Language Is A Funny Thing

I just read an "interesting" article this morning.  If you're one of those people that prefers his news from a more "neutral" source than "Faux News" here are the articles Fox got the story from; "'Brown bag' and 'citizen' too offensive for use in Seattle", and "City officials urge ban on 'potentionally offensive' language".  Sorry for all the quotation marks.  Anyway.  I see these stories so much I tend to get a little fit of righteous indignation and forget about it in ten minutes.  But think about it.  This is a ridiculous, time wasting effort by a group of people that should be managing this cities finances and attending to the running of utilities and maintenance of the city's roads.  This is a prime of example of government waste writ small.  They have created a rule for the employees to follow that is inconsequential to all but a hand full of people with nothing better to get worked up over than the term "brown bag".  I had never, ever heard of this as a racial term until this article (and I thought I knew them all).  If I didn't know better I would say a couple of smart-ass teens thought it up and tried to prank Seattle to see how far it would go.  Apparently it is a real concern to some, although I think I'm using the phrase loosely.  I will also confess that I can't eat a saltine without getting my feelings hurt.  So there we are, a city government will now have someone check every written document produced for the term "brown bag" and the word citizen.  Another confession, even though I read the article I'm kind of confused why citizen is taboo.  Oh, I think I just got it, the whole legal versus illegal thing.  Oh God, I'm tired.

For your further reading enjoyment here is a list of things that will soon need to be renamed so as to avoid hurting Spike Lee's feelings - Brown Bag