{"id":2835,"date":"2012-10-23T12:23:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T19:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coolkarma.com\/dharma\/?p=2835"},"modified":"2012-10-23T12:24:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T19:24:02","slug":"changing-our-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/?p=2835","title":{"rendered":"Changing Our Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I remember back when I was growing up there was a diet “candy” on the market called Ayds<\/a> (pronounced AIDS).\u00a0 By the time AIDS<\/a> (HIV\/AIDS) became part of our vocabulary, the diet pill lost 50% of its market and finally opted to CHANGE its NAME!<\/p>\n

Often it takes a hit to our financial well being, before we are willing to clean up our act.\u00a0 So, when October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month and Ms. Ann Coulter tweets \u201cI highly approve of Romney\u2019s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard,\u201d after the Presidential Debate last night (10\/22\/12).<\/a>\u00a0 It may only be if and when she recognizes that statements like that impact her income … that she may consider getting a thesaurus or playground-bully handbook, and find an alternate term.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we have to give up words or phrases no matter how common they once were, no matter how innocent they may have seemed.\u00a0 Even IF Grandpa Jerry could tell the cab driver “that’s mighty white of you” back in the day, that doesn’t mean we can still use that term in modern times.\u00a0 There’s a difference between “colored people” as Grandma Pauline use to reference and the politically acceptable “people of color” which of course is a wide sweeping term that should remind us as “white folks” we are seriously in the minority and had better clean up our act.<\/p>\n

I realize of course, that I grew up with a sailor’s mouth.\u00a0 Which in retrospect is probably a derogatory term for those who serve our country.\u00a0 So I’ll consider rephrasing that to “gutter” mouth.\u00a0 Look!\u00a0 A “teachable moment”.\u00a0 I can’t say that I ever heard my father curse when I was a kid, so I certainly didn’t get that from Dad, and while Mom was quick on her DNA baby daddy analysis (i.e. bastard) quips, my salty language didn’t come from her either.\u00a0 I actually blame George Carlin, who was my idol and his seven words you can’t say on TV<\/a>.\u00a0 Those seemed to be my bread and butter as I scan volumes of my journals from the mid-seventies.\u00a0 But somehow before I landed a job heading up the technology department at a libral arts college for women, I learned how to curb my enthusiasm and clean up my act.\u00a0 Though admittedly I do have a lapse of conscientiousness from time to time and \u00a0I find myself tripping over my mea culpa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are also those unavoidable better judgment calls.\u00a0 Take for instance this Free graphic package I use on my computer called:\u00a0 GNU Image Manipulation Program<\/a> or GIMP for short. \u00a0It really is a wonderful program, but as my best friend in college was limbless, I know firsthand how words can carry unintended payloads.\u00a0 And I am quite certain she would, as I do, find the acronym offensive.<\/p>\n

We all have verbal skeletons in our closet that may have been part of our culture or colloquialisms, that we should consider leaving behind in the 21st Century.\u00a0 We may not even realize a word is painful to our friends cellular cochlea because we don’t know that their son is black, mother is schizophrenic, or sister is challenged.\u00a0 But if we are to ever recognize that we live within an international community and that our words do indeed trigger ripples in our global pond, we should at least listen to ourselves and consider for a moment if we want to carry forward all of the language baggage we have brought from the past.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Well, as author Anne Lamont<\/a> posted today on facebook, “Haven’t people like Coulter ever heard of the word Karma?”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I remember back when I was growing up there was a diet “candy” on the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dharma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2835"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2847,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2835\/revisions\/2847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.karmabytes.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}