After the recent criticism over Seth McFarlane’s performance at the Academy Awards show and the controversy over an Onion writer’s twitter about one of the Oscar nominees, the Editors of Obamabeans believe it’s time to issue our annual apology to anyone, living or dead, who has been offended by one of our articles. Although we strive to be politically correct, it is difficult for our writers to navigate the rather complicated rules involving political correctness, which are not only unwritten but are in a constant state of flux.
Therefore we are excited to announce the publication of “The Obamabeans County Register Guidelines for Politically Correct Speech” sometime later this year. We feel this new book is deeply needed and are rushing to bring it to publication as soon as possible. Perhaps if our book had been available to Mr. McFarlane he might have been dissuaded to sing about seeing famous actresses’ boobs, even though many have been handsomely compensated for displaying said boobs. It might have also kept Alec Baldwin from screaming racial epithets and prevented Joe Biden from speaking at all.
Looking at previous efforts to issue guidelines in this area, we noticed that many were out of date and others suffered from so much political correctness that they didn’t really tell you anything. We at Obamabeans County Register vow to tackle the issues head-on, not pulling any punches. (Editor’s note: This last sentence was a test. “Not pulling any punches” is a masculine phrase and promotes violence. A better, more gender neutral choice of words would have been ” not rattling any staples”. Yes, we know that phrase doesn’t really make any sense, but that’s not the point.) We recognize that our efforts may get some people’s “panties in a wad” (Yes. another test. Better to have said “undergarments in an uncomfortable but nonsexist position”), but we will not let these people stop us; unless they say mean or hurtful things about us which may force us to drop the project completely.
[Update: it has been pointed out to us that the use of the word “boobs” is sexist. If our new guidelines had been available prior to the publication of this article, we might have avoided this mistake: just another great example of why our book is so important. We haven’t completed the female anatomy section of the guidelines yet, so right now we’re going for “upper lady parts” in place of boobs, but this is subject to change.]
©Obamabeans 3/8/2013