As far as politics is concerned, I am a left-of-the-middle moderate; fanatics of any stripe, bleeding-heart-liberal or barbarian-conservative, almost frighten me. Ordinarily, I support the Democrats in what they do, with the notable exception of gun control (read previous rant about that one,) but the second left-wing idea I do not support is, you guessed it, political correctness. This is one of the most idiotic policies I have ever heard of, and it has largely been pushed by whatever whiny activist group who cannot ignore name-calling is now in charge in Washington. These are the people who try to change old, accepted books just because it says "man" where they think it should say "person" or where they try to get policemen/politicians/whoever canned for describing a person as "(insert race/ethnicity here)" as one of his (or her, PC notation) traits.
For example, there was once a case in America where a radical feminist group tried to have a version of the Christian bible (I forget which version specifically) changed, because they think that in every account where that bible says "man," it should say "person," "or woman," or something along those lines. Whether or not I believe what the book says, the principle is frightening: if these people can change the content of a 2000-year-old book which has been the foundation of many different sects, (its previous translations notwithstanding,) they might insist on modifying language to exclude all adjectives and adverbs to the point where, instead of saying, "That man has a great-looking red sports car," we might be saying, "The person over there possesses an expensive vehicle."
An author named Lewis Grizzard once diagrammed the modern-day Speech Police
(as he called it,) something like this: "At the top are the New York Times
and Washington Post. If anyone says anything that they regard as racist,
sexist, gay-bashing, or any kind of bashing, they carry large stories about
it. Directly below them are the newspaper editors and various media who
convey the message of whomever has been caught by the Speech Police. Next
come activists, people who have a lot of time on their hands who go around
looking for things to be offended by; you can't do this if you want to eat
and sleep out of the rain." (I probably hacked that to death, but I think I
got the gist of it.) If George Orwell knew about the Speech Police in modern
society, he would probably be:
a) laughing, or
b) saying "I told you so."
The call for political correctness by the activists (the media just want to sell papers/get ratings) is directly proportional to the thickness of one's skin; one woman may be able to watch a hundred sexist videos and not say anything about it or care, whereas a second woman could just hear a man say, "And I'd like you to meet my wife, Mrs. So-and-so," and she goes into conniptions about the phallacracy of America, and so on. This is not limited to women, it goes to any advocacy group of any race, creed, ethnic group, sexual preference, and basically anybody who cannot just ignore the loudmouths.
At first, I thought this was a uniquely American problem, however, I recently have discovered that Britain, in some places, is doing even worse than we are over here. About a week ago, I read a story where a college in Manchester compiled a list of words and phrases that were "sexist," "derived from slave trade," and various other absurdities. These words included vital terms like "history," which is purported to be sexist, while "ladies" and "gentlemen" are referring to social classism. Even words like "mad" and "crazy" are being disallowed because they are offensive to advocates for the mentally ill. A second, more frightening case is one from a different city, I think it was Gloucester, where a policeman in a restaurant arrested a guy for "inappropriate table talk," where the arrestee was allegedly making fun of an Indian waiter's accent. Exactly how the courts intend to enforce this law is a mystery to me, but the precedent is both laughable and alarming: laughable because it is silly, and alarming because somebody actually takes it seriously.
To sum up this probably-overlong rant, the Speech Police are alive and well in America and Britain. They are supported by thin-skinned activists and knee-jerk people with no tolerance for insults. (Remember the old "sticks and stones" bit? It was lame, but it is good to remember today.) They have their political power (in America) supplied by the vote-hungry Democrat radicals in Washington who want to cater to every ethnic/racial/religious group to maximize their votes on election day. They hack everything that does not fit their standards, and as such are a danger to almost every form of speech available today. (And tomorrow, and the next day, etc...)
Orwell was right!