Here is the article, by the way. Walloon, you’re right that it was Paglia who called Goldstein a Stalinist–my mistake there.
But the article was spurred by his debating partner (David Horowitz?) calling him “a Marxist and a Communist”:
All the references to the origin of the term I’ve seen agree it started is Maoism- where it was of course, a term of praise. The first American site seems to be Angela Davis in 1971- who also used it in a positive sense. By the late 70’s/early 80’s, though, it was being used ironically by leftwingers to make fun of their more ideaologically fanatical peers, and sometimes, themselves. (As in “I didn’t use California grapes, so the salad is politcally correct.”)
And it went from there.
All the references to the origin of the term I’ve seen agree it started is Maoism- where it was of course, a term of praise. The first American site seems to be Angela Davis in 1971- who also used it in a positive sense. By the late 70’s/early 80’s, though, it was being used ironically by leftwingers to make fun of their more ideaologically fanatical peers, and sometimes, themselves. (As in “I didn’t use California grapes, so the salad is politcally correct.”)
And it went from there.
I need one of those smilies where the head lifts up, the eyes bug out, and the hair stands up.
I have heard Ms. Coulter say this several times on the aforementioned Fox News Channel. Maybe she is disingenuous. But I find Frank’s candor refreshing, and I hate listening to Daschle, Gephardt, Boxer, etc…
Camille Paglia is an independent thinker of the first order. To me she is the opposite of PC. She is a lesbian feminist liberal with conservative tendencies. Wrap your mind around that. I think she is cool.
Thanks, betenoir - this is how I originally remember hearing it too: the equivalent of, “politically and philosophically, this person is reliable - they won’t wander off the reservation.”
I remember this very clearly from the period, that is, its use by moderate lefties to satirize the further-out folks who wouldn’t believe a bad word about the leftist geurrillas in El Salvador.
IOW, liberals were using it as a term of derision for extreme leftists well before Dinesh D’Souza played it as a liberal attack on the moral underpinnings of America.
Gadarene, as it says in the link to Paglia’s article that I provided, Goldstein’s debating partners were columnists Andrew Sullivan and Norah Vincent. Not the heterosexual David Horowitz.
Whoops. My fault. Thanks, Walloon.
(By the way, Procacious: great post.)
I like Paglia’s boldness, and she has a perchance for slicing through bull that’s extremely refreshing.
Unfortunately, the reason I can’t read a lot of her stuff is not political, but the fact that she does this irritating hyper-Fruedian reading of just about everything: basically psychoanalyzing people based on little more than a few scraps of their public personae (as is her academic specialty). What significance this approach has to the political points she’s interested in is often beyond me.
“IOW, liberals were using (political correctness) as a term of derision for extreme leftists well before Dinesh D’Souza played it as a liberal attack on the moral underpinnings of America.”
“Nor is (Ann Coulter) 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.”
Cites, anyone?
There are certainly right-wing excesses that need exposing and deriding. Trying to revive tired labels such as “politically correct” and turn them on conservatives is, however, an obvious failure tactic. Surely there are issues (campaign finance reform, excusing corporate excesses, energy policies too heavily tied to oil interests etc.) that can be profitably exploited, without using doomed rhetoric as a crutch.
Oh, and Goldstein’s column strikes me as singularly unimpressive - just another case of “So-and-so attacked me; it’s part of a horrible trend that threatens the fabric of society!!”.
Calm down, Richard, you’re really not that important. And if trite labels really bother you that much, avoid using them yourself.
—“IOW, liberals were using (political correctness) as a term of derision for extreme leftists well before Dinesh D’Souza played it as a liberal attack on the moral underpinnings of America.”—
Can’t cite this right now, but I’m pretty darn sure that the term was at first a Chinese invention (you can find it in the writings of Mao, for one), and had positive connotations. Not sure about it’s usage by U.S. leftists, or whether conservatives simply took it straight from the Communists (which would make it particularly biting since that’s what they often implied leftists were anyway, sometimes correctly)
—Cites, anyone?—
People like Sullivan, Kuasfiles, Horowitz, O’ Reily, countless Washington Post and NYPost articles: just look back in the archives for these sorts of people. Remember all the talk of “a fifth collumn?”
If not, here are some useful summaries of some examples of the tactic used in different ways by both sides of the political spectrum:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20011029.html
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20011001.html
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20010917.html
Although two of those articles mention Coulter: her star really began to shine right after the attacks.
—Trying to revive tired labels such as “politically correct” and turn them on conservatives is, however, an obvious failure tactic.—
I agree that “PC” isn’t a great term, because it becomes a stand in for a real arguement. However, it’s not entirely deficient in its conservative usage, and indeed IS a term signifying exactly this tactic. It is true that many liberals, instead of arguing against conservatives directly, simply demonized them any time they argued certain positions. Certain positions simply became verboten, especially on college campuses. This was rightly criticized. But it AS A TACTIC, certainly isn’t limited to the left.
Scroll up and read betenoir’s post.
I wrote for a lefty paper in the early 1980s and can confirm that the term “Politically Correct” was used self-mockingly by the American Left before it entered the general discourse.
Yes, I know, but “re” was asking for cites he could look at, and I don’t know of any.
Thanks for providing links, Apos.
Ignoring Ann Coulter (an excellent idea, by the way), there are two opinion pieces cited, both from the immediate days after 9/11, one (Weyrich’s) by a person with some sort of standing as a conservative pundit. I’m still not convinced that there’s been a significant trend on the right to lambaste opponents on the left as being unpatriotic or un-American, certainly not by elected officials or prominent conservative commentators. And I hope it stays that way.
—I’m still not convinced that there’s been a significant trend on the right to lambaste opponents on the left as being unpatriotic or un-American, certainly not by elected officials or prominent conservative commentators.—
Well, I can only conclude that you don’t read conservative commentators all that often. Do an experiment: skim back through the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, or the Washington Post’s over the last year.
Also note that Ashcroft’s famous lecture was directed directly at critics of his policies, and certainly questioned patriotism. There were similar statements from the Bush administration linking their policies (sometimes very tangentially) with 9/11, intimating that standing in the way of them was unpatriotic.
And it’s not quite right to ignore Coulter. She has gotten a lot of play, and a lot of positive accolades from the right. Her charges have a lot of resonance. Or do you think the reason for her #1 nonfiction bestseller status is because so many liberals are buying it for kicks?
Apos: Washington Post, or Washington Times? And good point about the unaccountable influence of Ann Coulter.
Post, I think. Whichever is owned by the good Korean Reverend.
Again, I don’t think this feature is unique to conservatives at all. 9/11 definately changed the picture tremendously, and who knows what liberal commentators would do (heck, read more Spinsanity for examples of what many liberal commentators DO do that are very much akin to quetioning patriotism and ethics) If anything, conservatives have, at least in the past, in the past been more scrupulous about this sort of thing. But this particular strain of attack on liberals is most certianly not just a fringe one (and Coulter, sad to say, is not on the fringe)
That’d be The Washington Moonie^H^H^H^H^HTimes. 
This is a point I’ve been trying to make for a long time, that is there’s nothing liberal abount ‘political correctness’. Indeed it is well-nigh synonymous with ‘conservative’ which could be defined as ‘blind adherance to the dominant ideology’, i.e. ‘the Establishment’.
Racism was once the dominant ideology (i.e. conservative), and liberals questioned it. Now, race advocacy has become established–especially on college campuses–and its adherents see racism everywhere much as Christian conservatives see Satan everywhere. So what’s a good liberal to do? Question it!
So the familiar ‘multicultural’ brand of PC isn’t liberal, but it’s sill left-wing. Leftism–as I would define it–advocates policies designed to remedy perceived inequities. Not quite the same thing as liberalism, although the two often go hand-in-glove, especially in the '60’s, but less so today. Affirmative-action is left-wing, color blindness is liberal.
So one kind of PC, such as post-9/11 patriotism or the reaction to removing ‘under God’ from the PoA, is plain old right-wing conservatism, the other kind is a new form of left-wing conservatism.
Apos, I’m afraid I just don’t recall significant questioning of liberals’ patriotism by conservative commentators in the past year or so (I don’t read the Wall Street Journal much, so if you have examples from it or other sources, please enlighten us).
On the other hand, Michael Moore is #3 on the Times bestseller list (and has been on it longer than Coulter). I (and a lot of people on this board) don’t take him very seriously either. They both appear to be sloppy, self-aggrandizing yammerers who function mainly for entertainment value (and to gratify extremists on both sides who can then point fingers and say "See, that’s what my opponents are really like!!).