If laughter is the best medicine, then someone ought to take a copy of UNC’s “microaggression” guidelines to every hospital in America! The memo, brainchild of the University of North Carolina’s Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, is a new low for a politically correct movement that’s already God’s gift to late-night comedy. What is microaggression, you ask? It’s defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation and religious slights and insults to the target person or group.”

Gone are the days of simple, run-of-the-mill PC. According to UNC, even golf is on par with bigotry! Asking someone to hit the fairway is anything but, officials argue, because it “assumes employees have the financial resources/exposure to a fairly expensive and inaccessible sport.” Well, guess what? College is expensive and inaccessible for some too. Should we stop talking about it too? Welcome to the new normal, where even saying “you guys” is discouraged for being “binary” (which must offend… computers?).

Have we really reached this level of lunacy on college campuses? Believe it, say conservative students. This kind of hypersensitivity is overtaking higher education, but rarely in a form as ridiculous as Chapel Hill’s. Not only did the taxpayer-funded guide take a swing at the PGA, but there’s even a Claus about Santa. As far as the PC police at UNC is concerned, employees should discourage references to Christmas or any holidays that center around the “Christian faith and minimizes non-Christian spiritual rituals and observances.” Uttering the words “Christmas vacation” (sorry, Chevy Chase) is incredibly taboo. (I don’t know what macroaggression means, but somebody better warn the Easter Bunny.) Telling a female employee “I love your shoes!” is apparently more insulting than calling them ugly. And the list goes on.

“‘How did you get here?’ constitutes a national origin microaggression because it acknowledges that some ‘immigrants get to this country illegally,’ while asking ‘Where are you from?’ implies that ‘you are not American and do not belong to this community.’” By all means, never ask someone to “Please stand up and be recognized,” since, the school explains, it “assumes that everyone is able in this way and ignores the diversity of ability in the space.” Then of course, there are the more routine warnings — such as avoiding such oppressive gender stereotypes as “husband/wife” “boyfriend/girlfriend.” But above all, make sure you have some sexually confused friends, because not knowing people who identify as gay or lesbian is offensive. “I don’t know any LGBTQ people,” campus officials insist, “means that the person you are talking to must ‘openly declare’ their gender identity and sexual orientation in order for you to ‘care about LGBTQ issues.’”

In a mild miracle, the university was so bombarded by complaints that campus officials scrubbed the full list from its website. Communications Tanya Moore stopped short of apologizing, but in a statement the school did try to disavow any suggestion that this was intended as campus or employee policy. “The information in the post does not reflect University guidelines or policy. The Employee Forum piece was compiled from research and published scholarly works — which were annotated in the blog post — in response to Forum members’ interest about the topic of microaggressions.”

“We have educated ourselves into imbecility,” Malcolm Muggeridge used to say. That’s certainly the case here, where some segments of society are so consumed by this phony crisis of sensitivity that we can’t even focus on the real threats facing our nation. If we had leaders who focused more on America’s challenges than its delicate sensibilities, we might finally pull our country out of this tailspin.

Originally published here.

Thwart Worth: Texas AG Takes on Local Superintendent

Texas already had the legislature’s opinion on the president’s bathroom order — now they have the state’s top attorney’s too. In the steady drumbeat against Obama’s gender free-for-all, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is the latest to weigh in with a legal opinion from the chief law enforcer himself. The document, which was meant to put superintendents like Fort Worth’s Kent Scribner in their place, doesn’t carry the force of law (but then, neither does Obama’s!). But it does align with the directive from the Lone Star legislative and executive branches, which have almost unanimously urged schools to ignore this assault on students’ privacy.

Paxton, who was already an outspoken opponent of the Department of Education’s overreach, made it official in [Tuesday’s] document. Apart from calling it a violation of state law (which is what triggered the multi-state suit that Texas filed), Paxton blasts the administration for trying to substitute its judgment for local schools’ and families’. “Far from creating a partnership between parents, educators, and administrators regarding their children’s education, the guidelines relegate parents to a subordinate status, receiving information only on a need-to-know basis.” Lt. Governor Patrick pushed for a full review in his bout with Fort Worth schools, which were close to opening locker, shower, and restroom doors to students of both sexes. “Today’s attorney general opinion is a clear and resounding victory for parents within the Fort Worth ISD,” he told reporters, “who deserve a transparent superintendent and school board that follows the law.” For now, Scribner hasn’t called off his gender-free agenda, but he did promise to have his attorneys review the document.

Meanwhile, not everyone is so lucky. In New York City, one of the hardest souvenirs to find may be a traditional “men’s” or “women’s” restroom sign. As part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s grand central station of confusion, he’s ordered every public, single-occupant bathroom to have gender-neutral signs. It is, he proclaims proudly, “yet another step toward becoming a place where all can live with dignity, free from fear and free from judgment.” Surely, there are better uses of the city’s time than toilet messaging — like, say, its homicide, rape, and robbery rates?

Originally published here.