LizzieMaine
Bartender
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But who is the one who gets wound up - the people who want to change the name or the people who don't? And if it's both, then the argument you are making - I think reduces to - is that the right stance is to let others fight it out and then accept the outcome.
I really don't care if its chair or chairman (chairperson sound odd to me), but it was clear that chairman was changed to chair by some very motivated people for a variety of reasons - even if I don't care about the name, I might care about the agenda behind it.
And really -- so what? It's a word. It's a name. Will making a stink about supposed "agendas" cause anyone to say "OH GEE HE'S RIGHT BETTER CHANGE IT BACK!" There are so many more important battles to fight in the world that I just feel sorry for people who feel like they need to lather up over something so trivial as this.
Doing some radio history work some time ago, I did quite a bit of research in the NBC internal files, and came across a memo from John Royal, the network's head of programming in 1935, advising the chief of broadcast standards that the "N-word" was to be hereafter banned from use on the network. The executive noted that there had been complaints from "Negro organizations," and added that "sometimes these darkeys get too exacting." The people who whine about chairman-chairperson la-de-dah remind me very much of Mr. Royal. The world had changed, but he wasn't able to handle those changes very well.