Once again, against my better judgment, I feel that I must delicately remove my footwear in order to wade into the heavily polluted cesspool of politics and religion, everyone’s favorite combination of socially acceptable chatter.

I really do my best to avoid both topics at all costs and basically utilize the same avoidance technique that I employ when hiding from a door-to-door traveling evangelist. However, since my closet is simply too cluttered for human inhabitants currently, I shall face this head on right now.

The subject at hand, and there is one eventually, has reached a fever pitch in the past few weeks, and I can stand it no longer.

This isn’t so much a political rant as it is a political correctness roar. I think you may realize by now that I am not a huge fan of the whole concept.

People, we are slowly, but steadily, morphing into a nation of zombie creatures who tiptoe upon the shells of discarded eggs whilst, simultaneously, holding tongues. Not easily done, but this is what our future holds if we don’t reverse course pronto.

Now, two times in this past week, (way longer by now because I am quite ahead in terms of typing my columns), I have been bombarded by the insanity of knee jerk reactions having to do with political correctness.

One was from a higher up at NPR (National Public Radio), and the other was carried out by two chicks from everyone’s favorite “news show,” The View.

Most of you, more than likely, know of these but I shall recap quickly.

Bill O’Reilly, (hence forth known as O), was a guest on The View, (hence forth known as the gathering of high pitched voices and brimming ignorance), and, at one point, rather than saying that RADICAL Muslims killed Americans on 911, he omitted the word radical. This all unfolded during a free-for-all chat on the infamous guest couch.

To me, this was no biggie. I got the picture. I understood, and still do, that not all Muslims are bad people. I am not a fifth grader who has to have this concept pounded into her head on a regular basis. Get it? Got it? Good.

Well, evidently two “View women” did not comprehend and they decided to storm off the set of their own show. Which is quite professional, don’t you know.

Here’s the thing...actually, here are a few things about this. For one, I would love to see these oh-so-tolerant and overly defensive-of-religion-kind-of-gals, stomp off in a fit of rage if a guest were to spew out hideous things about Christianity, for example.

Do you hear that sound? Listen very closely. Honestly, I don’t hear it either. What am I talking about, you ask? I am not picking up on any audio containing the sound of high heels clicking wildly as co hosts trot off in a “Christian defending” rage.

As you know, I am not a Christian. However, I cannot help but notice that lately, they seem to be fair game when it comes to directing truly horrendous and hateful things their way. No one seems to come to the defense of Christians so, this nice Jewish girl is doing so right now.

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. Humans, The View yahoos included, are terrified to utter word one against the Islamic faith because they fear the repercussions. Admit it. You know I am right.

And yes, I am well aware that there are good and bad in all faiths so, I’m not picking on one in particular here. It just so happens that it was the religion that caused such a ruckus on these two occasions.

Now, O can be obnoxious and he loves a good fight but, I am siding with him on this. I agree with him that it is not necessary to kick off everything we say about that particular religion with sentences such as this: “These are radical elements of Islam and it’s really a peaceful religion.” There just is no need to say statements like the above-mentioned over and over again. There, I said it and I will now wait patiently for the hate mail, I suppose.

This next illustration of political correctness on cocaine has to do with a gentleman who once held the position of being the only black, on-air personality on NPR. His name is Juan Williams and he was canned recently for one of the most ridiculous reasons I’ve ever heard.

First off, don’t get me started on how I loathe the idea of funding any kind of national public anything—telly, radio, whatever. I shall save that for another time.

Moving along, this also involves O because the exceptionally offensive language Juan Williams, ex NPR man, uttered happened to take place on his show, “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Mr. Williams began by spending a great deal of time prefacing what he was about to say by stating that we, as citizens, need to be mindful of lumping folks into stereotypical groups or definitions.

He continued by announcing that he oft gets nervous when he boards a plane and notices several men in Muslim garb on his flight.

He simply stated what a lot of folks really feel deep down, but rarely have the guts to voice.

For that, he was handed his walking papers from NPR and was not even given the chance to speak with any of his immediate supervisors face to face.

Williams had been with them for ten years, in addition to being a liberal contributor for Fox for about thirteen years. He is one of the few left wing individuals that Fox employs to try and counter-balance the overabundance of right-wing commentators in their employ.

This whole firing from NPR is more than infuriating on many levels, one of which being that taxpayer dollars help to fund the drek known as NPR.

The man simply spoke openly about his own feelings. He did so to point out that even someone like himself, who has fought tirelessly for civil rights and is more than tolerant and accepting, could have fears such as the one he mentioned. I think that he spoke for a lot of people when he talked about his phobia, frankly. (This coming from a woman who has not, and, most likely, will not, even board a flight since 911.)

Now, before anyone becomes overly outraged and/or appalled over this column, let’s play a little game called, “What If.”

Pretend, for a moment, that 19 nuns in full habits boarded planes on September 11, 2001, strong-armed the crews and ended up carrying out massive death and destruction.

What if you were at an airport after that and saw a cluster of nuns getting on a plane? Can you truthfully say that you too would not have a fleeting thought of non political correctness?

I think if we were to be very sincere in our thoughts pertaining to this “what if” jazz, we could all relate to what Williams was trying to impart.

We have reached a place in time in which people are terrified to speak their minds for fear of becoming unemployed, labeled as racists or ostracized in some manner.

This has got to end. We cannot go on crouched in corners being petrified of the words we speak. This is not to say that we should begin telling anti Muslim, Christian and Jewish jokes or dropping a line of N bombs either.

I think we can, and MUST, arrive at some kind of happy medium where words can flow confidently and without the worry of what may follow.

Well, I certainly hope the chief does not terminate my employment over this column but I feel pretty certain that he will continue to allow me to truly be forthright.

I guess I should count myself as lucky because, thus far, I’ve been fortunate enough to be granted the ability to offend—I mean to say what’s on my mind boldly, honestly and fearlessly.

Until next time, let us all try and get our true feelings across with our heads held high. (After which, if second thoughts ensue, we could always resort to my method of hiding out from our door-to-door friends that were mentioned earlier in this piece.)

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