Thoughtful article in today's Wall Street Journal on the subject: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110010019. I have always been troubled by having "PC" forced down our throats. On one hand, there is nothing wrong with being sensitive towards another person's feelings. On the other, we have come to a point PC has resulted in witch hunts, and worse yet, it has been so selectively enforced against certain individuals and groups that it is absolutely absurd.
The examples of this selective enforcement are everywhere. I made the point in a previous post about how Don Imus was fired for calling the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team "nappy-headed hoes", while black rappers use language that blows away anything Imus said and yet they are hailed as cutting edge, creative artists. Palestininans and their sympathizers routinely refer to Jews and Israelis as Nazis, yet God forbid that anyone should refer to an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist (take a look at the crap that comes out of Hollyweird these days; ALL of the terrorists seem to be Caucasian men. My favourite example of this was the complete neutering of Tom Clancy's "Sum of All Fears", where Hollyweird turned Clancy's Arab terrorists into nondescript neo-Nazis. But, that's ANOTHER story for another day.).
The original goal of PC may have been laudatory, but even if that is true, we have long since gone astray on the path to that goal. PC has become nothing more than another tool for certain groups to beat others into submission, i.e., silence. Yes, words matter, but how can they if everyone is now afraid to use them?
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