It’s PC gone mad!
LESS OF THIS!
What is this?
NOT SURE!
Whenever something happens that tries to protect a minority say, or maybe sets out to right a wrong, there’s always a group of people who start yelling “This is bloody PC gone mad!”
And it’s always “gone mad” too. Political correctness never goes “too far” or “insane”, it’s always mad. As though political correctness is a man in a cardigan, sitting in the corner with a pair of googly eyes glued to his forehead, giggling about protecting the rights of the”gravitationally gifted” (fat people) or the “vertically disadvantaged” (dwarves).
And some people buy it. Paul Henry says something offensive, then lefties get up in arms suddenly BOOM! It’s the “PC GONE MAD”brigade. This expression is usually used in conjunction with the misunderstanding that free speech entitles someone to say what they want and then escape the consequences. “PC GONE MAD! Stop stifling his free speech!”.
I used “his” there because it’s usually a male. A male or Cactus Kate.
And as Jonny Potts showed me, you can get a really good idea of what’s going on in the world if you do a news search for “PC gone mad“.
So what is “PC gone mad”? What do people actually mean by that? Because I genuinely don’t know. Usually when we’re accusing things of being too politically correct, what we mean is that a minority that I’m not a part of is being protected from bigotry in some way. And we’re supposed to resist this? How rude are we?
So many rhetorical questions in one paragraph! It’s RQ gone mad!
It took me a while to find the perfect response to “It’s PC gone mad!”, but I did. If someone levels that accusation then all you need to do is kindly ask them to clearly define what they mean by political correctness. Because there is no definition. And the closest definition you can find is one where, if you’re against it, well you just come off sounding like an asshole.
The anti-PC brigade isn’t as bad as it used to be. I think it reached its nadir when Don Brash was National Party leader and named a Political Correctness Eradicator: Wayne Mapp. Remember Don Brash? Yeah that guy was nearly our Prime Minister. And we nearly had a Political Correctness Eradicator. Stay classy NZ.
Don Brash ended up a failed politician with a series of weird sexual peccadilloes. So don’t come gunning for PC mate, or it’ll fuck you right back (that or mixing with Exclusive Brethren, then lying about it, then running for a failed party that is supported by noted racist John Ansell….yeah it could have been those things).
It’s no surprise that the “PC gone mad” brigade tend to be right wing. I say “tend to” because not all. There’s that special sliver of left wing folk who also are a bit assholey when it comes to minority rights. They’re what Chris Trotter calls the “Waitakere man”. And John Tamihere is pretty much a picture of it. Labour are supposed to be trying to re-recruit the Waitakere Man to their cause. Because they’ve lost their way with their silly urban liberalness. But if that’s their target demographic then I don’t want to be a part of that tribe.
I don’t really have a point with this post. I just wanted to get this off my chest. So thanks for enduring a rant. I’m working on a piece where I argue that we actually don’t have a right to free speech at all. So that one might cause a fuss.
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My favourite musing on political correctness is from Stewart Lee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsJ9Pi_9LZM
You mean your second favourite after this one.
Yeeeeeeeah. That’s exactly what I mean.
I don’t get up in arms when Paul Henry says something offensive. I just add it to the “Paul Henry is a f-wit” pile and return to avoiding anything he’s even remotely associated with.
Pretty much everything has already become “PC”, most of what happens now in that vein is just attention-grabbing soapboxery by individuals who usually eventually go away once suitably ridiculed.
About the only real PC thing of any substance that springs to mind that may still be relevant is wage equality, but my feeble mind is inadequately caffeinated to come up with a decent PC term for the same. “Gender agnostic remuneration” perhaps.
Nice post. Thought provoking. I think your definition of PC is a bit narrow though. It’s a catch-all phrase that is used to label many things.
Sometimes it’s expressing a view that someone thinks authorities are invading their personal freedom too much with laws – as in “the anti-smacking law is political correctness gone mad”. Or it can be used to express a feeling that people are not accepting the sometimes unpleasant reality of human nature – as in “all this hand wringing over people getting drunk at the sevens is political correctness gone mad”. Other times it can be expressing a view that people are being overly sensitive about something – as in “all the Paul Henry bashing is PC gone mad”.
So she’s a broad brush this political correctness, but getting annoyed about that is a bit of a first world problem. Which should be the next saying you rant against. Of course it’s a first world problem: I live in the first world and these are my problems. Don’t disregard my issues solely because of the geography of my birth!