A recent suggestion coming out of Stanford includes replacing offensive words with better ones.

On the list is the suggestion that using “Karen” be replaced with “demanding or entitled white woman.”

Ordinarily I cringe at how the name substitution exercise goes to far sometime.

But while I don’t like the Karen suggestion, I oppose long deadening substitutions, it does point out

how wrong I think it is to use “Karen” in these cases.

It is a perfectly ok name. To stereotype anyone for doing bad things based on a given name is wrong. I’ve said before

if you did this to disparage a person of ethnicity and attribute to them bad behavior you would be skinned alive and you should be.

I just don’t understand why this should be the one situation where a given name is allowed to become a horrible negative and even a punchline.

It isn’t fair to people named Karen. It is lazy journalism.

I don’t have anyone close to me named Karen but if I did it would bug the hell out of me.