Prejudiced Prose

" 'I was strolling past some Korean shops in Chinatown when I overheard members of a Cambodian mafia having a powwow. One of these heathens had welshed on a deal to buy a ghetto blaster and was shanghaied off to the Near East. As if that weren't hurtful enough, it was Dutch treat all the way . . . . but my narrative doesn't end with a Mexican standoff: the thugs are massacred by Siamese-twin American Indian boys."

That's a quote from a hilarious review of a new book, Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing (Indiana University Press). The book was written by, and is intended for, copyeditors (of which I'm one, by the way). Though it contains some practical advice, the book seems to be primarily an excercise in political correctness run amok. ("Never say wheelchair-bound when living with mobility impairment will do.") The sentence in the above paragraph is reviewer Denis Dutton's, who writes: "The chapter on 'Race, Ethnicity, and Religion' in these Guidelines contains so much vivid (and therefore offensive) language, it tempts me to imagine a story-line based on vocabulary the Bias Persons would prohibit."