JEANS
Sydney Sweeney deadpanned, "My jeans are blue" as part of an American Eagle ad campaign titled "Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans," and progressive watchdogs responded as if she'd quoted Mein Kampf. A playful (if obvious) pun became, in their fevered imagination, a coded appeal to eugenics and white supremacy. The rest of us just blinked. When ordinary language is recast as hate speech, it isn't the denim that's frayed — it's the critics' grip on reality.
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PENNY
For years, earnest voices pointed out that each one-cent coin cost several cents to produce — a fact that mattered about as much as the penny itself. The real reason the US Mint finally stopped making them is that they had become irrelevant. When most people wouldn't even stoop to pick up a penny from the sidewalk, what clearer proof could there be that its time had come and — after more than 230 years — gone?
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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