Call people what you want. If you want them to respect you and respond to you in a pleasant and articulate way, you might want to refer to them in the way they prefer, no? QED as far as I can see. Me, I'm done with histrionic allegedly-young-adult attention whores who resort to name calling on a far too regular basis (
for the slooooow...), and
their cheerleading squad. The rest, I think, have valid points on both side of the argument, and have presented them fairly eloquently. I particularly liked Infi's black comparison, it may not be 100% allegoriacal -who knows- but it was thoughtful and well presented imho.