Rather Be an Iron Pig or a Pork Chop?

Just when I think political correctness can't possibly get any more ridiculous something new comes along to prove me wrong. The latest bit of nonsense concerns a professional baseball team, a Philadelphia Phillies minor league club based in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The largest cities in the Lehigh Valley, Allentown and Bethlehem, were once noted for steel mills so the team is known as the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs. The mascot was called Pork Chop because those succulent morsels have a close relationship with pigs.

But no more. Why? Because a few Hispanics complained that it was a derogatory name sometimes applied to them. Having grown up in an industrial city where every imaginable ethnic group could be found, I naively believed I was acquainted with every possible term that could be applied to the Irish, Italians, Hungarians and so on. Again I was wrong. Not once over the years did I ever hear a Latino referred to as a pork chop.

So the baseball team changed the name of the mascot from Pork Chop to Ferrous. How innocuous can you get? Maybe I'm not as politically correct as I could be because I would have had one word for the complainers: Tough.

Those who protested did accomplish one thing more than that name change. They have provided those who enjoy applying derogatory names to ethnic groups one more to use for Hispanics.

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Here's something to think about. During the past year people using Yahoo! to cruise around the Internet called up Britney Spears more than anyone or anything else. Second came professional wresting, the WWE.

No need for further talk of the dumbing down of Americans. Rock bottom has been reached.

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