(~5 minutes to read)
Timeline: November 2032
The political correctness thing has reached ridiculous levels! Today I was arrested for an article I wrote about fruits and vegetables fifteen years ago, in July 2017.
Apparently the fruit and vegetable rights lobby group, “FAV’RITE” (~Fruits and Vegetables Rights) had shopped me to the PC Police for historic abuse of produce, citing the article as evidence. And since I’m going to be punished anyway, I see no harm in reproducing the article here. It was written in July 2017, as a tongue-in-cheek poke at political correctness—how ironic that I now risk being incarcerated for what, back in 2017, was regarded as a little harmless fun.
Fictitious news item: Scientists discover that fruits and vegetables know what we are saying about them.
I read the above news item with a growing sense of disbelief and dread. Scientists had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that fruits and vegetables are actually tuned in to what we humans say about them, andthat their growth is stimulated or stunted according to what we say.
It’s not just the way we say things, but the words themselves. The scientists proved that the produce learns the language that’s spoken around them when they’re planted as seeds.
Back in the days of limited travel, each country was a monoculture, so carrots and onions (for example) only had to learn one language. In the UK, where accents and dialects once sounded noticeably different if you travelled no more than twenty miles, it is suspected that Essex potatoes could understand Chelmsford or Colchester English, but couldn’t understand, say, a Somerset farmer.
Nascent produce rights groups have long suspected what the scientists have now proved. Conspiracy theorists within those groups maintain that the European Common Agricultural Policy was put in place purely so that fruits and vegetables would be taken away from their native tongues early in life. If this is the case, then it’s an early acknowledgement of what we now know to be true about the abilities of our fruits and vegetables. It certainly explains why so many French Golden Delicious apples made their way to British fruit bowls—they wouldn’t be able to understand the abuse hurled at them about being tasteless blobs of cotton wool.
Globalization further reduced the ability of fruits and veggies to understand the world around them. But evolution being what it is, they gradually developed the ability to learn multiple languages. No longer was language-learning a seedling talent that was lost in adolescence. It became a lifelong skill, practised from germination to cutting board.
The PC loonies are now up in arms, and have stated unequivocally their intention to fight for equal rights for fruit and veg. In a manifesto, they list a number of slurs that they want outlawed.
Red as a beetroot. Beetroots are offended by the use of their colour in this simile. They reason that other groups have successfully campaigned for the elimination of reference to their colour. And as they say, “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” Needless to say, Geese rights groups have expressed their disgust at the use of this phrase, and a spokesman for the beetroot said that the beetroot were somewhat embarrassed by this. (Although how anyone can tell is unexplained.)
Not as green as cabbage-looking. A spokescabbage for the vegetables in question expressed outrage that its fellow brassica should be perceived as naïve. The question of reference to colour was also mentioned as offensive.
Tomatoes. The entire tomato race is frustrated by humans’ inability to pronounce the name of their race correctly. The two popular schools of thought—t’maytoe and t’mahtoe—are both wrong, they say. They demand that both schools adopt the pronunciation toe-m’too, reflecting its South American origins.
Raspberries. Raspberries are incensed that their name should be used to allude to a vulgar noise made by humans to express derision. Their advocates are demanding that the noise be re-named to “thrp-p-p”.
Bananas. Leaving aside the demeaning practice of their being used to demonstrate the proper technique for placement of a prophylactic, bananas are vexed because their skins are used as a metaphor for any slip-up, be it physical or figurative. They maintain that there are materials available that are many times more slippery than their skins, and they demand the immediate cessation of references to banana skins in such situations.
Pears. Pears have two grudges. Firstly, they object to being implicated in fat shaming. When people refer to someone’s physique as “pear-shaped”, they are rarely if ever being complimentary. Secondly, they don’t see why they should be associated with failure, as in phrases such as, “my plans have gone pear-shaped”. Two spokespeople (they always come in pairs) stated that the first use should be replaced with “like a water-filled balloon”, and in the second case, people should call a spade a spade (no doubt a relief to spade lobbyists). “My plans have gone awry” is perfectly understandable to pears, so why shouldn’t it be to humans?
I grew up in politically much-less-correct times. I’ve seen the gradual creep of PC into more and more aspects of our lives. I’ve noticed that people are being offended on behalf of groups who should be expressing their own feelings on a subject. I find this latest set of revelations incredible, frustrating, and ridiculous. I can see that we are fast approaching a time when we won’t be able to use slang, teasing, metaphors, similes, euphemisms or any other non-direct form of expression.
“Peach” will once again become just a fruit and not a colour, which will precipitate a new topic for disagreement between male and female humans.
“Sunday driver” will become a term for one who drives on a Sunday and not one that describes a person’s driving style.
And no longer will be able to call someone “nutty as a fruitcake”. Which is what I now call the moronic PC idiots who are ramming this latest nonsense down our collective throats.
The fact that it wasn’t illegal to write what I wrote at the time I wrote it will be no defence when I have my day in court. After all, those who used the N-word in their writings were pilloried for their insensitivity, so why shouldn’t I share a similar fate for my fruitist observations?