Word: correcting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Along with the Jewish Mother, the Jewish American Princess has increasingly entered American culture as an acceptable stereotype of Jewish women. Many of the most politically correct of us use the term as an innocuous description--devoting little thought to its existence as a gendered and ethnic stereotype...
...emphasized that Soltis was correct "not to invade [the intruder's] ... space...
These phrases are important to us because they name some feature of the current political landscape. They tend to stop being useful after a month or two when people realize that they have been caught acting in some readily identifiable, even cliched manner. Think about the whole political correctness debate. As soon as the term caught on, and people could be accused of being politically correct, political correctness quieted down. Soon after, people stopped using the term as often. It seems like the best way to win a fight is to label your opponent's behavior and get everyone talking...
Smoking, though ostensibly legal, is routinely vilified and its practitioners persecuted. While the letter was correct to note that one must be 18 to smoke, it failed to point out that one must appear to be 27 to purchase cigarettes without presenting identification. Since most underage smokers likely know someone 18 or older, it's doubtful that this law prevents many of them from smoking. Instead, it serves to inconvenience legal smokers, subjecting them to unnecessary scrutiny...
...records on "spittin' image" should certainly be kept straight. I don't think that the expression has anything to do with saliva. It originated, I believe, among the darkies of the South and the correct phrasing--without dialect--is "spirit and image." It was originally used in speaking of some person whose father had passed on--and the colored folks would say--"the very spi't an' image of his daddy." JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS JR. Atlanta...