[Dixielandjazz] Basin Street Blues

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

What was the matter with `black and white folk` in the first place.  Has 
anyone, anywhere ever approached the bandstand and said `I am one of the 
white folk and I object` or `I am one of the poor folk and I am being 
discriminated against`.
This sort of stuff is dreamed up by people who work in Government 
Departments with titles like The Office for Regulating Irrational Fulginous 
Inhabitants into Countrywide Equipoise  (ORIFICE)  who have to justify their 
jobs in any way they can.
___________________________
It's sort of in vogue to blame government for everyting but I think a lot of 
this is brought about by well meaning people who honestly don't want to 
cause offense to others.  Then it is picked up by those whose business it is 
to talk about such things and then everything gets blown out of proportion 
and then someone who didn't know he should be offended now decides to sue 
which causes even more comments and the whole thing gets amplifyed again.

A case in point are people with lower than normal intelligence.  At one time 
words like Idiot, Moron and Creton were used to describe levels of IQ.  The 
words were invented before the intelligence tests and were used mainly by 
doctors and other people in the professions to describe levels of 
intelligence and were sometimes used in combination.   The Down's Syndrome 
kids were Mongoloid Idiots and so it went.  But, as those terms crept into 
use by all of us they became derogatory and had to be changed so we started 
the evolution of the language and words like Trainable came into the lexicon 
and Mongoloid Idiot eventually evolved into the Down's syndrome.   Other 
descriptors are used today such as Special Needs Child or some variation of 
that.  Retarded has become Learning Impaired.  The evolution has moved from 
single words to multi word descriptors.  Single words have more power to 
hurt and are more likely to be said in traffic while flipping the bird at 
someone than multi word descriptors.

I worked with Blind children for many years and the word Blind is almost not 
used any more.  We went from blind to sightless to visually impaired and we 
no longer put the word Blind in front of someone's name like Blind Boone. 
We also don't use other terms such as "Fats" as in Fats Waller or Fats 
Domino or "Chubby" as in Checker.

One time I went to the school guidance counselor about a student's behavior. 
I used the term "Weird" to describe a students strange behaviors.  He 
climbed my frame about using non legitimate, derogitory and unprofessional 
language to describe a student.  In my defense, I may not know the 
politically correct word for it but I know weird when I see it.

As people percieve that a word has become derogitory the professionals 
dealing with that handicaping condition become creative and make up a new 
euphanism.

The language has become more confusing as we become more media oriented and 
it is ever evolving.

A sort of silly thing happened to me yesterday.   I went to the hardware 
store to buy some "Blind" nuts.  As far as I know they have always been 
called blind nuts.   We couldn't find them because their name has been 
changed to "T" nuts but after I described them, the clerk knew what they 
were.   Also Blind rivets are now pop rivets for those of you who keep up on 
such things.

I wonder when my wife will want me to take down the Venitian Visually 
Handicapped Window Coverings and clean them?
Larry
St. Louis