In this week’s issue of The Village Voice, author Richard Goldstein writes that rather than being associated solely with hyper-liberal sensitivity, in practice “[p]olitical correctness ought to describe blind adherence to the dominant ideology.”
I think he’s got a good point.
Agree? Disagree? Questions, comments, concerns?
I think the term “political correctness” has lost all value in serious discourse. It has come to mean, “That silly position that my adversay has articulated.”
It was about a year ago that Bill Maher declared, to one of the Fox News pundettes he had on, “Politically incorrect is not the same as conservative.”
** David Simmons ** is correct, though, about the state of the term today. It would have been nice if a lefty had decided to point this out back when the term had some meaning.
In some circles it means the speaker is a whiny bitch who lacks a spine. That is to say that they are overly sensitive and more worried about being righteous then about taking context into consideration. SDMB don’t seem to be one of them circles, however.
DaLovin’ Dj
Goldstein’s attempt to appropriate his opponents’ terminology comes at least a decade too late. The phrase has become entrenched in the political landscape, like it or not. Hackneyed and misapplied though it often is, it apparently still carries some sting, or the Village Voice would not be flailing away at it after all these years.
He’d be better served coming up with his own barbs to attack his foes.
Or contributing some original reporting or biting commentary on the issues, in lieu of labels.
Well, he was specifically talking about reflexive post-9/11 nationalism, so it’s not like he was just dragging out an old horse for a good beating.
A “politically correct” opinion is simply the opinion that offends the smallest percentage of people. Politically correct opinions vary depending on what group of people you are trying to avoid offending (e.g. the American politically correct opinion on an issue can differ from the World politically correct opinion on an issue). If all of someone’s opinions are politically correct, then they may indeed be blindly adhering to the dominant ideology, but if only some of a person’s opinions are politically correct, they may simply happen to agree with that position. (I should point out that it is hypothetically possible that all of a person’s opinions would be politically correct even if they came up with each one on their own. However, the odds of such an event happening are quite small and so it is likely that anyone that has only PC opinions is just blindly adhering or lying to get votes/avoid confrontation). The primary problem with the term is that some people just assume that anyone that has the PC opinion on the issue at hand must have no mind of his/her own (granted this position usually comes up when the PC opinion goes against the assumer’s own opinion, which is what David Simmons pointed out). The term still has value as long as people do not assume anything about the person that holds a PC opinion. To be a politically correct person, you must blindly adhere to the dominant ideology, but to have PC opinions on certain issues just means that sometimes you happen to have the least offensive opinion possible.
Huh? Appropriate? “Political correctness” was originally a leftie term of self-criticism. His opponents appropraited it first.
Maybe they’d be better served coming up with their own barbs…
Anyway I can’t think why the idea behind it couldn’t be applied to any idealogy.
Political correctness depends on what sphere you are in. If you are trying to get ahead in academia, there is a certain set of PC. If you are trying to get ahead in journalism, there is another set of PC. If you are trying to get ahead in party politics, each party has its own set of PC. Ethnic and sexual minorities have their own sets of PC.
Richard Goldstein has not given a good reason why “[p]olitical correctness ought to describe blind adherence to the dominant ideology.” He’s trying to use slight of hand to distract the audience. What do you call blind adherence to a non-dominant ideology? Goldsteinism?
Ironically, the best definition I ever heard of political correctness came from the religious right’s favorite whipping boy, Barney Frank.
Frank once railed that the Democratic Party was losing its grip on working class Americans because the Party had too long a list of “Things you’re not suposed to say.”
As Frank put it, in liberal circles, “you’re not supposed to say that most people in prison are bad people who belong there. You’re not supposed to say that Communism has been a failure.” Not that those things aren’t true, but in liberal circles, it’s somehow impolite or uncouth to say them. Frank was concerned that Democrats were handing important issues to the far right without a fight, because they were worried about offending certain pressure groups’ delicate sensitivities.
“Political correctness,” as it’s come to be known, refers simply to codification of “things you’re not supposed to say.” This kind of codification has been most common on college campuses, where expressing conservative opinions can not only make you a pariah but can actually get you suspended or expelled.
I haven’t read the Village Voice piece in question, but I think I can guess what it says. It probably says something to the effect that it’s perfectly okay for “powerless” groups to be cruel and obnoxious in attacking “the powerful,” but that it’s unfair for “the powerful” to abuse “the powerless.”
I’ve read and heard variations on this argument many times. It generally boils down to, “Rush Limbaugh and John Tower support the rich and powerful, while Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore represent the downtrodden. Therefore, it’s perfectly okay to call Rush Limbaugh a fat slob and John Tower a womanizing lush… but if conservatives call Ted Kennedy a womanizing lush, or if they call Michael Moore a fat, ugly slob, that’s mean-spirited, and mustn’t be allowed.”
Conveniently, the people who espouse this line of thinking always identify THEMSELVES with “the powerless” and their adversaries as “the powerful.”
I was with you (or, at least, not against you) up to this point. I don’t know any self-identified liberals would would fail to characterize Kennedy as a womanizing lush or Moore as a fat, ugly slob. (I may not know enough liberals, of course, but the ones I know are quite aware of the images that Kennedy and Moore present.)
Not at all. The article was generally about Red-baiting in a post-Soviet world and, as I alluded to, invoked political correctness in the context of what Goldstein perceives to be pervasive and reflexive American nationalism in the wake of 9/11 (cf Coulter, Ann: “liberals hate America”). That is, it is not “politically correct” (in Goldstein’s usage of the word) to criticize a president or, indeed, our country in the time of war (something that’s generally been true in the last century or so), it’s not “politically correct” to say, as Bill Maher did, that the terrorists in the planes were in some way “courageous”, etc.
No mention whatsoever of the powerless attacking the powerful, or of a double standard that exists for Democrats and not Republicans.
It’d be nice to see some documentation of this originally having been a term in widespread use among leftists. Having the left jump on the term “political correctness” now, after so many years of it serving as a staple of right-wing critics, carries the same lack of legitimacy as when right-wing pundits accuse the Left of “racism” (i.e. in the debate about school vouchers).
I don’t recall “P.C.” being a label affixed to left-wingers in the wake of 9/11. Perhaps there are ready examples that can be cited.
A major problem with the O.P. is defining the “dominant ideology” that is supposed to be hung with the P.C. label. Goldstein apparently thinks the party/ideology that is in power in the White House is the “dominant” one. Does he and his backers really think that the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft ideology is the dominant set of beliefs held by Americans?
If there are no further terrorist attacks in the U.S. before the November elections, Democrats are likely to score big gains. Will they then become the “dominant ideology” and an appropriate target for the P.C. label? Will the term be served back and forth according to who’s in power, like a shuttlecock in a badminton game?
Rather than flailing around at this late date about being stuck with the label of political correctness, the American Left should be busy rededicating itself to the principles of individual free speech rights and political diversity, for which it fought so tenaciously during much of the twentieth century. This means not only battling Ashcroftian attempts to demonize the political opposition, but remaining vigilant against internal attempts to stifle dissent.
You misunderstand. Note the examples in my post.
No, he doesn’t think either of those things, as far as I can tell. (His “backers”?) It’s my understanding from the article that the dominant ideology to which he refers is neither conservative nor liberal, but rather–as I’ve said–reflexively nationalistic. It’s true that the immediate impetus for the article appears to have been Goldstein’s being called “Stalinist” by a right-winger with whom he was debating, but both liberals and conservatives alike have been prone to throw around labels like “unpatriotic” and"un-American" to viewpoints which dissent from mainstream sensibility.
Where you go wrong, I think, Jack, is in viewing this “dominant ideology” business as top-down, rather than as reflective of the sort of over-arching cultural weltanschaaung of the moment.
Oh, and…
Perhaps, yes. I think that was partly Goldstein’s point.
Um, yeah.
Except that critiquing “reflexive nationalism” is not going to delude anyone into thinking that both liberals and conservatives are being blamed. It seems obvious that right-wingers are Goldstein’s target (perhaps it would be crystal clear if we had a link to the article, as all sorts of interpretations are being tossed about). I can’t think of any examples offhand of liberals calling opponents “unpatriotic” or “un-American” (not that there’s been much of that from the right lately, either) and the Left tends to be uneasy about fervent patriotic expression (sometimes with good reason).**
You do go on. 
Perhaps the verisimilitude of your remarks would be enhanced by a few illuminating quotes from Goldstein’s article.
*I suspect that citing Ann Coulter’s frothings about liberals hating America as representing a common conservative mindset is like suggesting that Al Sharpton speaks for the Left.
FYI Ann Coulter will be on Booknotes with Brian Lamb this Sunday on C-Span.
—Except that critiquing “reflexive nationalism” is not going to delude anyone into thinking that both liberals and conservatives are being blamed.—
Well, things have shifted now that power has shifted, and will probably shift back if it shifts again. Several years ago, when republicans wouldn’t confirm Clinton’s liberal judges, the democrats dishonestly accused them of being scared of their ethnicity (maybe it was true, maybe not, but there was no evidence, and every reason to think it was their politics that were scary, not their race). Now the Republicans are making the exact same accusations about the Democrat’s refusal to approve conservative judges who happen to be minorities (dishonest for the same reason).
It would be nothing less than dishonesty to suggest that the Democrats were playing the “political correctness” card in the first instance, but that the Republicans were not in the second.
—I suspect that citing Ann Coulter’s frothings about liberals hating America as representing a common conservative mindset is like suggesting that Al Sharpton speaks for the Left.—
Except no one invites Al Sharpton onto every single lefty news program (are there any serious mainstream ones even in existence?), pitches him softball questions, compliments him on his great work exposing racists, then laughs along with him about his characterizations of conservatives as sub-humans.
She’s been a pleasant staple on FoxNews, and is treated as if her book is just as credible and damning as “Bias.” Nor is she an isolated case: just a brief dip into conservative Blogistan and conservative editorial pages will net you exactly the same sorts of inferences about liberals in regards to 9/11.
But even the Village Voice rarely ever has much good to say about Sharpton. Except to a small cadre of supporters, he’s a joke. You might have more of a case with Moore, though at least Moore couches his rantings with the qualifier that they are also comedy and satire (pretty lousy comedy though).
The person who called Richard Goldstein a Stalinist was not at the debate, but commenting on the debate: Camille Paglia. She is hardly a registered Democrat who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, hardly a right-winger.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1975
Scratch that first “hardly” in my last post above.