Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
>
> The term "PC" was an invention of the left that served an excellent
> self-critical purpose -- attacking self-serious narrow- and
> literal-mindedness particularly around identity politics.
>
> The theft of the term by the right and its re-selling through the
> corporate media was a back-handed compliment to the wit that created
> it.
>
(Not the first time I've gone over the limit, but the first time I have deliberately done so.)
I'm aware of that history, Paul, and I agree in general that leftists should resist having their terminology stolen from them by the right (in either of the two ways it's done: following the model of PC, as you describe it, or following the model of "petty bourgeois individualist," killed both by leftist overuse and by fairly unprincipled parodying of it by rightists).
I just don't think it can be done with PC -- partly because (exempting your use) most of its uses by leftists have in fact picked up the sullenness given it by its rightist kidnappers. Overwhelmingly, including its appearances on this list, leftists who use do so to preclude response by suggesting that only the humorless or dogmatic could possibly label the user's proposition for what it is (usually) -- a shamefaced repudiation of marxism.
Carrol