PC Lingo

Recently, I saw a Toys "R" Us catalog marketed to "Differently Abled Kids." Now, I'm all for toys that help children with disabilities to play and learn, but I don't think marketers need to sound like they have a language disability in order to appeal to their target group. Maybe I shouldn't expect much from a company that thinks that placing quotation marks around the "R" in their name is a proper abbreviation for "are." Plus, the R is backwards; further proof that they are somehow confused into thinking that writing like a kindergartner will make Sally buy more Barbies. Let's pretend someone said it was "catchy" and the rest of us agreed, and we'll return to my original, grammatical rant.

Since when is "abled" an adjective . . . or a word? I guess that prefix of "dis" was WAY too negative for the PC dictators somewhere. Now I start getting confused. Are these toys for kids who are different because they are "gifted" (another ambiguous educational term)? No. Oh, they must be kids who have different talents! No. They are kids who are not able to do certain things, so we made toys specifically with their abilities and potentialities in mind. Since they are only lacking some abilities and not all abilities, we just call them "differently abled." Oh, ok. Was that random hyphen between "different" and "abled" supposed to tell me all of that?

How about that word "different;" won't that make them feel excluded. downtrodden, outcast? Shouldn't it be "Uniquely Abled?" Or you could just make up another adjective. That would effectively confuse the masses! Black Friday is pretty much just about materialistic mayhem anyways, right? Who said it has to make sense?