “You suck” dates back to college campuses in the fifties. It was clever shorthand for telling someone that he is nothing. Nothing is a vacuum, and everyone knows that a vacuum sucks.
But it seems that some simple and dirty minds have managed to corrupt the phrase’s message into something else. Now that I trouble myself to think of it, there’s hardly a better place on earth than Seattle for corrupting such a phrase.
Political correctness, wherever it occurs, has at least two goals. The first is Orwellian mind control. In his novel, “1984,” Orwell described “Newspeak,” a synthetic language that was a creation of his Seattle-like totalitarian state. Newspeak was intended to deprive its citizens of the ability to formulate thoughts of dissent against the government – or to speak ill of the opposing team.
Although liberals don’t call it that, newspeak is the holy grail of liberalism . Ban words and you ban incorrect thoughts. Those of us who make our living on college campuses know all about forbidden words.
The second goal of political correctness is to make the whole world like a preschool playground, where grownups can pretend that nobody's feelings ever gets hurt. John Rocker knows what it’s like to run afoul of that proscription.
The athletes who are typically the targets of the crowd’s abuse usually take a philosophical view. Abuse from the fan who buys the tickets and therefore pays for the athlete’s multimillion dollar home, his Mercedes and his swimming pool, is tolerated as a privilege the fan has paid for.
We can only imagine what might result should Seattle’s new political correctness metastasize into other sports venues. It’s quite common at basketball game for the home crowd to voice its displeasure with a referee’s call by chanting, “Barbra Streisand, Barbra Streisand!” Although, it’s just possible that the crowd is actually reciting some other slogan starting with the letters B S that have essentially the same meaning. In the future such fans should be expected to chant, “We beg to differ, we beg to differ!”
Attempts to distract the visiting team’s free throw shooter would have to cease. It’s just not fair that visitors would be treated differently from the home team. It might cause them to lose and feel bad.
It may take a while for other sports venues to catch up to Seattle. To wit, during last year’s playoffs, many Yankees fans arrived at the ballpark wearing a tee shirt portraying a fireman urinating on Seattle hero Ichiro Suzuki.
"That was apparently appropriate at Yankee Stadium. It wouldn't be at Safeco Field,” sniffed Ms. Hale.
New York needs Ms. Hale. Perhaps we could ship her across the country to civilize those East Coast barbarians.