Did Political Correctness give the Freepers Fodder in the 90's?

[absyntheNsugar]

I would say yes.

Why was Rush so sucessful in the 90's? There were many reasons but one of them was this political correctness witch hunt that seemed to consume college campuses. Trust me, I was there. Our Political Science department head mandated that all term papers would use gender neutral terms when the 'men' or 'man' was used in a gender non-specific way. Miami University in Ohio had the permission system for all dating (you had to ask permission explictly to kiss, to hold hands, to do whatever.)

Rush Limbaugh took these extreme examples and made a show out of it, and as all great lies are based on a premise of truth, he used these examples ad nauseum.

Now one can argue that PC never existed - but most likely you weren't on a college campus in the 90's, or were at a conservative school which bucked this trend. But those would be very hard to find as even Evangelical Christian Schools had some of this going on (it was very isolated, but it was there.)

[boobooday]

1. I agree with you

Free speech means free speech, even when people are total morons.

The remedy is not to suppress any speech, but to drown out the racist, homophobic speech with LOVE speech ten times over!

Besides, the idiots will hang themselves, if they are allowed to talk.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[forgethell]

14. the idiots will hang themselves, if they are allowed to talk.

So very true.

[rumguy]

2. yes

much of what passed for PCness was just a raging joke...

[VelmaD]

3. No...we gave him fodder...

by not standing up and defending sensitivity as a noble goal. We let him get away with dragging out and exaggerating the most extreme examples. We cowered like weenies instead of pointing out the abuses of women and minorities and the GLBT community that sensitivity training and codes of conduct were designed to end but didn't.

And yes I was on a college campus in the 90s. I don't wanta hear how poor white guys were beaten down because that is utter fucking bullshit. There was gay bashing at my school. Someone wrote a nasty gender epithet on one of the buildings the night the women's b-ball team won the National Championship. There were still bigots and assholes who felt free to make nasty comments to blacks and gays and women. PC Police my ass.

[indigo32]

4. Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap

bravo

[absyntheNsugar]

5. I must disagree with you

It wasnt poor white guys who were beaten down. It was the very strict codes for papers that I spoke about. It was the permission dating system. It was the spelling of women as 'womyn'. It was the popularity of writers such as Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (who argued, among other things, that leering is rape.) And it was the banishment of other voices such as Susan Faludi for being unsufficiently feminist (yes, Oberlin considered her a sell out and took her books out of the library.)

I'm not talking about the removal of the 'N' word from publication, although taking Huck Finn out of a library is too far IMO. And I'm not talking about the sensitivity courses that were mandatory back then.

There were schools that took this a bit too far, and an extreme of any extent is wrong

ON EDIT: I think we're talking about two different things, and unfortunately this is another bait and switch Rush did. He complained about the above mentioned excesses of the PC movement, and then targeted legitimate sensitivity trainings as the enemy. Classic bait and switch, something the Repubs seem to be VERY good at.

[VelmaD]

6. We're still buddies when we disagree...

so it's cool.

I just think that this argument is a victory for Rush Limbaugh and people like him. That people on teh left have heard this so many times that they've started to believe it too. That we've let them take the language of the debate and turn "PC" into a bad word (like we've done with feminist and liberal).

Yes, there may have been over-compensations on some campuses but they were nowhere near as pervasive as the right would want us to believe.

[absyntheNsugar]

8. I'll agree with you there

"Yes, there may have been over-compensations on some campuses but they were nowhere near as pervasive as the right would want us to believe."

I'll agree, but unfortunately the Right took these and held them out to be much more than they were. Kind of like the 'welfare queen' myth they created. They found one or two individuals abusing the system, and then used them as examples of why the whole program needs to be scrapped.

[felonious thunk]

11. I agree

I know there were over-compensations, but over-compensations help to serve the purpose. Ok, so idiot Rush listeners got pissed, so what? They were sexist and racist to begin with, so of course they were going to mock it. But those over-compensations drew attention to the issue. People heard what to them seemed like ridiculous levels of political correctness, but those same rational people looked at the words they used and the attitudes they had. Maybe they didn't use the over-compensations, but they got to thinking about other terms they might have used and not realized the implcations beforehand.

Rush was simply preaching to a choir. Even if there hadn't been over-compensations, he still would have talked about it. Any influence he had is overstated. Sure, not all the concepts caught on, but many of the most important ones did. And moreover, people who weren't fanatics of the right got to thinking about their own attitudes and hopefully recognized ways that they could be more sensitive. People still screw up, but I think by and large, most people try to be sensitive, and the "PC" debate helped them learn.

[rumguy]

7. PC is a modern version of Victorian prudishness - nt

[slinkerwink]

16. no, it's not---it's about defense against bigotry and sexism

[rumguy]

18. some of it is, not all of it - nt

[denverbill]

10. It's not 'sensitivity'. It's basic politeness.

If I say 'Happy Holidays' to everyone whose religion I don't know, it isn't because of some 'political correctness' movement, it's because I have basic human decency and I actually care that I'm not being hurtful to someone else.

It's the same reason I don't call people fat or ugly or stupid.

The term 'political correctness', as used by most conservatives, is a 'politically correct' way to say you want to tell ethnic/sex jokes without getting fired.

[absyntheNsugar]

12. But thats just the bait and switch the right did

They turned politeness into PC....they had examples of extremes (and they did exist, despite what others might say) and used them against polite terminology.

The extremes did exist - granted they went nowhere but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. Many colleges changed texts to use gender neutral terms. This isn't politeness, this is MADNESS!

Any college that would decry Susan Faludi as a sell out needs their head examined (you might notice a sore spot about Ms. Faludi - she's kind of a heroine of mine. Read "Backlash" and "Stiffed" back to back sometime.)

[felonious thunk]

13. But of course the reaction was strong

Political correctness was in a sense a reaction to millenia of racism, sexism and hatred. Of course the reaction was intense! It wasn't nearly as intense as it could have been!

Ultimately an equilibrium will be met, and we won't have to worry about being "PC", we'll just be.

What is madness is thousands upon thousands of years of subservience.

[forgethell]

15. On the other hand, Christmas

is the holiday that I, personally, celebrate. Why should anyone be offended if I wish them a ahppy time during that season. If they don't celebrate Christmas, fine. Why take offense when none is intended. Personally, I think we all could be a little less "sensitive", or, the term I prefer, "prickly", and the world would be a better place.

[denverbill]

21. Well, if everyone in my office was Jewish and knew I was Christian,

I'd probably get a little hacked off at continually being wished a Happy Hannukah when they knew damned well I was Christian.

The fact that 90% of the population is Christian means that the 10% non-Christians in the US are already inundated in Christian radio, Christian music, Christian holidays, etc. I'm sure they are told often enough by Jerry Falwell and his ilk how they are infidel sinners who need conversion. I personally choose not to further annoy them during what I consider to be a time of year where people should be even more kind to one another than normal, when the simple alternative is to wish Happy Holidays.

However, to each his own. The are no laws against being an asshole.

[forgethell]

22. why take offense?

It seems to me that the persons who take offense when none was meant are the "assholes". Why should 10% be able to dictact courtesy to society? Rights of the minority? Give me a break! First off, there is NO right not to be offended. Second, the rights of the majority must outweigh the rights of the minority.

Third,"inundated in Christian radio, Christian Music"? Well, tune in another damn station. Isn't that what we say when "christians" complain about sex, violence, profanity, on TV? Are there different rules for Christians and non-Christians??

However, I agree, if a Jewish person has expressed a desire not to be wished a "Merry Christmas", his wishes should be respected. If it is not known what his wishes are, why should it be assumed that the man (or woman) is an "asshole" that will take offense. Give people the benefit of the doubt.

[denverbill]

23. Nobody is denying your right to be offensive.

The ACLU is out there defending even Nazis right to say offensive things. Even I would defend your right to free speech. It just doesn't seem to fit in with your self-identified Christianity.

[forgethell]

30. But I am not trying to be offensive,

so why take offense?? It seems to me that those who want to crush all expression of Christianity are the one trying to be offensive. And, yes, they have the right to do so. But we don't have to play along with them.

[slackdude]

9. Not only did it make the left look bad...

...it took the focus away from very real problems like corporate greed, sweatshops, labor abuses, advertising to children in schools, privatization and everything else we SHOULD have been fighting. Naomi Klein writes about this in the first section of No Logo which is a must read for any left activist.

[capriccio]

17. DOD PC

You're right...it did feed the Right and leave the Angry White Guys with their shorts tied up in their asses. But what few people realize is that PC started--not in the liberal colleges--but in the corporate world and the Pentagon, to wit: "reduction in force", "administrative leave", "collateral damage", "friendly fire," etc.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. They have their own PC, and it's orders of degree nastier than ours

So in the fodder department, I'd say OUR warehouses are fuller than theirs.

[geniph]

20. There's always people who take things to extremes

in ANYTHING - but the vast majority of what got decried as "political correctness" is simple, common courtesy (god, I WISH it WAS common!). The type of people who find "PC" laughable are, for the most part, people who want to call women bitches and African-Americans ... well, you know what they want to call them. Sure, some people are annoyed by my saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, but you know what? I'd rather have that than assume everyone is a Christian. I see no harm in being careful in how one uses the language. Control of language controls thought; ask a linguist.

It's specious to take only the extremes and use them to impugn an entire way of thought. Attack the extremes. Don't attack the idea itself.

The lunatic fringe is ALWAYS populated by lunatics. (Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are my idea of lunatic fringe; talk about letting the extremes give an entire movement a bad name! I'm a hardcore feminist, but those two offend me.)

[furrylitldevil]

24. Just look at Dan Quaile

and his campaign for "family values." Of course, popular culture took care of all that before it got too big.

[David__77]

25. To some extent...

I admit that I tend to say the male term in cases when I could use gender-neutral terms. I do sometimes say "mankind." I think it's reasonable to make some efforts to change that, but it is annoying on some level. Hopefully though the next generation reflecxively does it and this is no longer necessary.

[Insider]

26. and the alternative was...?

please. polite is polite. respect is respect.

we should have let people abuse us, say anything they please TO OUR FACES because to insist otherwise might increase their power over us?

obviously i don't get it.

[Whitacre D_WI]

27. The alternative to PC...

...is Macintosh.

Duh.

[Insider]

28. ah, i get it

:dunce:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

29. I was on college campuses almost continuously between 1968 and 1993

and I never saw any of the kind of stuff that you mention.

I knew ONE professor at another school who refused to use the word "freshman" and always primly and emphatically said "first-year students," but for the most part, my professors and colleagues were a sensible lot.

If anything, I saw more of the "good old boy" insensitivity. Mind you, I'm not one of those prudes who think that "blind" has to be replaced by "visually impaired," but some of the racist and sexist behavior I saw from my fellow academics deserved reproach.

The low point came when I countered an older colleague who was proclaiming that it would be difficult to get Third World populations under control because darker-skinned people were more highly sexed.

Little did I know that he would turn up on my tenure committee the following year. :-(