Spanish views from a small town

Watching the French president and his wife greet the Trumps this week, and the completely irrelevant and insulting remarks Trump offered ("She's in such good physical shape." Really? Did you expect her to be flabby and sagging and fat just because she's closer in age to you than to Melania?), I thought about how different the consort of a leader is treated according to the country and the leader.  To begin, the only consort that seems to grab much media attention, internationally at least, is the American First Lady. Since Eleanor Roosevelt, if not earlier, each dedicates herself to one cause or another and becomes its most public advocate. I suppose that having seen Michelle Obama in such a public fight against childhood obesity, it is strange to see that Melania doesn't want to go public on anything. It was mentioned back in January or so that she would take up the cause against bullying. At least that's what I think she was supposed to espouse, though man...

For the past twenty years, or more, political correctness has infiltrated speech, and terms once simple have now become awkward landmines. Titles like chairman, mailman, fireman, steward or stewardess have now become chairperson, mail carrier, firefighter, or flight attendant. All of this has presumably been done to reflect the entry of women into almost every job and thereby their equality in the workplace, and to avoid sexism.  In Spanish it's not just the terms that have been changed, it's the grammar. I'm sure most who have studied Spanish have learned that everything has gender, and that when there is a group of something with different genders, such as people, the group is referred to in the masculine. Yes, it's sexist because it gives primacy to the masculine gender, but it's also an attempt to simplify language. And political correctness here can lead to chunky phrases that detract from the message the speaker is trying to convey. Granted that that is expe...