One of the key weapons added to the leftist arsenal in the last century is called “semiotics” – the postmodernist tactic of redefining words to make them mean whatever they want.
Combined with the Marxist inveiglement of constantly posing as the paladin of the “underdog,” the savior of the “besieged minority,” the defender of the “victim,” collectivists have given birth to an ever-growing brood of “woke” terms and “protected” people who will be favored by the state, which, of course, will victimize anyone who would prefer to be left alone as a free person.
Now, the shallow virtue-signal rhetoric that lies at the core of semiotics is so pervasive, and the state-selected “favorites” are so numerous, at least one bureaucrat is having trouble juggling all the manipulative NewSpeak.
She is Dr. Michelle Morse, Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Department of Health, and, as Kyle Morris writes for Fox News, she is encountering some pushback after using the trans-fantasy-affirming term “birthing people” to describe white-skinned moms, while simultaneously using the term “mother” to describe Hispanic and black moms – all while promoting another rights-attacking, government-growing, dependency-expanding city program.
The comments from Dr. Michelle Morse, the chief medical officer at the New York City Department of Health, came in a series of tweets touting the city’s ‘birth equity’ initiative to expand the ‘citywide doula program and midwifery.’
Specifically:
’The urgency of this moment is clear,’ Morse wrote. ‘Mortality rates of birthing people are too high, and babies born to Black and Puerto Rican mothers in this city are three times more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to non-Hispanic White birthing people.’
So, which is worse? Is it the dumb, woke implication that anyone other than a female can give birth? Is it her racist differentiation between white mothers and other mothers? Is it the typical “crisis-mongering” language about mortality rates – rates she does not cite, let alone explore temporally or geographically? Or is it her assumption that, as a government hack, she has a justified place not only telling people in this garbled language that there is some kind of “problem,” but assuming for others that she and the government can, first, “solve” said problem, and, second, do it by taking other people’s money?
The urgency of this moment is clear. Mortality rates of birthing people are too high, and babies born to Black and Puerto Rican mothers in this city are three times more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to non-Hispanic White birthing people.
— Dr. Michelle E. Morse (@NYCHealthCMO) March 23, 2022
If you had someone in your neighborhood who kept sending his or her friends to your house to pilfer your wallet, while telling you it was for yet another constant stream of “crises,” wouldn’t that be a problem? And even if there were a problem, and the thievery could solve it, would that excuse the theft?
So, what we have here is not only a “failure to communicate,” as the film “Cool Hand Luke” put so well, we have a failure to respect one’s neighbors’ rights to their own property.
And that lack of respect for the rights of others is manifested in the misuse – the intentional abuse – of language, in order to manipulate, confuse, and control.
Morse, who was hired in February last year as the first chief medical officer for the department, also serves as the department’s deputy commissioner for the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, which places focus on ending racial inequities.
Because, of course, collectivism always has been about gaining power over individuals by claiming to use the power of the state to “protect” the little guy – or, in this case, “birthing person.”
And, get this, when called out by Twitter users for this blatant racism-meets-foolish-wokeness, the NYC government offered an apology that made things worse, doubling-down on what they clearly want to establish as the normative absurdity of America, that men, somehow, can give birth.
As Morris notes:
A DOH spokesperson told the New York Post that Morse’s tweet was an ‘oversight’ and said ‘we apologize for inadvertently gendering Black and Puerto Rican birthing people.’
Oh, man.
Can one still say that expression, or is it, too, verboten, in this World of Woke?
P. Gardner Goldsmith writes for the Media Research Center, where this originally appeared.