
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, June 13, 1994                   TAG: 9407070010
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: EXTRA1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COME ON, BOYS, AND LET'S GIVE THOSE WITCHES RESPECT

As we have seen here before, even occasional reading of The Wall Street Journal can make you wonder whither we are tending.

You certainly can't blame the newspaper. It's just doing what it's supposed to do.

The paper recently did a story on political correctness - a term I have come to dread just about as much as getting another notice to report for induction into the Armed Services.

When I was a boy, being politically correct meant being a Democrat, whether you voted or not. I hate to say it, but Republicans were looked upon as carpetbaggers and Yankees.

(One of these days it's going to be politically incorrect to say "carpetbagger" or "Yankee." Given the way I keep up with the times, it probably already is.)

Although I dread the concept, I try to be as politically correct as possible.

I haven't used the word "broad" in years in public. Sometimes, in the sanctity of my own home, I kid around with the greatest station wagon driver of them all and say:

"Hey, Toots. There's this broad on the phone who claims she's your sister."

I don't do this an awful lot. At my age, you have to be concerned about your health.

But, to return to The Journal and reporter Kevin Goldman, we find that there is such a thing as a "witches' rights group," an organization that scolded the Aetna insurance people for using a witch in a television public-service spot.

This would suggest that if "The Wizard of Oz" had been done in these politically correct times, Dorothy wouldn't have melted the witch - who would have been referred to as an elderly citizen with personality problems.

Instead, Dorothy would have extracted a pledge to get counseling, clicked the ruby slippers and gotten the hell out of there.

I know. I know. Ruby slippers are sexist, right?

Lord knows what group would get on your back about a cowardly lion.

I won't get into a discussion here of what effect political correctness might have had on "Snow White." You remember her. She was the little broad who was dumb enough to eat this apple a witch gave her.

It is obvious, however, that one of those witches' rights groups would have demanded that the witch have a Ph.D. from Harvard and closely resemble Kim Basinger.

I have to go now. I seem to have misplaced my ruby slippers, and you never know when you might want to go to Kansas. Or somewhere.

by CNB