The vocabulary police were flourishing over the weekend over at the Age, with the frequently delusional Ruby Hamad on the job. Off the playlist in Ruby’s car were the otherwise “progressive” Elvis Costello, John and Yoko, Bruce Springsteen, and even Madonna. The latter’s socially unacceptable crime was to sing the outrageously offensive line “Crazy for you.”
Ms Hamad is generous enough to recognise a degree of social and historical context, and, in news that will be a great relief to the artists concerned, does not believe either of the four offenders are “bad people.” Messrs Costello and Springsteen, together with the ghost of the late Mr Lennon, will, no doubt, be grateful, however, that the strongest condemnation is reserved for the blatantly “ableist” language shamelessly employed by Madonna in her 80’s hit “***** for You.”
A distressed Ms Hamad wrote: “Out of all the songs on this list, this is the only one that features a problematic word that is still widely and flippantly used. I confess, when it comes to dropping unconscious ableist language from my everyday vocabulary, it is this (along with ‘insane’) that I most struggle with.”
XYZ has very high editorial standards and would never stoop to using an “ableist” term in a gratuitously offensive way, but we strongly suspect most punters out there will find the very delicate Ms Hamad, in a word, “crazy.”
