Global Language Monitor, a nonprofit group that studies word usage, has chosen "macaca" as the most politically incorrect word of 2006, followed by "Global Warming Denier." "There are now proposals that ‘global warming deniers’ be treated the same as 'Holocaust deniers’: professional ostracism, belittlement, ridicule and, even, jail," the group's president, Paul JJ Payack, tells Reuters.

Just as African-Americans take offense at equating the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to today’s gay marriage rights campaign, The Stiletto takes strong exception to equating global warming with holocaust denial or genocide denial.

The scientific evidence for global warming is in flux, with competing studies and computer models arguing the case on one side of the issue or the other. In contrast, the Jewish holocaust and the Armenian genocide are established historical fact.

There is no equivalency between someone who is properly skeptical about the highly speculative data on global warming and someone who is delusional or despicable enough to disbelieve or deny the well-documented mass murders of millions of human beings.

To equate the two trivializes the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazi Germans and the Ottoman Turks – who provided the "inspiration" for Hitler’s Final Solution by very nearly succeeding in the annihilation of the Armenian people.

EU Holds Turkey At Arms’ Length In Accession Talks

With Bulgaria and Romania joining European Union on January 1^st as the 26th and 27th members, EU leaders decided to hold the line on future expansion for the foreseeable future at a summit in Brussels last week addressing the pace at which the bloc should admit new members.

The main stumbling block to further growth is the EU constitution, which is no closer to unanimous ratification by member nations – in 2005, it was roundly rejected by Dutch and French voters – and cannot take effect. Germany has pledged to make the constitutional crisis its top priority when it assumes the EU presidency for a six-month term that begins January 1^st.

In a related development, the EU also determined that Turkey has not made sufficient progress in meeting membership requirements and unanimously endorsed the partial suspension of accession talks, putting a freeze on eight of the 35 policy chapters that Turkey must negotiate successfully before being permitted to join.

The action was taken because of Ankara's refusal to normalize trade relations with Cyprus by opening all of its ports and airports to the EU member, as per the terms of the Ankara Protocol, signed in 1961.

In taking the step to partially suspend accession talks, the EU reiterated that Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and other candidates must fully comply with the bloc’s criteria for admission. EU-watchers interpret this as a signal that after granting membership to 10 new members – eight of them from Eastern Europe - other countries waiting in the wings will find a longer, more winding road leading to the EU’s door.

A recent article by The Associated Press gives a particularly cogent analysis of why Turkey’s admittance to the EU has always been a long shot:

As European as Turkey fancies itself, it is still a country in which a crew of Turkish Airlines mechanics sacrificed a camel on the tarmac of Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport. By custom, Turks celebrate good fortune by sacrificing animals as an offering to G-d. Complying with EU demands, Turkey introduced fines for people who slaughter animals in this manner. The airline’s chief mechanic, Sukru Can, was canned for green-lighting the barbaric ritual.

The Seven Words That You Can Say On TV

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York granted a request from C-SPAN to televise oral arguments in a TV industry challenge to the FCC's ruling in March that Fox’s broadcast of the Billboard Awards, in which Cher and Nicole Richie uttered the profanities "f**k" and "sh**," were indecent by contemporary community standards. "No cable or broadcast news operation has yet asked C-SPAN for a pool feed of the December 20^th arguments," reports Broadcasting & Cable. "[L]ook for the cable news nets and perhaps even the broadcasters, all of the latter have a dog in the fight, to run with it as well."

Maybe the community the FCC is thinking of is Mayberry, circa 1965. The Stiletto has heard mothers screaming these very words at their misbehaving children; fathers yelling them at motorists – along with profane hand gestures for added punctuation – heedless of the example they are setting for their children in the back seat; and children themselves, using them in casual conversation with the same frequency as "um."

Someone should inform the FCC that community standards have already gone to heck in a hand-basket. The Stiletto applauds the FCC’s valiant, if anachronistic, attempts to stop contemporary society’s free fall into coarseness, incivility and vulgarity. But the agency needs to come up with a regulatory justification for its indecency rulings that fits the times and holds up in court.