Offenses of the Month, Winter-Spring 2024

SA, SA (“Stand Aside, Special Acronym”) or More Adventures in Polysemy

A shout-out to a favorite topic: the snare of the polysemous in the contemplation of the over-squeamish.

This winter the SA at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., was renamed SGA. Whether or not this particular change reflects a broad trend I can’t say, but GWU isn’t the first university to morph the widely-used moniker in the hopes of avoiding consternation and confusion on campus.

Don’t know what “SA” stands for? Take a moment. Or consult Wikipedia or Wiktionary for scores of possibilities. Movie buffs could be thinking of their favorite screen star, the one with Sex Appeal. Geographers are already pointing to South America, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or San Antonio, among others. Geologists: San Andreas. In my Navy days, I used to see Seaman Apprentices walking about, happy to be stateside. Bureaucrats here and there, I read, have rubber SA stamps signifying that your plan is “Subject to Approval,” and if the SA stamp is undated it’s double SA: “Sino Anno,” loosely “without date.” Lots of schools and other organizations have Service Agents and System Administrators. The Salvation Army is known by none other. But I suppose few on campus would work up a lather thinking that SA billboards were aimed at sailors, geographers, or IT staff.

Students seem to have darker thoughts, and some of these SA meanings may “trigger” the anxious. South Africa because back when . . . Saudia Arabia because now . . . Check in at the infirmary (or the statistics lab) for more on Sleep Apnea, Suicide Attempts, and Social Anxiety. If you’re still unruffled, you might just break out into chills thinking about all the Special Agents crawling around, some of whom might carry Semi-Automatics, while others tally Sexual Assaults on campus.

But these acronyms cast only pale shadows of terror alongside the Sturmabteilung, the early Nazi era paramilitary thugs that helped put Hitler into power. GWU’s board of trustees didn’t quite say they were seeking to avoid association with terrorist paramilitary organizations of the past when they approved a request to rename the “Student Association”—henceforth to be known as the Student Government Association—but apparently the thought that someone might confuse the Nazi SA with the student’s SA informed their thinking.

Whatever various word associations came to mind, some were troublesome enough to render the SA acronym “offensive and hurtful,” according to the vice president of the newly-named GSA. In so doing GWU joins Abilene Christian University, Syracuse University, Boston College, and no doubt others, reducing by one the number of associated meanings a single acronym will continue to carry. Rest easier.

Too Big to Nail

Politically incorrect celebrities are a dollar a dozen these days (blame it on inflation) and reports of their oafishness have increased, perhaps in sync with global warming. But their pronouncements still rate headlines, and so let me nominate two one-of-a-kind luminaries for this winter and spring’s honor roll of offensive remarks by those who should know better: Pope Francis, Sovereign of Vatican City; and Harrison Butker, the pope of National Football League’s kickers, for their contributions to the roster of slurers and scolds.

The Slurer

At a private Vatican meeting in May with bishops to discuss whether celibate gay men should be admitted to seminaries for training, Pope Francis was quoted as having used an Italian slur, frociaggine, from a Roman dialect meaning roughly, the pundits tell us, “faggotness,” apparently while commenting that there are too many gay novitiates. He did not directly acknowledge using the word, but news accounts quote a Vatican spokesman as saying the pope was “aware of the articles” about his having done so. The spokesman offered this comment: “The Pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he apologizes to those who felt offended by the use of a term reported by others.”

For a man who has seemingly been seeking closer ties to the gay community than any previous pope, the spoken slur came as jarring. That the Vatican issued an apology at all indicates an awareness that the pope flubbed. But as apologies go, it’s a pretty weak one, coming close to insincere. It doesn’t admit to or name the offense, is directed only to those who “felt offended,” rather than to the larger gay and Catholic communities, and appears to lay the blame for the word on those “others” who reported it.

Despite the apology, two weeks later the pope repeated the slur in another closed-door meeting, this time with a group of Roman priests at the Roman branch of Salesian Pontifical University. This time there was no apology, only a comment from the same spokesman that those with “homosexual tendencies” should be welcomed into the church, but “their entry into the seminary” should be greeted with caution.

If the pope were a football coach and said what he said out loud, he’d likely be a former football coach.

The Scold

Then there’s Harrison Butker. Unlike the dissembling pope, the storied field goal kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs was quite direct and forthright and formally polite—no slurs—in his condemnation of any portion of modernity that clings to a woman’s skirt. And much else to boot, in delivering the commencement address to graduates of Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas,

Highlighting his polymathic learning, he spoke about Catholic theology, church practices, failures of the clergy and the Church’s leaders, pitfalls of educational administration and leadership, the collapse of social mores, corruptions of American political theory, sin, the failures of elite journalism, the perils of inclusivity and diversity, and weaknesses of the Biden Administration, among other things. Of oourse, I am generalizing. Butker was rather more specific in each part of his diatribe against the modern age. For example, his rap on sin was that the celebration of Pride Month is an obvious instance of “the deadly sins”—to the consternation of his team and the National Football League, both of which support diversity and inclusion efforts and which celebrate Pride Month.

But the part of his admirably succinct commencement speech—he covered it all in about 20 minutes—that garnered the most attention was his excoriation of educating women. He told the several scores of female graduates that they had been told “diabolical lies” about the nature and value of their learning. Without explicitly denouncing the women who would go on to “successful careers in the world,” he “venture[d] to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children that you will bring into this world.” He reminded the women on stage who were “thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career” that one of the most important titles of all [is] homemaker.” His wife, he said, forsook her original ambition to have a career but has no regrets. (If you suppose I exaggerate, you can find the full text of Butker’s speech online.)

Butker’s diatribe got me to thinking: What sort of educational program does Benedictine College offer its students, women included? According to its website, Benedictine, referred to in most descriptions of its ethos as a conservative Catholic college, offers 24 majors. If most of the graduating women are excitedly looking forward to post-graduation family and homemaking, forswearing careers, I figured the college would have anticipated their life paths with majors to equip them for the role. You know, like Home Economics, Family Sciences, Consumer Sciences , Home Schooling Education (yes, such majors are offered at a few colleges across the country, but the list is predictably small, at least at schools with four-year bachelor’s programs). And for the record, I should note that many of the lists of schools with such majors that appear in a quick online search are misleading in their claims: quite a number of “home economics” majors are actually majors in home economics education, which will equip their students to go out of the home and teach in high school and vocational schools.

But none of that appears to be on offer at Benedictine. Perhaps some of the traditional majors, like those in Economics, will help prepare people who will go on to spend most of their time at home raising children. But I doubt that many students major in “Health, Wellness, and Exercise Science” or Nursing or even Education do so for the purpose of raising their own children. Most of Benedictine’s majors are standard fare at any university: You can specialize in Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, Architecture, Biology, and so on.

Consider Benedictine’s major in Astronomy. This is not stargazing for the kids. The department description says it prepares students “for graduate study and careers in astronomy and related fields; they also gain a strong set of analytical and technical skills that prepare them to pursue careers in a wide range of other fields.” Benedictine says nothing about separate tracks, depending on the sex of its students: males who get jobs (like kicking footballs?) and women who stay at home with the kids and feed the kickers. Like any sensible college, it prepares all its students for work, male and female. So I’m left unclear who Harrison Butker insulted more: the female graduates or the college itself.

As far as I know, Mr. Butker has been silent on a rebuke from an order of nuns affiliated with Benedictine. In a statement posted on Facebook, they denounced his remarks as having “fostered division” and not” represent[ing] “the Catholic, Benedictine, liberal arts college that our founders envisioned and in which we have been so invested.” Butker’s employer and affiliates were also quick to note that they disagreed with much of what he had to say. But they equally quickly pointed out that they value diversity in thought and don’t pay players for their political and social views. And when you’re earning about $3.5 million a season, you can afford to tell the little lady she can just stay home.

Offensiveness: The Tool of Champions?

All this is mere foretaste of the heroic heights to which offensiveness will likely be lifted as a tool in the second half of this one-of-a-kind election year. It’s not much of a prediction, but I’m betting the winner of the Most Offensive Candidate on the Ballot in 2024 Prize will be Mark Robinson, Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, whose range of offensive vitriol surely qualifies him for a place in the Olympics of his verbal sport.

Among many other things, he has managed these gems: Michelle Obama is a man, only men should lead, transgender women should relieve themselves in the streets, there is a class of people who ought to be killed, discussion of “homosexuality and transgenderism” in the classrooms is “filth,” there was a Jewish plot behind the 2018 hit movie Black Panther, American society will crumble in the wake of legalized abortion, teaching elementary school children science and social studies is unnecessary, and — but why go on?

Extreme offensiveness got Robinson his nomination. This may be the year that will definitively test whether politicians who wield offensiveness as a tool can succeed in being elected. Too soon to tell.