Hello from Engage.
I often notice, not only in the media but around family, friends and strangers, the pejorative use of the terms of mental illness – people use ‘crazy’ to mean ‘bad’ all the time. “You drove drunk? You must be insane!” “She stole all the money even though she knew she’d be caught – crazy!” “The only reason you would kill a person is if you were mad.”
Bad things are often crazy. Crazy things are rarely bad. I have read some fine pieces encouraging the use of phrases such as “crazy good” and “mad fun”, and I love these phrases and want to hear them more. The comparison I want to make briefly here though is to the use of the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘bad’, which is appropriately frowned upon. People seem to understand now that using the denomination of a group of people as a catchword for the negative is just not on. So I hope it may go for ‘crazy’ some day.
If somebody uses crazy to mean bad, call them out on it. Say to them, “Being bad may be crazy, but being crazy isn’t bad.”
Daniel Larsen-Barr
