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So um, this is still happening?
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Worse yet, when I popped over to the store with CBC Radio on…
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That is the whitest bunch of men yet, getting to yell on the radio about whether we should afford others basic human respect and dignity. P R I V I L E G E
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Stephen Fry is the kind of naturally talented debater that right-wing clowns like Cruz and Gingrich and Peterson wish they could be. You could ask him to take the position “resolved: the Nazis did a lot of good for Germany” (something that he’d do on a lark, which is what I suspect happened with this debate given his own politics) and within 15 minutes he’d have the Happy Mutants here giving his position serious consideration.
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If faced with the prospect of debating Stephen Fry, I think I’d first check the rules to see if there was anything against leaping across and strangling him before he could speak. He could read the phone book and probably win.
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Ah, finally, someone actually noticed that political correctness debate after I mentioned it earlier.
Peterson and Fry curbstomped the debate. Before the debate, 64% of the audience agreed with them, and after, the number rose to 70%. Meaning the other side lost a sixth of all their support going from 36% to 30%. This was, of course, an ideology vs. reality debate. The worst part of the debate where was Dyson called Peterson a “mean, made white man” and is now something of a laughing stock. This usually happens to the type of people to say ridiculous things about Peterson that end up losing their credibility for it, in fact the number of such people has been steadily increasing. Cathy Newman took the first bite, then Michael Dyson, Ari Feldman, Bernard Schiff as we’ve seen earlier, etc. One has to guess when people will actually try contesting anything Peterson says without throwing these ad hominems and … always losing. Hard to say whether or not it was Peterson or Fry who made the better case. Peterson dismantled the concept of political correctness, whereas Fry pointed out it always fails and is therefore a useless concept.
these days “political correctness” refers to one of two things.
in general it refers to the use of language so as to be polite and courteous to one’s interlocutors or to one’s audience. if your mother or father ever admonished you to “be polite!” they were encouraging you to be “politically correct”.
the other variant usage of the term is exclusively as a pejorative generally used by the white, as a way of regretting the good old days when others of all sorts “knew their place” and whites could speak of them however they wanted to. whenever i hear someone using the term along those lines i place a mental red flag over them and label them “privileged assholes.”
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Given Fry’s own progressive politics and his identity as a now openly gay man, along with what seems to be a consistent tone of respect for his interlocutors, I’d assume his definition would be the former when he’s not taking a side in an Oxford Union style debate (where the challenge is often to argue in favour of something one doesn’t believe in, or at least spin it toward a more palatable interpretation).
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“Used by the white”? There goes your argument. Isn’t characterizing a race … racist?
And political correctness is literall just language policing so no one gets their feelings hurt. See Stephen Fry’s part in the debate posted above. I’m sure a leftist gay Jew like Fry is really loving his privilege. /s
Because not wanting your language checked by the leftist patrol just must be a result of privilege!
Agreed. It’s best to view such debates in the same light as sporting events.
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Does anyone have a good compendium of terms co-opted in this fashion?
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One could be forgiven for believing this to be the case. Certainly some people take this position. I honestly can’t say what proportion of people fall into which category of usage, though.
This is really more how it started. “Hey, just letting you know, saying X is offensive to Y people. Please be mindful.” This is how I use the term, certainly. And how I feel the concept should be applied. ETA: Would I be mistaken to call it “Common Decency”, and an attempt to evolve what the popular sense for it is?
A good term I’ve heard coined which is descriptive of who he’s referring to is “wypipo”. If you read enough of the The Root, you’ll get it.
Sidebar, I recommend reading The Root regularly, if for no other reason than a perspective that may not be as readily apparent to you if you’re not a person of color. Particularly Michael Harriot.
Careful now. Walking on thin ice in this thread, the lot of us. The mods have been clear…
Anymore, basically all of them. Political Speech 101 in this day and age is basically this:
Someone comes up with a snappy term for some idea > The opposition tries to find a way to turn it into a purjorative. (Actually, I wasn’t alive for it, but I think “political correctness” may have been coined as a purjorative)
Someone accuses the political opposition of some heinous trend > their opposition tries to find a way to push the narrative that the other guys are the real (big spenders, racists, fascists, RINO’s)
Round and around we go. The best I can say is that some politicians aren’t guilty of this, but certainly this trend is solidly represented across the two major parties.
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I don’t, but off the top of my head there’s “liberal” and “secular humanist” and “urban” and “elites” and “intellectuals”. Karl Rove tried to make “the reality-based community” a pejorative, but we took that one back from him.
“Racist”, too, come to think of it. Right-wingers “cleverly” turn it into a personal attack by implying that someone who brings up race (e.g. in the context of discussing institutional or societal racism) is de facto a racist.
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Maybe “victim”? Certainly the concept.
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I speak for a large portion of ladies I know personally who give Mr. Fry a seriously long side eye these days. “Progressive” indeed.
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Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘political context’.
