Language fascists: “Crazy” and “insane” should be tossed down the memory hole

July 9, 2019 • 10:00 am

Some changes in language are clearly advisable because there are alternative words that convey the same concept or object without being offensive or insulting. (“Retarded” may be one of these, though I don’t have strong feelings about that, and at any rate the word no longer has a use in characterizing mental illness, though it can mean “slowed down” in non-mental contexts.) Clearly, racial slurs, like the old term “Jap,” used to demonize Japanese during World War II, should be ditched. The alternative, “Japanese person”, is just as good but without the bigotry.

It’s up to society, of course, whether such changes occur, but society comprises individuals, and if a recommended change seems out of line, we can take a stand against it.  Euphemisms like “collateral damage”, for “innocents killed in warfare” are one example. And I’m not comfortable with the term “undocumented immigrants” for “illegal immigrants,” which has the same (but less invidious) intent: to try to soften the nature of a transgression. After all, “illegal immigrant” isn’t in itself insulting:  it’s referring to people who enter the country in violation of the law. You can claim that such language has the effect of demonizing immigrants as a whole, but what makes many Republicans treat immigrants badly is not the term itself, but their bigotry towards foreigners, particularly brown ones. Still, it seems more accurate than the euphemistic term “undocumented immigrant”, which really does try to erase a crime and to efface a real and politically important difference between legal and illegal immigration.

Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” is indispensable in highighting the political uses of language.

But when “crazy” and “insane” are next on the chopping block, I say “no more”. If you click on the link below, you’ll go to an NPR “All things considered” piece discussing those who think the words “crazy” and “insane” should be ditched, for, according to disability activists, they supposedly insult those who are mentally ill.

Part of the conversation, moderated by Neda Ulaby:

NEDA ULABY: . . . Azza Altiraifi researches disability justice issues at the Center for American Progress. Crazy might seem harmless, she says, but she thinks giving negative value to crazy or insane contributes to marginalizing people.

AZZA ALTIRAIFI: One in 5 Americans at least have lived – are experiencing mental illness. And of those people, we’re talking about your neighbors. We are talking about family members. We are talking about people in your community.

I suppose I’m one of these, having experienced severe clinical depression several decades ago, and sometimes prone to less-severe recurrences. Do I object to “crazy” or “insane”? No. But of course depression isn’t schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Still, I can’t imagine exactly how mentally ill people get marginalized when those terms are used. Sure, you may find one or a few people who raise this claim. But I don’t think we need to satisfy everyone’s desire to police language, for that creates a one-way ratchet in which the entire English language becomes hostage to those most easily offended. If you are bipolar, for instance, and get upset when you hear that “John did something crazy,” or “The meeting was insane: there was no point to it because everybody just blew off steam,” then I claim you’re being too sensitive, and also that you’re also not being palpably damaged in any objective sense.

The conversation continues: 

ASLAMI: And as, you know, an English professor, I also felt the burden of, like, well, you know, I should be able to be more specific. When I say something’s really crazy, what do I really mean? Like, it’s really stressful. It’s really busy. But as you and I talked about, those words don’t really have the force of saying, like, something is insane.

ULABY: It might feel unrealistic to lose words with such force. I asked Azza Altiraifi what she would say to the people who are rolling their eyes right now at the notion of rethinking crazy.

ALTIRAIFI: What it tells people like me is that my life is not worth that adjustment. And if that is where people are, then it’s really no surprise that people living with mental illness face such disproportionately high levels of violence and harm.

ULABY: Language is living, she says, and using language that brings more dignity to people with mental illnesses maybe not such a strange idea after all. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

Here we have someone apparently suffering from a mental disorder saying that using the terms “crazy” or “insane” is devaluing her life, and if we don’t change our language, we’re telling her that we won’t modify our words because it somehow “erases” her life.  This is an attempt to hold the listener hostage and force a change in language by claiming victimization.

Altiraifi also claims that people living with mental illness face “disproportionately high levels of violence and harm.” I don’t know the data, and so will take her at her word, but I maintain that changing how we use these two words will not lessen the harm and violence that they experience. If a mentally ill and homeless person is mistreated, it’s not because of other people using the words “crazy” and “insane” in other contexts.

Further, there aren’t many words that are adequate substitutes for “crazy” or “insane”. “Really stressful” or “really busy” can suffice in some situations (“The crowds in Costco were really busy”), but they don’t truly convey the extremity of the situation. And saying to someone that another person’s behavior was “crazy”, well, I don’t see an adequate substitute for that. You can confect one, but ask yourself this: if you use that phrase in that sense, what harm is being done? This is the question we should always ask when we see people make extreme claims like a display of kimonos or the wearing of dreadlocks are cultural appropriations. I got that idea from Grania, who always went back to questions about harm.

The palpable harm is only the claim of people like Aslami—and I suspect they are few—who say that their lives are being devalued or erased. But the damage is to a individual’s subjective feeling and not to the welfare of a group.  As I said, if we alter the words we use in response to anybody’s claim that the words are harmful, then language devolves to a level at which the most sensitive person in the world must be satisfied. And that is a language purged of life.

And what’s next: should we get rid of the word “sick”—meaning either “very good” or “ridiculously inappropriate”—because they’re an affront to those who are physically ill?

 

h/t: Stephen

100 thoughts on “Language fascists: “Crazy” and “insane” should be tossed down the memory hole”

  1. those who think the words “crazy” and “insane” should be ditched are just deranged. 🙂

        1. Completely mental, in fact.

          😉

          cr

          (I have this disorder that impels me, when anybody says ‘you can’t say that’, to say it as loudly and as often as possible.)

  2. I just find it hard to target such words as offensive or harmful to people with mental problems of all kinds. Why not spend the time and energy doing something about these metal illnesses instead? I am guessing the mentally ill would rather we find cures for their problems than get all wrapped up in words. We warehouse the mentally ill in prisons in this country by the thousands. We use to care about them and kept them in mental hospitals but then, when more drugs and pills were available, we say, okay, just take these pills and we will now close down all the state hospitals. They did this in Iowa and many other states. So where do the mentally ill go now? Where is the progress?

    1. They did this in all states starting in the 1950s and throughout the 1960s even into the 1970s

    2. The availability of new therapies was not the impetus for closing state-sponsored mental hospitals. It was a combination of historically horrific treatment of patients at those hospitals along with the understanding that mentally ill people ought not lose their civil rights simply because they are ill.

      It’s a difficult thing – how do we balance the rights of the mentally ill with the needs of both the patient and society? Unfortunately, our solution has been to either ignore the problem or demonize the mentally ill. As a result we have large numbers of them living on the streets. I certainly don’t have an answer, but one thing I am sure of, the answer is NOT to re-open the hospitals, at least not in their previous form.

      1. Mental hospitals were a necessity until the advent of better drugs and a better understanding of different types of mental problems.

        The bad wrap that the big institutions got, and ideas of institutionalization itself being a problem led to the idea of community based care.

        This was a good option for some, if not most but, not all.
        Many people simply were not able to cope in any kind of community and needed the security and escape of an institution.

        With less restrictions in community based places and the unsuitability many became homeless.

        And of course the money.

        I think it was thought that a better bang for the buck would be achieved by closing down the big institutions.
        Maybe, but it led to a situation where spending cuts were less easy to follow and that resulted in more people slipping through the cracks.

        There was a place for institutions.

        It is a really tricky problem always exacerbated by lack of money.

  4. In my view, much language policing is less about being too sensitive than it is about their desire to appear to be doing something about a perceived problem. It’s a comforting illusion (delusion) that they’re changing the world for the better. It’s much easier than, you know, actually doing something that would actually change the world for the better.

  6. Was a time, a bit before my own salad days, when “crazy” used as slang had approbatory rather pejorative connotations. I think it started with the beatniks, as in, “Dig that crazy bongo player, daddy-o” (a phrase probably never uttered by anyone except maybe Maynard G. Krebs).

        1. Penned by a young Willie Nelson, if I’m not mistaken.

          Though I’m not sure ol’ Willie ever actually qualified as “young.” 🙂

        3. And what about Paul Simon, who is “Still Crazy After All These Years”?

      2. Aerosmith’s “Crazy”, Heart’s “Crazy On You”, Madonna’s “Crazy For You”, Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”, Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”….those are just the ones off the top of my head.

        And today, while watching Queer Eye I heard lots of references to “crazy”.

        How am I supposed to describe my hair in humidity now? How am I supposed to get my colleagues to modify their outlandish ideas without using “let’s not go crazy”. How do I tell them they are way off, “that sounds crazy”.

        Please, it’s not insulting the mentally ill, it’s describing a state which is nothing to do with being mentally ill. Next I won’t be able to describe being angry because anger is too violent or something.

  8. Why go after the most innocuous words associated with mental illness, rather than words, such as “nuts” or “looney”? There are a lot of words with far greater negative connotation. Is the idea those words are clearly wrong so not worth mentioning? Even if so, there is still a question of where the line is drawn. The NPR reporter in her last sentence, uses the word “strange”, so if crazy and insane cannot be used in a completely unrelated context, why is strange okay? It comes back to the inherent problem with censorship of any form. Where is the line and who makes that decision?

    1. ‘The NPR reporter in her last sentence, uses the word “strange”.’

      Reportorial opinionating.

      Certain NY Times reporters (and no doubt not just the Times), in supposedly objective news articles, will refer to something or someone as “strange” or
      “odd” or “eccentric,” among other such words, as if it were so obvious that it ought not be questioned.

    2. Or weird. Things can be weird but it’s not the same as crazy. But isn’t weird an insult to someone who is different?

      1. How about ‘queer’?

        😎

        cr

        Bonkers, daffy, doolally, wacky, bogus, idiotic, naff, fubar’d…

  9. If you say to someone “You are mentally ill” that is much more insulting than saying “You must be crazy” which is almost affectionate and often said with a smile.

  10. I like to be called crazy. It has no pejorative meaning in my life. Nevertheless, attributes are behavioral, not identities. Everyone has been behaved crazy or insane in their lives, that does not mean they are. Even Trump did not use to be orange all the time.

    1. Besides I like to argue that “it’s not crazy, it’s completely sensible”.

  11. Republicans have “bigotry towards foreigners particularly brown ones”.
    There is no evidence that Republicans are markedly more racist than Democrats.
    Republicans also buy sneakers
    Republicans also read this website…

    1. I meant “some” Republicans, and I’ll correct that above. I would still claim that, on average, we see more Republicans than Democrats acting in bigoted ways.

    2. Republicans may not have more “bigotry towards foreigners particularly brown ones” than Democrats or Independents in general. But today’s GOP certainly has a higher tolerance for such bigotry within its ranks, both as to its white-nationalist wing and as to its Birther-in-Chief (whose approval among the Party faithful currently stands at upwards of 90%).

      Being a Republican by no means makes one a racist; but being a racist makes one more likely to be a Republican.

    3. Actually, there have been a number of studies that have shown that race was a key factor for Trump voters.

      “Nativism” was a substantial part of his campaign and continues to be an effective way to rally his base. The same is not true of Democrats.

      So yes, we can say with a high degree of confidence that Republican voters, as a whole, are markedly more racist than Democrats.

  12. If you deleted all the articles that use the words crazy and insane like that, HuffPo would just vanish.

    1. Yes, I’d be happy to see “insane” get banned, at least for those click bait headlines as in:

      “Number of ducklings in duck pond is insane says professor emeritus”.

      or

      “fan following of Polish cat is insane says writer of pop science book”

  14. Still, it [“illegal immigrant”] seems more accurate than the euphemistic term “undocumented immigrant”, which really does try to erase a crime and to efface a real and politically important difference between legal and illegal immigration.

    Among the PC Left, the preferred nomenclature is “undocumented immigrant,” but I don’t think they object (at least not vehemently) to “illegal immigrant.” Their main beef is with referring to such people simply as “illegals,” inasmuch as it seems somewhat dehumanizing to reduce a person to such a mere nominalized adjective, as though they are their illegal status and their illegal status alone.

    1. I have heard also that people object to “illegal” on the grounds that suggests voluntary, which in some cases at least (children) it is not.

      1. Many Republicans call any and all immigrants illegal. Anyone who approaches A border entry point asking for entry, especially if they’re asking for asylum are not illegal at all.

    2. There’s also the issue of which people are thought of as “illegal immigrants” among those who are illegally in the US. Those who overstay visas did not illegally enter the country, but illegally stayed in the country. I would like this difference to be clear in language and especially when talking about statistics. This distinction is often lost when using illegal immigrant, and I, personally, think undocumented immigrant makes it clear that both groups (illegal entry and illegal staying) are being referred to. If there are alternative terms that make these distinctions clear, though, I’d be happy to adopt them.

      1. “I, personally, think undocumented immigrant makes it clear that both groups (illegal entry and illegal staying) are being referred to.”

        I have to agree with our host on this one. “Undocumented immigrants” makes nothing clear nor does it intend to. Its intent, rather, is to make it sound as though the persons in question just inadvertently left their documents at home.

        Whether entering illegally or remaining illegally, a person who is in the country illegally is by definition an “illegal immigrant.”

        1. If a U.S. citizen declines to renew (appropriate possessive pronoun) driver’s license, is that citizen an “undocumented driver”? Same for an “undocumented immigrant”?

          1. I think the term of art for the DMV and law enforcement is “unlicensed driver.”

  15. We dropped Cretin & Mongoloid, while Moron is living on. Crazy is fine!

    PLEASE DO NOT SAY BRIT! It is as offensive to me as ‘Jap’ or Yank.

    Briton is the word, & I don’t mind limey either, or rosbiff.

    Ah – call me what you like – just don’t call me late for dinner! 😉

        1. Richard Dawkins has made it clear that he disapproves of Brexit. A.C. Grayling is right there with him. (They both want a redo of the referendum. Would they push for a redo of the 2016 POTUS election?) I heard him in person say to the effect that (of course) it was a mistake to have a public referendum on the matter; that the issues involved were “very complex” and should be left to experts, not the average citizens, to determine. I wonder if he would state for the record that he thinks Trump voters incompetent.

          Some months ago I read of some U.S. politico pushing for U.S. senators to be elected by state legislatures, as they were until 1930. Would Dawkins support that, inasmuch as state legislators are presumably, at least nominally, more “expert” than the citizenry. (Though Congresspersons and legislators are drawn from the citizenry and so far as I know national and state constitutions do not impose any expert credentials to qualify for office.)

          Pat Condell, in several videos, has held the position that, for many Brexiteers, it was not about economics but about national sovereignty; the ability to control entrance to U.K.’s borders; and a disdain for having to account to what he described as unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.

          1. I just bought a red T shirt with a big Bill-the-Cat saying ACCKKKK (but no barfing furballs)

    2. An Aussie once told me you Britons prefer “pommie bastard” — but maybe he was pulling my leg? 🙂

      1. All depends on the tone of voice it’s said in.

        I was trudging down the Earls Court Road, into a pub I was lured
        “Where d’you come from?” said a nosey pom, as I downed the amber fluid
        So I tells him straight “I’m Australian mate, and I feel like getting plastered
        But the beer’s crook and the girls all look like you, ya pommy bastard!”

        😎

        cr
        (Pommy bastard)

  16. It will not accomplish anything in the long term. In the US, the “N Word” was followed by “Colored” followed by “Negro” followed by “Black” followed by “African American” (my order may be incorrect). As far as I know the last 4 were not used disparagingly but needed to go for some reason.

    1. I wonder if anyone is using the term, “person of non-color”? Who would that be? And to whom would it be offensive?

  17. What I’d like to see ditched immediately is the association of stupidity with having a low IQ. People with a low IQ are not inherently stupid, nor is “intelligent/non-stupid” at the “high IQ” end of a scale.

    Anyone can be stupid, regardless of IQ — it has to do with overestimating one’s capabilities while ignoring warning signs.

    Freeing the term ‘stupid’ from associations with low IQ would free it up to be used to describe its most noticeable appearance in public life at the moment: as a political tool.

    Stupid is the best descriptive term for people who persist in behaviour that damages their own interests or who openly disdain facts.

    They are encouraged to do so by politicians and propagandists who are either strategically stupid (giving people stupid soundbites to repeat when their views are challenged — eg., “I just want my country back” in the case of Brexit); or who are genuinely stupid, like Trump.

    1. Actually, there is a word for acting against one’s interests, ignoring warning signs etc, namely “foolish”. Fools can be smart or stupid.
      Stupid (when applied to people) should stay reserved for actually dumb, slow, low-IQ people.

  18. A few years ago, I was part of a fairly stable group of responders on another website. I used the term crazy in a comment and a frequent collaborator, who’s comments I always admired, shared his experiences privately with me regarding his life-long battle with hypomania. Although he realized that I was using the term in a nonclinical sense, he also shared how these terms were hurtful to him and others that he knew. He wasn’t preachy about it at all. That got me to thinking about all ways our language is permeated with the legacy of casual prejudices to which I was inured. Removing them all is a process that will take some time and effort from those privileged enough to never have felt their sting.

    1. I do not feel privileged to have severe treatment-resistant bipolar type II disorder (among other things), but I have never been offended by the word “crazy” because it isn’t meant to address me. And, on the rare occasions that I have acted “crazy” and it has been said so, I took no offense because the people who said it were right.

      Until someone shows me that most people who suffer from mental illness are offended by these words, I see no reason to try and eliminate them from our lexicon; even then, I’m not sure I would. I’ve known a hell of a lot of people with mental illnesses because of how long I’ve had one and how many treatment groups I’ve been to, and never once have I heard anyone express this.

      There will always be someone who is offended by something, but we can’t tailor the world to the every tiny minority. We all have to put up with shit that we personally don’t like, but almost everyone else doesn’t care about, including other people like us.

      I sympathize with someone who might feel uncomfortable with other people using the word “crazy” in completely different contexts from referring to mental illness, but I feel no need to change how I speak to accommodate them. We’ve already gone too far. Everyone needs to learn to put up with things they don’t like. I think we’re becoming way too weak, trying to make every place a padded room, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.

      1. I feel different. Language has such an impact on perception that I think it’s never a waste to consider that. Sometimes I change my vocabulary – sometimes not.

    2. I, on the other hand, got called “Crazy Laura”, and not in a one-on-one situation. I got called “Crazy Laura” in front of other people. The person calling me crazy though he was being funny. He was grinning and smiling in what he must have thought was a jokingly friendly manner.

      But I did NOT like it at all. I was struggling with severe and painful depression and didn’t find it cute to have this guy make a joke of my problem.

      Now, do I think the word “crazy” should be banned? No way! It’s a word that has a number of good uses and I don’t want to be unable to make use of it.

      (Oh, and I thought my name was “Stupid Idiot” for a long time. My dad called me that if I ever made a mistake, and I came to see myself as stupid. I don’t think he realized just how damaging it was and how it affected me.)

  19. This seems even more quixotic than the usual run of language policing. Most younger folks seem to use “crazy” as an all-purpose descriptor: That tornado that wiped out my neighborhood was so intense! It was crazy! There were so many people in line for Avengers:Endgame! It was crazy!

  20. Another offending term being eliminated by the language police is the noun “vagrant”, already absent on NPR; when English is replaced by NPRspeak, it will be gone entirely, along with “crazy”.

    A shining example of the new language is provided by Azza Altiraifi herself in the interview: “And as, you know, an English professor, I also felt the burden of, like, well, you know, I should be able to be more specific.”

    When we all speak NPRspeak, many, many, many offending words will be gone, but every sentence will be richly decorated with “like” and “you know”. All sentences will begin, by law, with “As A…”. Some examples are: “As a woman of color”, “As a student”, or “As a duck-billed platypus in a former life”.

  21. I’m not aware that people with mental conditions identify themselves with terms like “crazy” or “insane” (caveat, in my language), and do not think such terms have something to do with them when used to describe something else.

    It’s also only crazy behaviour as long as nobody knows what’s going on, but when there is an actual condition, its quickly cast in pathological terms, as disorders or illnesses.

    The woke habit to always turn it up to eleven also seriously goes on my nerves. It’s like as if you murder somebody when you don’t do exactly what they want. And you murder not just anybody, “we’re talking about your neighbors. We’re talking about your family” — you moral monster!

    This episode reminds of old Pharyngula, where their attitude was similar and could be summed up as “Don’t say `stupid’! This literally does violence to marginalized people you f**cking moron!!111 And go die in a fire!111”. It’s that bizarre sensation, oozing out of woke culture, when the most abusive people parade on the moral high ground.

  22. Doesn’t it depend on what the adjective is being applied to? “That was an insane meeting” is a colloquialism. “You are insane” is not only a calculated insult but a misuse of what was once a clinical term. For me, “crazy” has lost pretty well all its associations with mental illness, if indeed it has had any for decades, and is little more than a synonym for “behaving wildly”.

    And I am particularly resistant to being told what to say by an English professor who can barely speak English.

    1. Well, that’s the thing, and the hardcore social justice people have had a phrase that they seem to think counters this for years: “context isn’t magic.” Meaning that it doesn’t matter why you said what you said or in what context, they still think it’s x-ist or x-phobic and so it must be. What you thought doesn’t matter. What was happening at the time doesn’t matter. Even you not knowing that this was the newest offensive thing doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that it’s now deemed offensive by the Commanders. Context doesn’t matter to the thought police.

      1. I would say that context is *everything*.

        I had a close friend at work – we worked together for several decades – and we continually insulted each other – no offence being taken, it was a game we played. Once, to our surprise and subsequent amusement, a newly arrived supervisor was so alarmed by our repartee that he formally cautioned us that we would be disciplined if we actually started fighting. Nothing could have been further from the case. Context!

        What really grinds my gears is when some censorious, pusillanimous, obscurantist, puritanical, dictatorial, wannabe thought police use weasel phrases like ‘context isn’t magic’. To hell with them.

        cr

  23. What offends me is that somebody who claims to be an English professor is saying “like, well, you know”.

    Not to mention the use of “professor” when they probably just mean “teacher” or “lecturer”.

  25. Couldn’t agree more. This is not an abstract issue for those of us trying to get books published, especially books for younger readers. As I reported in an earlier thread, an editor at a major publishing house insisted that I cut a passage from a middle-grade reader where my 12-year-od narrator, Ned, commented on “retarded” vs “disabled.” Prompted in part by several comments on this site, I agreed to modify but not cut the passage. This wasn’t enough for the editor and I ended up losing a publishing opportunity but preserving a principle along with what I considered the integrity of my character. A fool’s bargain? Probably, but I think I’d do it again.

    Anyway, here’s the offending passage with my proposed modification in italics. Ned, the speaker, is in the principal’s office while the principal is talking to Ned’s mother on the phone.
    _____

    Now, my mom works at the ARC and she’s very busy because she has to find jobs for all these retarded people. That’s what ARC stands for—Association for Retarded Citizens. Except they call it the ARC because no one who works there is allowed to say “retarded” any more. They’re supposed to say “disabled.” I asked her once why they didn’t just call it the Association for Disabled Citizens and change the initials to ADC. She laughed and said, “Because that would make too much sense.” My mom is pretty cool, by the way.

    So after she told me this, I looked up “retarded” and “disabled.” “Retarded” means you’re slow, so you might not get where you’re going very fast but you can still get there. “Disabled” means you’re not going anywhere. You’re out of commission, dead in the water, kaput. So which would you rather be? Hey, I’m not saying you should ever call anybody retarded, because it hurts people’s feelings, and that’s just wrong. But really—only grown-ups can come up with this kind of stuff.

    1. This makes me so freaking angry. I’m really sorry that happened to you.

      People don’t seem to understand the knock-on effects of this shit (the people pushing it often do, but I don’t think the people dismissing it do). It trickles down. People say, “it’s just a small fringe of the far left so it doesn’t matter. There are bigger issues.” There may be bigger issues, but politics is dealing with a whole lot of issues at once, so that’s no excuse. Point is, this “fringe” ends up influencing places that aren’t “fringe” at all. They’ve begun to influence big publishers, HR departments, and even the modern-day public forum itself in Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s affecting the ideal of free speech itself.

      We haven’t just allowed censorship to creep in because censorship has always been with us in one form or another. What we have done on is allow the ideology of censorship to creep back into places out of which we had previously torn it, and even places where it wasn’t before. Ignoring the issue will only make it worse.

      Again, my sympathies. I remember when you first posted about this last year and it just makes me so angry to hear about the result.

    2. Reckon a novel narrated by a six-year-old tomboy name o’ Scout, who’s terrorized by the neighborhood recluse and has a housekeeper named “Calpurnia,” wouldn’t go over well in today’s publishing world, huh, Gary?

  26. I am afraid “sick” has to go. I confess, sometimes when someone says or does something that is harmfully insane, I say “That’s sick!”

  27. Language-cleansing like this is another sign that Social Justice is bad for the moral compass. Yes, we’re comparing some people’s behavior to that of mentally ill people, with a negative connotation – because being mentally ill is actually bad, and behaving as if you were mentally ill is likewise bad. Smart is better than stupid, wise is better than foolish, healthy is better than sick, and sane is better than crazy. No feigned concern for anyone’s feelings should keep us from keeping that in mind.

    1. Do you have any idea how able-ist that sounds?

      (I mean, it’s absolutely 100% correct, but it’s just very naughty to point it out 😉

      cr

    2. The problem comes when “bad” is equivocated on. Being mentally ill is bad (as in it makes it hard to live, like a “bad leg”). But it is not *morally* bad.

  28. I reckon we’ve seen the last of the tv commercials for “Crazy Eddie’s” electronics stores. His prices were “IN-SAAANE”:

  29. Some synonyms, from an online dictionary:

    sense 1: mentally deranged

    mad, insane, out of one’s mind, deranged, demented, not in one’s right mind, crazed, lunatic, non compos mentis, unbalanced, unhinged, unstable, disturbed, distracted, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare, stark mad; sectionable; informal mental, off one’s head, out of one’s head, off one’s nut, nutty, nutty as a fruitcake, off one’s rocker, not (quite) right in the head, round the bend, raving mad, stark staring/raving mad, bats, batty, bonkers, cuckoo, loopy, loony, bananas, loco, dippy, screwy, with a screw loose, touched, gaga, doolally, up the pole, not all there, off the wall, out to lunch, not right upstairs, away with the fairies; informal barmy, crackers, barking, barking mad, round the twist, off one’s trolley, as daft as a brush, not the full shilling, one sandwich short of a picnic; informal buggy, nutsy, nutso, out of one’s tree, meshuga, squirrelly, wacko, gonzo; informal bushed; informal yarra; informal porangi

    sense 2: foolish

    absurd, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, laughable, risible; idiotic, stupid, foolish, foolhardy, unwise, imprudent, ill-conceived, silly, inane, puerile, infantile, fatuous, imbecilic, harebrained, half-baked; unreasonable, irrational, illogical, nonsensical, pointless, senseless, impracticable, unworkable, unrealistic; outrageous, wild, shocking, astonishing, monstrous; unbelievable, incredible, unthinkable, implausible; peculiar, odd, strange, queer, weird, eccentric, bizarre, fantastic, incongruous, grotesque; informal barmy, daft, potty, cock-eyed; informal crazy-ass; informal wackadoo, wackadoodle

    I’m not sure dropping one or two of the words will make that much difference.

  30. as, you know, an English professor
    the burden of, like, well, you know,
    Like, it’s really stressful.
    saying, like, something is insane.

    From an English professor, in one short six line paragraph!

    These do violence to my delicate ears. I would move “like” and “you know” to the front of the banned list, well ahead of crazy and insane.

  31. I agree with what others have alluded to above – in a way it’s almost insulting to assume that people must be referring to the mentally ill when they use terms like ‘crazy’. I think most people would say that someone with mental illness might, in any given moment, show deep insight, while someone entirely neurotypical could act in a way we would call ‘crazy’. Same idea with the origins of the word ‘mad’. It’s used to describe a mind state that literally anyone can experience, and while it does speak to the idea that acting angrily equates with disordered thinking, it in no way applies only to those with mental illness.

  32. Anyone with mental illness who thinks it’s all about them is crazy. Can we please get over this insane political correctness that lets the SJW’s dictate our language?

    cr

Comments are closed.