Look South Column
How to be a politically-correct slacker
If there is one thing I hate, it is chain emails, or chain letters, as they used to be known before the advent of computers. Most of you are familiar with them. You receive an unsolicited email or letter promising to make a wish come true, or prevent you from suffering some nasty fate, such as the sky falling on your head, if you forward the said correspondence to 50 people within six minutes. There are many reasons to despise such letters; notably, they are a waste of time and a sure way to lose friends, if you forward them. But more than anything, it is the emotional manipulation at the core of them that is sometimes steeped in political correctness that bothers me most. Take, for example, one such email I received recently. It went something like this: a poor boy is starving in Africa — he has no family, livestock or limbs, and each time you forward this email, Bill Gates will personally give the boy $1 and good luck will shine on you all your days. If you do not forward this letter, you will be struck down with some horrible disease, just like Joe, from Kansas, who was diagnosed with bubonic plague only hours after refusing to send this letter on. Worse still, the limbless boy, who has no chickens to call his own and is a victim of capitalism, will surely die.
