Seattle city officials: The terms ‘citizen’ and ‘brown bag’ are too offensive to say

A long time ago, I spent a couple of years working in local government. It wasn't a big city, and while the P.C. era was already underway (the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings occurred during this period), I don't recall the good folks at the Charter Township of Canton wasting much if any time on nonsense like this.

But, boy, do they dive into it in Seattle, as Fox News reports. The term "citizens" is too offensive because of all the non-citizens living in the city, paying taxes, blah blah blah. And as for brown bags, well, if you say that you might as well be segregating drinking fountains and lunch counters, Mr. Grand Wizard. Elliott Bronstein of the city's Office of Civil Rights explains to KIRO Radio:

"For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.

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According to the memo, city employees should use the terms "lunch-and-learn" or "sack lunch" instead of "brown bag."

Oh, and Bronstein doesn't want you wishing anyone happy birthday either, because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate birthdays, and you never know who might be within earshot so as to become offended. I would love to know how much time and money cities spend on nonsense like this. It's not just that they pay the salaries of people like Bronstein, but typically policies like this are also reviewed by lawyers - either someone on the city attorney's staff or an outside firm that charges by the hour. You can never be sure the kind of time and resources the employees of any governmental unit might spend indulging their own little intellectual fetishes as opposed to serving the citizens, er, sorry, residents. It's another pretty good argument for smaller government, though. A bare-bones operation doesn't have time for crap like this.