Serving on a Federal Sensitivity Panel

I’m very excited. I, Smart Ass Cripple, have been appointed by the president of these United States to serve on the very first sensitivity panel of the newly-created Federal Bureau of Stereotype Standards (FBSS).

The mission of the FBSS is one of vital importance: to resolve our national identity crisis. I mean, there are so many different types of people buzzing around in America today that our national identity default position is no longer automatically WASP male uncrippled hetero.

So who are we? It’s so confusing because try as we will, we can’t help but offend each other. And so we’re always walking on eggshells around each other for fear we might say the wrong thing. For example, take all this redskin stuff. Just when it seems like it’s not cool to call Native Americans redskins, along come some other Native Americans who say it’s no big deal. So now what? Can’t they make up their minds?

Cripples are another good example. People shun cripples because they’re afraid they’re going to say something that will make us cry or sue. Some cripples hate being called crippled. No matter what term you try—handicapped, handicapable, differently abled, physically challenged or whatever—you’ll find cripples who love it and cripples who hate it.

Cripples are much easier to please when it comes to infrastructure type stuff. There are standards you can look up. Like for instance, you know if you make a doorway 32 inches wide most wheelchair cripples will be satisfied and those who aren’t satisfied are probably chronic whiners anyway so you can feel it’s safe to tell them to fuck off.

So the task of the FBSS is to create similar concrete, easy-to-reference standards for stereotypes. So when a certain genre of Americans is uncertain how to refer to another genre of Americans to which they don’t belong, all they'll have to do is go to the FBSS portal and enter a question like, Is it okay to call a woman a chick?. Within seconds, they will receive a simple reply of yes or no.

The FBSS sensitivity panel will hold hearings, collect testimony, conduct research and, based on all this, develop these standards for socially-acceptable stereotypes. I will be serving on the sensitivity panel on the concerns of Native Americans. You may ask what my qualifications to serve on such a panel are. I have never set wheel on a reservation, if you don’t count casinos.

My lack of qualifications is my best qualification because first and foremost, panel members must be objective. Therefore, panel members must all be from populations outside of the population that is the subject of inquiry. This is an exercise in rationality, not emotion. We can’t have Big Chief Purplefoot of the Wahoo Tribe serving on the Native American sensitivity panel because he can’t be objective, like I can.

There will be sensitivity panels on the concerns of gays, Mexicans, Muslims, cripples, etc. Like I said, I’m really excited about this opportunity. I will serve with honor and integrity in the hope that the president will call on me again. I really want to be one of the guys on the panel that gets to decide how we treat women.



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