##“Never try to appeal to anyone’s ‘better nature;’ they may not have one.”
Good old “Political Correctness.” One of the far right’s early triumphs. It was the prototype for a strategy which serves them to this day. The trick is to short-circuit inconvenient trends by re-branding them with catchy double-think labels that make good things seem bad. Hence “Political Correctness” stands in for “civility, and that of the simplest and most god-damnedest sort.” Laws requiring corporations to be responsible for the safety of their products become “excessive regulation.” Legal actions to try to prevent people from being royally screwed become “frivolous lawsuits.” It’s brilliant, really. Such nonsense labels work perfectly in the thought-free, zinger-driven world of the Twitterverse. Frankly, until progressives figure out how to play the same game, there will remain a huge population convinced that you make America great by making it safe to say "nigger"again.
[quote=“ficuswhisperer, post:12, topic:91700, full:true”]
What would he autocorrect SJW to, I wonder.
[/quote]Well, since I only ever seem to hear it used as a slur against people trying to improve how you treat other people, it’s sort of mentally become the equivalent of “nigger lover” to me. It makes those sentences ring so much more true to the actual sentiment behind them. Try it yourself on the following sentences: “All those cry-baby SJW’s supporting BLM.” “Trump’s gonna put those SJW’s in their place” “You libtard SJWs are helping the Islams kill us.”
It makes their true intentions so much more clear.
Honestly, I’ve heard SJW used as an insult hundreds of times in the last year, and can think of only a single instance all year where it wasn’t being used as an insult.
Its got its roots in 70’s left wing political theory. Queer/Gender Studies, inter-sectional feminism, and early identity politics work. Though there are earlier uses of the phrase for unrelated concepts. After its introduction among academics it was adopted as self parody by broad swaths of the left. It wasn’t ever, really, a serious term or conception. Though the broad approach it describes (don’t be an exclusionary dick) is at the heart of a lot of left wing thought. I’ve got humor books from the nineties. By liberals. That mock the over wrought, often counter productive language of political correctness. Even as they underline and express the same ideas about inclusion, civil rights etc.
Come the 80’s and 90’s the term was adopted by the right and popular media. As a dog whistle attack on left wing ideals. Basically a publicly palatable way to push back against resistance to racism, gender bias, and anti-LGBT politics. That basic model of claiming PC people are “enraged” about something, censoring something, protesting something. When the only people actually upset or discussing that something are the conservatives screaming about political correctness. Is the only thing there’s ever been. There is no PC movement. No consistent, set out ideology. No impact on policy. There are no people working to ban certain kinds of speech. No academics writing vast manifestos about political correctness. No PC protest movements. It went from liberal in joke to conservative attack. I mean sure you can find the odd person who misunderstands. Or weird, not well supported, quirks in other movements. Like the number of black civil rights activists who support legally banning the word “nigger”. Or a few radical feminists that campaign against freedom of speech on grounds of destroying/banning hate speech. But these things are rarities. Not well accepted. And not part of any sort of consistent movement. And often not related to anything involving political correctness.
So yeah its a term created to attack kindness and decency. Basically the same model as when conservatives get flaming pissed and act like being labeled a racist is so much worse than the racist thing they did in the first place.
See the above. Political Correctness as a thing, is largely the creation of conservative political campaigning. The GOP’s communications strategy. And an uncritical media that got a lot of play out of talking heads screaming about it. And scare mongering or hand wringing about kid’s these days. There is no there there. If there is a “corporate” element its that companies generally recognize that offending potential customers is bad business. Which is admittedly a shift from the past. Where selling things to black people was considered more damaging to your brand that the additional sales were worth. Because Black people are bad and gross.
Also there’s more than one Holiday that even Christians celebrate this time of year. More than one formal religious holiday/festival/holy day involved just in Christmas. “Happy Holidays” is just more efficient and covers all the bases.
Growing up I was told that we said “Happy Holidays” because the New Year was right around the corner.
As a general rule, I believe that people should be treated with respect… unless they’ve demonstrated that respect has not been earned… as the original writers’ have clearly demonstrated.
That’s a good question. The short answer is - I don’t know.
I don’t think there is a clear answer. If you want a black and white answer, there is none because all of it is completely subjective and CONTEXT can make a huge difference. Even with horrible slurs, some comics who self identify with that slur can use it - and even use that slur in a derogatory manner against others. Others can manage to use slurs as part of their comedy even if they don’t belong to that group if they do it “right”. And when they do this you will have some people who might identify with that slur want to give a high five to the comic, and another person who wants to smack them upside the head. So right there is an example where “what is politically correct/respectful” doesn’t even have a clear answer.
Another good question though is - does humor and satire have to be respectful? Shouldn’t pushing boundaries be part of the art? Is offense how we measure if something is humorous or not? Because all of us have sacred cows, and that means someone will find offense to something. Shows like South Park could not exist in a world like that. Why is it acceptable to make fun of some demographics and not others? NO ONE cares if we poke fun of some cultures, but similar poking fun of other cultures is seen as disrespectful?
And I realize we are just focusing on comedy, which clearly is judged differently than real life. As with the newest season of South Park showed, just because you think saying horrible things on the internet is funny, doesn’t make it so. And indeed, everyone has a limit where even the worst trolley can encounter something and go, “Wow, that is really not cool, what is wrong with you?” Even though they are doing the exact same thing, but a line or two down on the scale.
I guess that might work, if only progress meant exploiting masses of uncritical people, but that’s the same old bullshit.
I first heard the term in the wilds of Berkeley during the 1980s. It was used pejoratively by leftists and liberals to mock overly earnest young people who just achieved “woke” status due to some college course and were now on a mission to correct everyone else with their newfound outrage. It was used to refer to the roommate that had a screaming fit because they found a carton of milk in the fridge – milk being irredeemably cruel to cows. Someone who was “Politically Correct” was tilting at windmills and not actually sharing their fresh enlightenment. Someone who was “Politically Correct” was committing the ancient liberal sin of alienating people who essentially agreed with them by being harshly doctrinaire and scolding.
It was only a matter of time before the right-wing seized the term. Lacking the impetus to actually create their own terminology, what else can they do but beg, borrow and steal from Berkeley ironists?
Basically. But having be raised in an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian church, and having a lot of Catholic family. There was also a big stress on saying Happy Holidays because of all this:
The Christian liturgical calander, especially for Catholics and Orthodox churches are loaded with holy days during the end of the year. “Happy Holidays” was used in church for religious reasons. To help emphasise those other holy days. Almost all of which are of much greater religious importance than Christmas . Christmas isn’t, and never was a particularly important religious day. “Happy Holidays” let our church staff put some added stress on the more important ones. Hell I know people raised in regions with Eastern Orthodox as the dominant religion. Almost none of them even celebrate xmas. Partially because the Soviets basically barred that shit. But also because they never did, Xmas just wasn’t an important church day. So all the celebratory traditions focus on a non-religious New Years. Orthodox churches tend to place much more focus on Easter. Which is the primary and most important Holiday from a religious point of view.
Actually knowing this shit. The whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” thing seems especially foolish. Even from a church perspective Christmas wasn’t ever particularly Christy. And its the least important thing in the December calendar. Its seeming primacy is nothing more than pandering to the popular secular focus on celebrating something around now.
Or is citing racism shifting blame and ignoring the problem? It’s impossible to have a reasonable conversation when one side declares themselves the winner by saying the other side is racist. The tragedy is real problems that have nothing to do with racism will be never be solved when you make racism the blame
That is a fair question but a separate issue from whether “Political Correctness” is just another way of saying “treating people with respect.”
I think its definitely complicated. But its rather clear what’s going on. Some of the comics making this complaint are definitely in the “its funny because its offensive” camp or making jokes that in spirit and content are racist, misogynistic etc regardless of language. The complicated bit comes in with those comics who aren’t doing that. Using foul language, crass politically incorrect or whatever concepts to mock and criticize the ideas behind it. There’s a difference between telling a joke that makes light of rape. And making a rape joke that’s constructed to make people who make light of rape look like assholes. Its the whole punch up/punch down thing.
There seem to be 2 problems. 1st is a tendency of people who are less than informed of the context to jump on anything that even seems to be bad/offensive. The band wagon effect basically. And 2nd is a tendency for people to conflate trying and failing with not trying at all or advocating the very thing being criticized.
Comedy is a bit weird. Because its all about getting actual people to actually laugh it very often needs to be worked out publicly. Comedians are used to trying out work in progress jokes publicly. Watching them fail to be understood, and fail to get a laugh. Then re working them to improve. Out in the real world. Before the internet you’d didn’t see that unless you were in the habit of going to smaller comedy clubs. Where even the big names would show up unannounced and work out new material.
Now most comedians do the early stages of this work on twitter. Where everyone can see it. And those smaller work shopping shows end up on youtube. We’re seeing the sausage get made. Most of the jokes that seem to create shit storms seem to be early work. Jokes that attempt to make a statement the protesters would agree with, from comedians on their side, but that fail and need to be reworked. Some one sees the broken joke, misunderstands or opportunistically shit stirs. And the band wagon takes over. Despite the fact that everyone seems to agree with each other. Many of the comedians who sound like they’re buying into (or who actually are starting to buy into) conservative PC scaremongering are actually pushing back against this. People from outside the comedy scene failing to hold up their end of the bargain the way those smaller audiences did. The idea is not to attack the joke for existing. But to offer advice or feedback to make it work. Constructive criticism.
Something similar seems to be going on with the whole push back on Doctor Strange and white washing. Many of the people protesting the loss of a roll for an Asian actor (a good sentiment) don’t seem particularly familiar with the actual roll they wanted to go to an Asian actor. Which is a negative Asian stereotype and little more. Tilda Swinton recently confirmed that her casting was an attempt to avoid the negative tropes and stereotypes in question. Which is good. But having seen the movie. Well those fuckers failed. All the eastern mysticism and old kung fu master in a secret magic, mountain, retreat is still there. If a little more subdued. They even failed to use Swinton to her gloriously weird potential.
It’d be much more constructive to acknowledge the attempt to fix it. But criticize the failure. Instead people are criticizing the attempt as if it wasn’t even an attempt. As if it were a deliberate attempt to deny a major role to an Asian actor.
In any case none of this is rooted in a consistent idea of political correctness or any sort of over arching PC movement. They are weird edge cases where certain aspects of unrelated movements butt up against existing sub-cultures or corporate media. For the Comedians its the whole social justice thing, butting up against what was previously a pretty tight knit community. People are protesting the ideas they presume are contained in the jokes (even when they are not) not the language. For movies like Doctor Strange its an odd misfire from a thus far quite successful protest campaign to push media companies into improving representation and pay equality. Or not even a misfire really. As criticism is warranted. Miscalculation maybe? In either case edge cases. Where “political correctness” claims miss the point, and serve to distract from the valid issues and criticism at the heart of these disputes. Which is what political correctness as a concept is for. Rather than talking about racism, misogyny, etc you’re now arguing about internecine rules of language and some invisible group that’s “taking it away” from Real Americans.
The more holidays I get to celebrate, the better.
It’s fuckin’ black-eye Friday where I’m from, bonny lad.
There is (almost) none. The vast majority of jokes, unless self-directed or observational, are disrespectful to someone. The question really comes down to who are acceptable targets for disrespect.
For the left, such targets are usually those who hold social power, to the right, it’s more often those who are culturally different.
My general feeling on comedy is that “if people aren’t laughing at your jokes anymore it’s not because people have no sense of humor these days. It’s because you haven’t managed to keep up with where the rest of society is.”
In the early 20th Century blackface was still a socially acceptable form of comedic entertainment. When Eddie Murphy rose to prominence in the 1980s his standup routines made liberal use of homophobic jokes that would make most of us shudder today. (Watch his “Raw” special sometime—it hasn’t aged well.) It’s not like there aren’t any stand up comedians bringing home the laughs anymore; it’s just that they’re telling different jokes. So when someone like Jerry Seinfeld complains that he’s constrained by the kinds of jokes he can tell these days I’m less inclined to think “comedy audiences are getting way too PC” and more inclined to think “Jerry Seinfeld should probably try updating his act.”
Lead with your heart.
#AllProblemsMatter?
“Fixing” racism doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with fixing other social and societal issues.
