The other day my good friend Chris over at www.redhogdiary.wordpress.com wrote a story about a grandfather teaching his grandson the value of the Quran. I responded to Chris that I had heard the same story 30 years earlier, but that the story had been about the Bible, not the Quran. I finished my comments with “I guess it’s more politically correct these days to spin it towards Islam than Christianity”.
Chris’s reply was “I was always a fan of political correctness anyway. I think another way to say political correctness is civility. Those who rile against political correctness often times want an excuse for rude behavior.”
Now I have known Chris for 35 years, and I love him dearly. And while Chris is a liberal and I am a conservative, we realize that we have more in common than we are different, and we (generally) respect each others opinions, even though we don’t always (or often) agree with each other.
Never before has Chris said anything that angered me or made me question whether he was losing his mind, until his “I was always a fan of political correctness anyway…” comments. Now in Chris’ statement he argues that political correctness equals civility, and if you are going to take that narrow of a view, than yeah, I agree with him. I’m actually a big fan of civility. But saying you are a fan of P.C. because you like civility is like saying you are a big fan of fascism because you really like having the trains run on time. Again, this is a narrow point of view. Political Correctness isn’t about civility, it’s about exerting power and control over others. It’s also about pure stupidity.
Lets look at a couple of examples. In his book Bias, Author Bernard Goldberg talks about a report he filed as a reporter for CBS about a hurricane in the Caribbean, where he had referred to the natives as “Black”. The brass told him to change “Black” to “African Americans.” When Goldberg reminded them that they were not African Americans, in fact they were not Anything-American, he was told it didn’t matter – change it, or the story doesn’t get on the air. So I guess it’s “civil” to take a person’s nationality away from them.
I remember another story regarding a group of nuns who worked with Mother Theresa. They had purchased an abandoned warehouse in New York City with plans to turn it into a soup kitchen and housing for the homeless. NYC Officials told the nuns that they wouldn’t be able to house the homeless, because the planned beds were on the upper floors, and they were “discriminating” against wheelchair-bound homeless. The nuns said they would handle the situation the same way they did in Calcutta: They would carry the handicapped (sorry, I mean “handicapable” – or is it “differently-abled”?....) up to the rooms. The city said no, that carrying them up the flight of stairs would be an assault on their dignity. Apparently it’s more “civil” to let them freeze in the snow.
And no, it’s not just the left that are to blame (although they have truly made it an art-form). In 2006 Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele accused a leading democratic congressman of racial insensitivity for saying that the Republican candidate “slavishly” followed the GOP. Steele, and African American running for the U.S. Senate, was reacting to remarks made by Steny Hoyer, who characterized Steele as having had “a career of slavishly supporting the Republican Party.”
You want another example? Actually, I could give you dozen’s more, but hopefully you, dear reader, “get it”.
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2 comments:
Bob I bet you could have found thousands more examples rather than dozens. But I would imagine that a broadcast producer or a city administration has deeper considerations behind their decisions than the quick at a glance failure of common sense that your examples portrayed. When I wrote that I am a fan of political correctness I had in mind the times I hear people whine about having to be politically correct while they go ahead and tell me what they really wanted to say or do in the first place. It is as if those who protest against PC the most think that by acknowledging that their comments or actions are not PC then it is okay if they do them anyway. And in my post I had already alluded to the idea that the story could have been told by the grandfather of any religion. But you had to throw a shot in anyway. I didn’t see the point of doing that. It was a beautiful story no matter who gets credit for telling it first and that was the point of my post.
The term "politically correct" traces back to Mao's "Little Red Book" and was used in Marxism to mean "party line" or "the correct line". "Nuff said...
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