Maybe it's my age or the dog days of summer or maybe I am just having a bad hair day but I am fed up with political correctness.  The majority of people in this country have been intimidated and paralyzed to the point that they are afraid to say anything lest some minority group be offended.  This phenomenon has occurred because special-interest groups have learned how to manipulate the media, which, in turn, manipulate the politicians, leaving the rest of us with no voice.  We are fair game for criticism but if we in turn dare to criticize, we are deemed homophobic, racist, sexist, bigoted or worse.  The PC police are holding us hostage and I for one am tired of it.

For example, Patrick Leahy, senior senator from the pipsqueak state of Vermont, doesn’t swear in people with the traditional “So Help Me God” anymore.  Might offend somebody.  Wonder if he ever thought that it might offend God?  Maybe Senator Goofy will have a chance to find out firsthand one day.

Law-breaking foreigners who sneak into our country are no longer “illegal aliens.”  They are now referred to as “undocumented immigrants.”

The city of Atlanta is hyperventilating over the possibility of hosting the Gay Games in 2006, despite the fact that the city badly bungled the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games – or should we refer to them as the Heterosexual Games?   The city’s politicians and business leaders spent most of their time five years ago trying to make a buck off the Games, and the local media was too worried about the woebegone Olympic mascot, Izzy, to focus on making a dysfunctional city work.  Hurling brickbats at the organizing committee became an Olympic sport.  As a result, Atlanta looked to the world like a cheap flea market.  But the Gay Games will have no problems with the politicians, the business community or the media.  Nobody has the guts to dare criticize them as they did us.  Gays win the gold medal when it comes to intimidating people who disagree with them.

Jesse Jackson has an affair with a staff member and produces a baby out of wedlock.  It barely causes a ripple in the media.  Jackson criticizes Anheuser-Busch for something or other and his son suddenly ends up with a lucrative beer distributorship.  Questions are raised about the coincidence of that chain of events and Jackson says such speculation is – tah dah – racist.  Everybody quickly goes mute. Now let’s suppose that Charlton Heston, part-time Moses and full-time white guy who serves as president of the National Rifle Association, had done what Jackson did and ended up with one illegitimate baby and a few hundred beer trucks for his kids.  There aren’t enough trees in the forest to supply the newsprint required for the huffing and puffing that the press would do.  And we would likely deplete the ozone layer with the hair spray needed for all the hyperventilating television commentators.  Double standard?  You bet your sweet backside there is a double standard.

Before we go off and slash our politically incorrect wrists, the good guys just might win one for a change.  The Boy Scouts of America decided some time ago that they don’t want gays as scout leaders.  I know some gays I think would make pretty good scout leaders but that’s not the point.  The point is that the Boy Scouts have the right to decide who leads their organization and who doesn’t.  This claim for freedom and independence, of course, didn’t sit well with gay rights groups which made their usual snarling threats.  But they have hit a brick wall on this issue.  Why?  The Boy Scouts are a great source of pride to most Americans who have suddenly found their voice and have come roaring to the Scouts’ defense.  The bullies in the gay community realize this and have temporarily backed off, along with the media and the pandering politicians.  But they will be back.  They aren’t used to losing, which raises a question:  If the gays can have their own Olympic Games and bars and tours and choruses and marriages, why don’t they start their own gay scout troop and leave the rest of us alone?

I admit that living in this society can be pretty discouraging for people who consider themselves middle of the road.   Maybe you have given up and are resigned to letting the inmates run the asylum.  Not me. I’m ready to fight on.  Just call me the last angry man or, to be politically correct, the last complacency-challenged individual.