Back when I worked for a local steel maker (LTV), they sent all of their supervisors to sensitivity training, where they actually gave us a printed list of unacceptable words and phrases. Why I didn't keep the list, I'll never know, because it was great reading - a little something to offend everybody. The list made even all of the college-educated in the room turn into either Beavis or Butthead.

Anyhow, one of the terms we weren't supposed to use was, "flip chart". Yes, the paper tablet used in presentations. Nobody knew why, but it was later explained to us that "flip" is an insulting word for a Filipino. Who knew? It was good to know, however, since the steel mill in Cleveland was just teeming with Filipinos.

Man, we are so hung-up on words these days and nobody seems to care one bit about actual intent. Why is it so enjoyable to be offended these days? Is this just another symptom of our developing Victim Culture?

Well, we already knew that "niggardly" is a bad word. Here's a partial list of verboten cliches:

A chink in one's armor
Spic and span
To nip something in the bud

Faith and Begora, we'll march on New York City, and we'll do it every year on the same day, March 17th, until we get our reparations, and they are as follows:

1. Two cases of Guinness (bottles not cans) per week for life.
2. Two cases of Harp per week for life.
3. Six pounds of potatoes per week for life.

Is that really to much to ask?

My tongue has been removed from my cheek long enough to say that things like this will be the end of this country. That's the dumbest thing I've read in a while.

Actually, by PC standards the complaint is on the mark. But I suspect the complaint is a type of reminder that in the divisive world of liberal identity politics, we are all victims of hate crimes. Why should the Irish have to pass up a chance to play the victims of deep seated racism by the bigoted C. Virginia Fields?

Didn't anyone tell the PC police that the Irish are white?

DaveJ: 120 years ago (say), a common joke in areas such as Boston was that an Irishman was a (N-word) turned inside out. It's a joke on the reddish coloring that more often occurs in the Irish - but it also brutally put them at the bottom of the social pecking order, and in fact the Irish weren't treated much better in Boston than blacks were in Mississippi. "Paddy wagon" (Paddy is from Patrick) probably reflected another edged joke - that Irishmen drank so much that they frequently had to be hauled off to jail by the van load.

But that was 120 years ago! And even back then, the cops stuffing drunks into the "paddy wagon" were likely to be Irish themselves. For several generations, Irish-Americans have been about as likely to be successful as other white Americans. I doubt that any American under 80 or 90 was ever told that he couldn't apply for a job, play in the park, or buy a house because he was of Irish descent. I very, very much doubt that "paddy" has any sting anymore.