From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Mar 02 2002 - 05:48:16 MST
At 07:36 PM 3/1/02 -0800, "Michael M. Butler" wrote of my following comment
on the tedious general purpose anathema `politically correct':
>> The trouble is, as we've all discussed previously, there are different ways
>> of reading that phrase. Most here seem to find it quite transparently
>> acceptable: a scornful way to characterize mealy-mouthed euphemism, masked
>> special interests, Nanny Statism, etc. I, like many non-Americans, read it
>> as a code for annoyance at any disruption of the privileges of the status
>> quo.
>I invite you to check your code. [...]
>A few people (with a slightly longer memory than you seem to have handy)
>remember the first users of the phrase, and know that in Mao's China, being
>labeled "Politically Incorrect" meant
< unspeakable horrors and no supper >
Yeah, yeah, I was there in the anti-Vietnam trenches, comrade, watching
with sardonic amusement. (The Maoist thoughtcrime charge was, however,
`*ideologically* incorrect'.) That was then, however, this is now. The way
the accusation of `PC' is used today by the right, as a universal solvent
against egalitarian ideas as well as purse-mouthed claptrap, can be
illustrated, perhaps, by the following small snippet from a Texan humorist
writing about the proposed Ron Howard/John Sayles Alamo movie:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:ufDdHTq3kiMC:www.texasmonthly.com/mag/i
ssues/2002-02-01/feature3.php+san+marcos+texas+movie&hl=en
>More recently, other groups have protested naming public
>schools after Travis (because he championed slavery and abandoned his wife
>and child) or Bowie (because he was a slave smuggler). In a politically
>correct age, the heroes of the Alamo are apt to come off as a bit unsavory.
Ah yes, if only we could go back to the good old days before this odious
and holier-than-thou `political correctness', when a man was a man and
didn't have to flinch at slavery and abandoning your wife and child, the
useless baggages.
Now of course that paragraph of mine is absurdly humorless. Actually what
Don Graham was saying is: we live in mendaciously squeaky-clean times, when
the truth about the crappy values that infected our past heroes can't be
admitted. Therefore the film treatment will surely be sanitized, for
otherwise the powerful and ubiquitous bleeding heart liberals, gays,
blacks, Mexicans and Muslim terrorists will claim that the film makers are
*advocating* such behavior, rather than simply reporting how things used to
be. (I'm not sure how to work the public schools into that exoneration, but
let's all boo and hiss at them anyway. I went to horrible privately funded
working class Catholic schools, so I'll boo and hiss at those instead.)
For all that, I still think there's a hidden barb in most such uses of the
phrase `PC' (even if, usually, an unconscious subtextual one), implying
that hey, things weren't *really* so bad before the bitches and the uppity
took over the sidewalk.
PLEASE NOTE WELL: I *don't* mean to imply that this subtext is intended by
anyone here (well, hardly anyone), especially not Michael, who's a fine
fellow with an intellect as keen as anyone in the room (well, almost anyone).
Damien Broderick
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