"Political Correctness, Run Amok - Now It's Fireplaces"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Political Correctness, Run Amok – Now It’s Fireplaces”

January 21, 2011

While I expect a firestorm of abuse from many of my liberal friends, there just are too many intelligent, cultured, wealthy Americans with too much time on their hands. These people tend to reside on the two coasts and they are characterized, outside of having ample idle time, as patronizing and disdainful of the masses who disagree with them – expressing their opinions in a manner I find especially offensive.

What causes this outburst was an article in – you guessed it – yesterday’s New York Times. The piece, “A Love Affair Cools”, graced the front page of the “Home” section and dealt with the idea that wood burning fireplaces have become hazardous to our health. Forget smoking or second hand smoke. Forget the poor guy in New York being sued for smoking cigars in his own apartment, arguing that a man’s home is no longer his castle – that the moat has been breached by the long reach of the government, ably assisted by supercilious citizens who know better than we what is good for us. Nirvana, for these people, will be reached when the individual is subsumed into a politically correct puppet.

The article suggests that wood burning fireplaces are “a direct pollutant to you and your family,” a “use of a natural resource that otherwise could have been spared.” Wood smoke contains carcinogens and is “very irritating.” One woman, a Karen Soucy, who I wish were my neighbor, refuses to enter a home “when wood has been burned, even infrequently.” Robert Frost wrote that fences make good neighbors. He likely never envisioned that fireplaces could prove equally effective in keeping annoying neighbors away from one’s hearth.

Another idiotic online magazine, The DailyGreen.com, has concluded that all wood burning fireplaces be replaced with electric ones – an idea, should it come to pass, that would warm the hearts (and fatten the pocketbooks) of the coal companies, as they produce about 50% of all electricity generated in the United States.

Perhaps I get carried away, but I grew up in New Hampshire in a house without central heat. Wood heated the downstairs – wood stoves in the kitchen and dining room, with a fireplace in the living room. I have three wood burning fireplaces in my home in Connecticut and one in my apartment in New York. It is one of man’s great luxuries to sit before a blazing fire, drink in hand, contemplating what irritant the wunderkinds of political correctness will dream up next.

However, snow willing, I am off to Florida for a few days; so it will be a week or so before I invite Ms. Soucy over for toasted marshmallows.