Pitt can’t find a red pen because failure is not politically correct
By Roger Pitt
After several minutes in an office supply area searching for a particular pen, I was joined by another man on a similar mission.
“I am looking for a red pen.”
He admitted to also looking for his favorite pen as we perused hundreds of pens hanging on the shelves.
Finding a pen with red ink is becoming more difficult and frustrating and giving pause to seek a cause or logical explanation.
Over the past few months I have been unable to find my preferred or any substitute of its color at Walmart nor Walgreens, my most frequented businesses other than grocery and convenience stores.
“It must be because nobody gets an ‘F’ any more. Nobody can get a failing grade.”
“How is that working?” he asked rhetorically, adding “not too well.”
The discussion transcended from pens to politically correct (PC) views and continued a day later at the End Stool with Tuesday’s regulars.
“Can’t use a red pen to grade a paper, didn’t stop me from using one all the time,” Richard Yatzeck said. He spent his life in academia after being raised on a farm and moving to the Milwaukee area with his family during the Great Depression.
Yatzeck said discipline is important as it defines your life in many ways – mentally, physically, personal conduct, relationship with others, ambition and determination.
PC purists believe there should be no failures, no loser, no winners.
“Kids know who won and who the better players are in games where they don’t keep score,” Dennis Smith said. “It matters to them. It is natural.”
Before adults took over the world of youth sports, choosing sides was done by the kids and most often led to competitive, friendly games. It didn’t take them long to set the pecking order for their teams – often determined by the tiny hands one-over-the-other on a bat.
Trying to be PC not only confuses me at times, but often seems extreme, if not absurd.
An example is news about a list of “micro aggressions” within the University of California by its president Janet Napolitano, former Secretary of Homeland Security, circulated recently at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in an e-mail to its teachers and staff.
The list includes several sayings we read for years in our history books and respected media. Examples and (reason for not being PC) are:
“America is a melting pot.” (A white person does not want to or need to acknowledge race.)
“America is a land of opportunity and everybody can succeed, if they work hard enough.” (Asserts that race or gender does not play a role in life successes.)
There are no guarantees, but there has always been opportunity. The list did not include “Land of opportunity,” another precept I believed in during my life.
I carry multiple pens for taking notes to ensure getting to the point and eliminate any doubt what is being discussed or written about. Red ink sped up writing a story – especially on deadline.
Politicians, bureaucrats and numbers crunchers routinely deal with red ink as spending in their budgets often exceed revenue creating a deficit.
As a result the red ink grows and grows, like Pinocchio’s nose.
The red ink in Greece has spilled beyond its borders, sending stock markets acting like a yo-yo, a rapid drop and slow rewind, when its voters rejected an austerity plan in a bid for a bail out of its failing banking system.
An agreement in principle calling for new austerity measures was reached during the weekend with Eurozone creditors. Greece has a debt of $360 billion, which pales to our red ink.
The U.S. Treasury and Federal Bank are drowned by the U.S. debt – $18.3 trillion and growing last Saturday. Treasury bonds secure funds by the Fed which controls money in the U.S.
Money supply in the U.S. in 2015 was $11.963 trillion, compared to $4.81 trillion in 2010. The monetary base this year is $3.95 trillion, compared to $602 billion in 2010.
Politicians repeatedly outspend revenue, resulting in more red ink.