[lbo-talk] On the term, "Political correctness"

[Arthur Maisel]

*      *To say that people are wrong about something is not the same as "to
politically correct" them. Even were the phrase used as a verb (which I
don't think I ever saw or heard before), it would imply more than simple
disagreement; it would carry the connotation of *enforced* agreement. To
pretend that it doesn't have this connotation is to run the risk of evoking
for your audience a well-known passage in the *Through the Looking-Glass*:
* *

           "When *I* use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose

     it to mean—neither more nor less."

          "The question is," said Alice, "whether you *can* make words mean
so many different things."

          "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be
master—that's all."

The real problem with the phrase is that the right has managed to convince
many that only the left has "political correctness"; anyone who subjects
him- or herself to comments on rightwing blogs knows that there is a "party
line" at that end of the spectrum, too. For example, it's well known that
as exemplars of "toeing" the talking heads of Fox News hold their own with
the apparatchiks of the *Pravda *of yore.

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Shane M: "Sat a Russian and a Prussian,
> Writing out the Party Line."
>
> [WS] Communism = Nazism is a Tea Party Line, no?
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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