#1060 Little PO’d

Recently the Little People of America asked the FCC to ban the word midget. They said that radio and TV don’t allow the “N” word, so they shouldn’t allow the “M” word either. And you know what, until I heard it that way, I never knew how serous an insult it was to them.
But there’s the problem of using the term midget generally. You don’t use the “N” word when you are describing something as general as size. Saying midget racers or midget cars will be hard to stretch into something as insulting as N-word anything.
I wish the Little People luck, although I don’t expect much. If only because the term “Little People” is such a poor replacement. It sounds more cartoon-y than the term they are trying to replace. And the tongues of the cruel will soon twist it too.
You wonder sometimes about words, though. I was reading something the other day and the writer was talking about putting butter on a piece of toast. He put on a “pat” of butter. If you think about even a little bit, the term “pat” doesn’t make a lot of sense.
It’s okay as a verb. When you pat someone on the back or you pat down a clump of hamburger into a “patty.”
Still, we all know what a pat of butter is. In fact, even if we start with a butter cube, most of us can slice off a pat of butter at a nearly uniform size. Probably because we all encountered individual pats of butter at school cafeterias or restaurants.
Pats of butter were like the first individually packaged miniature portion. Wow. We owe all the single condiment packets in the landfills to the success of “pats.”
There may be an internationally recognized measurement for a “pat”. One of those lines on a butter cube wrapper perhaps. Then again, a “pat” may just be part of the broad category of “almost measurements.” The dollops and the pinches and the smidgens.
Which show, by the way, that we probably wouldn’t miss the word midget. Because there sure are a lot of other words that mean little.
America, ya gotta love it.