“Political correctness”, at least as it is often understood by the right, is known in some circles as “not being an asshole”.
Really? Wonderful if true, but I’m afraid that horse is out of the barn.
Plain old whiteboards are so 80s 
The new ones are (or at least should be) interactive whiteboards.
That’s pretty much how I feel about it. I always thought “politically correct” originally meant that you had some empathy for other people as individuals and took care not to insult or demean people carelessly. Now, unfortunately, it’s used to signify a sort of bizarre overcompensation, where you twist yourself into a rhetorical pretzel to avoid any conceivable offense.
My experience is that people who whine and complain about “political correctness” want to be able to be assholes and not get called on it. They’d like to be able say “Hey, nice tits” to a female coworker with no repercussions at all. Well, we live in a free society, and that includes the freedom to be an asshole, but it doesn’t mean you get to be an asshole with impunity.
If you don’t believe in the Bible, what in tarnation are you doing in a fundamentalist church Bible study group?
In the snippet of JohnnyEnigma’s post you quoted, he was referencing what I said about the people I knew in college who weren’t only labeling language as “politically correct,” but who were actually labeling political opinons or stances as “politically correct.” That is, whatever the current leftist agenda was, that was the side that was “correct,” and if you disagreed with any of it, you were “incorrect.” I think that this is what JohnnyEnigma was saying was oppressive. And…it was.
Parents?
Girlfriend?
What on earth does a non-believer attending a “Bible study group” have to do with being “PC”?
It might be rude, but it doesn’t come under the commonly-held definition of “left-wing whining”. Nor does the Bill Maher thing, surely.
So, it is just the leftist version of what the rightists do with false appeals to a limited and coercive form of patriotism for which we do not have a catchy name, (although in some limited applications, McCarthyism serves that purpose).
I disagree that JohnnyEnigma was responding to your statement, however. Prior to this thread he had posted his own thread making the same claim, but expressed in terms so vaguely stated that it could not even support itself as a thread. If that is what he intended, he seriously needs to work on the clarity and precision of his language.
I think that political correctness is more than just beating up on people who use language that’s insensitive or offensive. It also includes castigating those who express views that are insensitive or offensive.
Political Correctness has it’s roots in communist ideology, and referred to following the “party line”. In soviet nations, failure to be politically “correct” would get you sent to a Gulag, if not taken out back and given a severe case of lead poisoning.
While a couple posters here have tried to claim that all stories regarding political correctness are rare anecdotes, or outright cases of fraud, it is not. Such things as the laying out codes of speech which are acceptable, and which are not, is political correctness… and in fact has roots that are traceable to Orwells 1984. Orwell spoke of political correctness when he described “Newspeak”… a manner of controlling thinking by controlling the words which are acceptable.
An example of Orwellian Newspeak are the words “gay” and “homophobe”. In the first instance, a politically correct term is used in substitution to more common terms of the time, in order to change peoples attitudes about the act. In the second instance, “homophobe” is applied to all who do not care for homosexuality, in an attempt to stifle all speech by those who are opposed to homosexuality by labelling all who oppose homosexuality as suffering from an irrational fear bordering on psychosis. In these examples, political correctness is being used as a vehicle for making the perverse seem normal, and the normal seem mentally ill.
Over the years, blacks in America have utilized political correctness in order to change perceptions about them. First they did not like being called “negro” and the new politically correct term became “colored”. Eventually, “colored” became, at least in the minds of blacks, a dirty word, and they then changed the name to “afro-american”. Since then we have seen a host of changes… some of which seem to be a step backwards… such as “people of color”, and “african-american”, and finally “black” (which is, ironically, all that the spanish word “negro” means… black). This label game has come full circle.
In the middle ages, when travel was extremely dangerous and one was likely to have his throat cut by the keeper of the Inn in which you were sleeping, people who lived in villages or villes were known as “villians”. However, their own actions as cutthroats and thieves caused the term villian to change to villain (note the switching of the a and i), and the meaning to change with it.
If you have a group of people who are decent, hardworking, and honest people… and they are named “assholes”, then in a generation or two, assholes will become a name everyone wants to be called. The flipside is that if you have a bunch of theives and crooks, and name them “saints”… soon, saints will become an epithet.
In spite of political correct attempts, labels do not define a people… people, thru their actions, define their label.
OR as a means of stiffling speech of those who disagree with a particular political agenda.
But oddly enough, the same side that usually defends political correctness as “not being an asshole” is against attempts to “legislate morality,” or even peer-pressure people into it.
I have never heard the term “previously owned” being described as an example of political correctness by the right or the left.
Ever heard the term “limousene liberals” ?
You have your righty stereotype all wrong. Now had you suggested that righties are more likely to buy pickups, I might agree with you.
If you’ve got the balls to say “I don’t believe in the Bible” at the study group, you’ve got the balls to tell your parents or girlfriend you don’t belong in the study group.
The famously ridiculous examples are probably all like that - here’s one example about a nursery rhyme where, as you rightly say, the change was proposed by some well-meaning but overzealous dunce, and was fairly quickly overturned or dismissed.
It may be, though, that there’s a lower level of PC-ness that does persist, but doesn’t make such juicy news - but I’m not sure how to identify it if it is there - we could point to things like the Benny Hill Show, or the Black and White Minstrels, and tut that they’d never get away with that nowadays, but actually, there are still things like that around, and the elements of them that really have become unacceptable have not really done so on arbitrary grounds.
And quite right too - it is a term of abuse in the UK.
I don’t see the legitimacy in comparing a progressive approach to language to the mind-control of a totalitarian state. For example, replacing the words ‘Policeman’, ‘Chairman’ and ‘Fireman’ with ‘Police Officer’, ‘Chair’ and ‘Firefighter’ is not only a gender-neutral option which doesn’t implicitly suggest these are male roles, but is actually a more *truthful * use of language, as the reality is that there are both men and women in these roles.
And the same people who bitch about PC language have absolutely no problem with Orwellian phrases like ‘collateral damage’.
A progressive approach to language? Who is to dictate what sort of language is going to be used and what is unacceptable? I find it amusing that a step BACKWARDS, to the days when you were not allowed to say certain things without someone yelling “Heresy!” and proceeding to heap firewood around a stake is “progressive”. IMO, that would be REGRESSIVE.
Political correctness stifles free and open speech, irregardless of whose ox is getting gored, and it is a crime that is commited by both sides of the political spectrum. Thought control thru the use of language restriction is the same, whether it be thru a tyrrany of the state, or a tyrrany of the masses.
The usage of the words you use are not good examples, because in certain circumstances they simply give greater accuracy… it DOES sound silly to call a woman a fireman. However, such terms as gay and homophobe do not add to accuracy… if anything, they detract from accuracy for the sake of an agenda. This is not to say that “queer” or “Faggot” would be good terms either, they are the same sort of orwellian newspeak, only used in the opposite direction. ACCURACY in language would be to call a spade a spade… homosexuals be called homosexual, and those who are opposed would accurately be called homosexuality opponents. THOSE labels have no implied conotations, positive or negative.
Pericles_64, your assertion that the habit has its roots in Communism is rather selective (think “heresy” [ETA: oh, you just did, but you failed to see the incongruity of what you wrote] and “treason” - you’re a millenium or two out), and Orwell was a satirist, not a documentary writer.
Anyway, for those of you who’re mad as hell and can’t take it any more, this is for you.