ICYMI: UNLV Law School Apologizes for Organizing “Picnic” Due to Word’s Offensive Connotations

On this week’s episode of “The War on Words…”

I’d bet all my money on the probability that I could make this a daily feature, but… I hate that this is even an issue, so… I won’t be subjecting myself (or you) to that.

From The College Fix:

A scheduled “picnic” sponsored by the University of Nevada Las Vegas law school’s Environmental Law Society has been renamed “Lunch by the Lake” due to “diversity and inclusion” concerns.

According to a memo obtained by Libs of TikTok, the law group informed members that the word “picnic” has “historical and offensive connotations,” and apologized for “any harm or discomfort” caused by its use.

The group’s view mirrors that of the University of Michigan’s IT department from several years ago: “Picnic” was included in a “Words Matter Task Force’s” list of offensive words and phrases along with “brown bag,” “blacklist” and “long time, no see” among others.

At the time, Reuters did a fact check on the alleged offensiveness of “picnic”; its verdict: It “does not originate from racist lynchings” but instead comes from the 300-plus-year-old French word “pique-nique,” meaning a potluck-like social gathering.

Still, Reuters claimed 19th and 20th-century lynchings of black Americans “often occurred in gatherings that could be referred to as picnics.” But a PolitiFact article noted the term historians actually use is “spectacle lynchings” — where people “took photographs and looked for souvenirs.”

Ferris State University’s David Pilgrim, curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, said “it’s possible someone used the word ‘picnic’ to refer to lynchings, but ‘what we know for a fact is that’s not where the word ‘picnic’ came from.’”

The icing on the cake here is that this has been both fact-checked and debunked. Now people can’t even pander correctly. How embarrassing…

You know you’re really running out of things to complain about when you’re inventing problems where there are none. These are future lawyers for crying out loud… what are they gonna do when they’re confronted in the courtroom with facts they don’t like? Fold like a cheap futon and start crying? Sounds like I would quickly be hiring a new lawyer…

I can only hope that these kids will be in for a rude awakening, but I’m honestly not counting on that. Unfortunately, it seems like they’ll be perfectly prepared for the new emotionally-padded walls of the future.