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SO not normal to be up at 5:00 AM talking about political correctness...
I found a decent paper about the term: it's a Word doc, I downloaded it okay. If you look for instances of usage (that are conceptually more like what fridge says), this goes really way back... but I think that what we are talking about is this meme that came up in the 80s? The paper refers to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Stanley Fish, Catherine R. Stimpson, et. al. as PC advocates, which is what I remember. Being Californian by marriage, I've no doubt that Santa Cruz was a hotbed of PC advocacy at this time. I also remember a conversation, in the late 80s, with my sister who was doing grad english at Michigan, and I used the term PC & she politely winced and said something like Most people aren't saying that anymore...
By now, I'd think the term "political correctness" is long past its sell-by date. But you know, I'm pretty used to this being thrown out by the right & this is the point when you know the debate is at an end. But I feel actual sadness when I see this poor destroyed term coming back at me from the left, it feels like self-immolation.
I've no objection to further analysis of the socioeconomic factors that might support or refute the method and intention of the original posts. I was simply surprised that folks felt it necessary to do so. It's just a rant in the heat of the moment that some guy threw out there because he was pissed off at the shameful hoisting of democracy by BushCo.
So your position is that this was just some funny venting, about which nothing more needs to be said? I don't object to the funny venting part --you don't know me, but my own sense of humor is very, very harsh. But there's always a basis to humor, I think. Like when something makes you laugh hysterically because it's so terrible, or because it's so true. It may not be something that you question yourself, because you know the meaning of your own laughter --instinctually, if not rationally. All of your beliefs and experiences that motivate and mitigate your laughter. But when you get a group of people together like this, they don't necessarily know what everybody's laughter means. And the more sensitive the subject is --if you're from the South, or if you think that the conceptual division of the U.S. into Red and Blue is exactly what's wrong with this country-- the more people are going to raise points & I think that's what people are getting at. |
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