In the first six words of her column, Linda Chavez states that she believes that it is important to remain polite when speaking out in public. She brings up "bellicose" metaphors, or metaphors that have to do with war, because these phrases, such as "campaign," "rounds," and "took his best shot," all have to do with war and yet they are being used to describe politics.
She's making the point that we take these words and turn them into something else. Chavez is trying to say that we should think before we speak, but our choice of words doesn't have to be boring. She says that the words themselves don't really matter; it's the meaning behind them that counts. She uses words like "Indian" and "Native American" or "ghetto" and "urban" as examples. Linda Chavez also brings up the new edition of "Huckleberry Finn," where they replaced "nigger" with slave. Her best example was explaining the words "gay" and "queer." These words used to have different definitions than what we think of them as today. "Gay" meant happy and "queer" just meant odd or peculiar. Now they refer to "sexual orientation" and homosexuals.
I agree, because people today are so afraid of offending someone else because of a word they use. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but people blow it way out of proportion, such as the "nigger" and "slave" switch in Huckleberry Finn.
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