Ham and hamlet

have nothing to do with pork. I also doubt there was any "Muslim Council demand" that "Buckingham Palace" was renamed because it contains "ham". 

The word "ham" actually means village and, in the strictest sense, a "hamlet" is a small village without a church. There are plenty of places in Upover which end in "ham" and if the Muslim Council wished to be consistent and eradicate all of them they would be busy for a very long time. (There are some "hams" here in Downunder too and the same sort of problem would apply.) 

As I was making my evening meal I thought about this and the way in which individual words are used to make trouble where no trouble should be. They were not particularly happy thoughts. I thought back to the "Coon" cheese episode, where a man's name was wiped out because someone took exception to it. "Coon" had no racial connotations in this country until one man decided to make an issue of it. There would have been very few people who had ever heard the term but suddenly it was wrong, so wrong they were forced to change the name of the cheese. I feel for anyone whose surname is actually "Coon" - and there are some in the phone book.

And there are other names and descriptions which stick like super-glue even when they are wrongly applied. There is the "sad, sultry, sexual and confused" label given to a young teen by the woman who has become the "person of the year" for her work on body image. I don't care what she was thinking when she said it. She simply should not have said it - ever. 

Yesterday they held a funeral for Cardinal Pell. As I have said elsewhere I doubt I would have liked the man if I had met him. That is a personal thing. Unlike some though I would not call him a "paedophile". His "conviction" for paedophilia was, rightly, overturned by the High Court. The suggestion he supported others who were and covered for them is, in all probability, wrong as well. He went to court to "support a paedophile"? No, he went to court because his religious convictions, his faith, his position demanded that he go because someone was in trouble. He could support the sinner but not in anyway condone the sin. Still he will almost certainly always be called a paedophile.

Yet while this is being done there is a move to call actual convicted paedophiles "minor attracted persons".   It is as if changing the words used can somehow change the deed or the depth of the wrong doing or even wipe it from our consciousness. 

It won't work like that of course and Buckingham Palace will still sound more dignified than "Buck House".