Exculpations Crybabies: Eternal Victims

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Far more dangerous is the way demagogues have been able to dismiss as no more than "racism" the workings of the U.S. justice system in cases like the notorious 1987 Tawana Brawley affair. The fragile mechanisms of equity that Americans have struggled hard to establish -- and must still struggle hard to improve -- are among the things most threatened by the sweeping fiats of victimology.

Language itself is buckling under the strain of avoiding insult and injury to everybody in response to the crybaby's complaint. Ever mindful of the genuine or imagined sensitivities of women and minorities, the University of Missouri's Multicultural Management Program has produced for newspaper reporters a 22-page dictionary of loaded words and phrases. Some of the proposals in the lexicon are unarguable (bimbo and broad are derogatory when applied to women). Other entries, listed mainly to pacify various groups, are questionable. Burly should be used with care, since it is "too often associated with large black men, implying ignorance and considered offensive in this context." Articulate could be deemed offensive "when referring to a minority . . . and his or her ability to handle the English language." Illegal alien is unkind, especially to Mexican Americans; "the preferred term is undocumented worker or undocumented resident."

The real issue is not that words can hurt, or that civil rights and tolerance are essential in a democracy, but that hypersensitivity clouds rational discourse: how to knit a contentious American society together rather than allow it to become balkanized by competing interests. "We need to reset the thermostats," writes sociologist Etzioni, "not shatter windows or tear down walls. Extremism in defense of virtue is a vice."

William Donohue, a sociologist at Pittsburgh's La Roche College, argues that this same extremism reflects a perverse view of freedom. "Civil liberties means the right of the individual to win against the majority," he says. "But civility and community are both predicated on the individual being subordinate to the interest of society. If you make a fetish of individual rights, you are going to emasculate that community."

Perhaps one step toward more civility and community would be a modification of the famous injunction in Henry VI: First, let's restrain -- not kill -- all the lawyers. Then add a second proposal that Shakespeare never had to think of: Let's gag all the crybabies. Better yet, let them gag themselves.