I'm making a rule. From now on, if you say “politically correct” or “politically incorrect,” you're an idiot. If you used the terms before – if, maybe, you named your TV show after them – that's okay. That's before I made the rule. But after this, we're classifying these phrases among the nonsensical, along with, “Two plus two is five,” and, “With the election over, our nation is beginning to heal.”

“Politically correct” has been bleached of all meaning after years of being applied arbitrarily to anything irritating or confining. You know – as with, “All those politically correct people who voted for Pat Buchanan and sided with the Prussians.” And, “Those p.c. creeps who built the Erie Canal and egged my car. P.C.ers, like Jimmy Buffet, Anne Frank and Galileo.”

“Politically correct” actually had a specific definition when I first heard it 14 years ago. This was in Berkeley, where the term as well as what it signified was packaged and shipped out to the world in 15-gallon tubs. Basically, it referred to all the changes in language and taste that reflected the rise in feminist and racial sensitivities – a well-intentioned if condescending effort to acknowledge other people's existence.

Its lasting impact shows up in your local newspaper, whenever “Assemblymen” is replaced with “Assembly members,” “chairman” is replaced with “chair,” and “Pulitzer Prize” is replaced with “Oprah Book Club selection.” But the more awkward attempts have failed, such as “personhole covers,” “herstory,” or the short-lived curiosity, “s/he.”

And overall, it's had little effect on our routine conversations. Men in private still talk about the same parts of the female anatomy they always have … the eyes and hair, of course. People still make racial snipes. And right now the raging fad is in fact to call yourself “politically incorrect” – meaning, from what I can tell, nothing in particular.

But people are blaming political correctness for everything. In a recent stand-out from the Courier-Post's letters to the editor, the term was applied to (are you sitting down for this?) the Supreme Court's recent decision favoring George W. Bush in the Florida recount dispute.

That's right, Justice Anton Scalia is politically correct. As were the people opposed to him, according to another letter. In still yet other letters and articles, “politically correct” has been applied to any kind of literary and historical censorship, some guy's ex-wife's divorce lawyer (I'm not kidding), anything vaguely liberal, several things ultra-conservative and virtually any movie in which black people don't shoot each other over bad crack deals. In one rather curious news quote, it was even used for justifying the dumping of garbage in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, politically incorrect phenomena have included violent video games, virtually anything sexual and, the king, John Rocker.

Sure, sometimes these terms have been applied with their original meaning. But in which cases?

Video games? Parents in the politically incorrect 1950s wouldn't have wanted their kids to see that stuff either, and wouldn't have believed the graphic violence that Wally and the Beaver would be swapping on disc with Eddie and Lumpy.

“Gee, Wally. That guy's head splattered like an over-ripe melon.”

“It sure did, Beav.”

Sex? Americans have always been squeamish about that, though perhaps I have that impression because my only pick-up line is to pull out a carton of milk and ask, “Does this smell bad?”

John Rocker? Perhaps. But he might be more precisely described as a giant piece of lunch meat that can pitch well.

In fact, most of the things to which these terms are applied could be described more precisely in other ways. People often say “politically correct” when they mean politically expedient or advantageous. Censorship, no matter who is doing it, is best described by using the word “censorship,” and another kind of rhetorical circumvention could be covered by the new, hand-dandy phrase, “weak-kneed about mentioning race.”

Beyond that, if you make generalizations about all people of another ethnicity, you're not “politically incorrect,” you're a racist. If you spend a disproportionate amount of time portraying your own ethnic group as a victim, you are neither politically incorrect nor correct. You're a whiner.

So we're storing “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” where they'll serve as curios from a bygone era, to be taken down when – for ironic literary effect – we need to sound like total morons. High on a shelf they'll go, in a forgotten corner, next to “commie,” “witch” and “dysfunctional.”

Oh yeah. You're not allowed to say “dysfunctional” anymore either.