Well, it’s official.
We no longer have a “homeless” problem.
Because you can’t call them that anymore.
Heretofore, the poor folk with no abodes are to be known as the “unhoused.”
Which is light years more compassionate than homeless, and will undoubtedly add to the concerned’s self-worth.
And those aren’t “junkies” or “drug addicts”; they are “persons experiencing addiction,” which doles out a touch of respect and encouragement, two things in short supply on the street. That’s worth a couple of extra syllables on our part, isn’t it?
And we elders aren’t “old people” or “senior citizens” or “golden agers.”
We are “extreme adults undergoing peak maturity.”
When microaggressions were identified and branded as triggers, San Francisco was there.
San Francisco did not birth or raise political correctness, but we may have acted as an inadvertent midwife.
Not the Mother of Woke.
But the gay honky godmother with the funny haircut of woke.
We were woke back when it was known as simple common human decency.
It was taught to kids … some kids.
But that was in the olde days, way back before compassion was criminalized.
Our hospitals were the first to rename Monkeypox Mpox, so as not to stigmatize the sufferers, not to mention the monkeys.
And don’t say “mad cow” anymore either.
It’s the whole thing or nothing at all — “bovine spongiform encephalopathy.”
And in San Francisco we don’t say “crazy.”
We say “neurally diverse” or “not reality-based.”
Or “alternatively sane” or “differently reasoned” or “51/50” or “a little woo-woo” or “pixilated” or “Crispin Glover-ish” or “Wackier than Woody Harrelson after three weeks in Mexico on Willie Nelson’s tour bus.”
As I’ve said before, this tiny peninsula can be confusing; this is where the term “marijuana initiative” is not an oxymoron.
Will Durst is a San Francisco-based comedian who will be making his triumphant return to the Comedy Day stage Sunday, Sept. 14, in Robin Williams Meadow of Golden Gate Park. Show starts at noon and goes to 5 p.m. And it’s free!
Come on out and support the arts while you can!
