expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.” The president concluded: “What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship.”
Robert Bork, who became a conservative icon after he was denied a seat on the Supreme Court—by Democrats on the Left who attacked him as too controversial because he openly expressed a conservative, and definitely not politically correct, judicial philosophy—joined in the attacks on political correctness. In a 1993 debate with Professor Linda S. Greene of the University of Wisconsin Law School, he spoke of the frustration felt by many when he said: “Political correctness, I think, is something that is widespread in this society and it’s part of a mood of radical egalitarianism which has taken hold.… And we’re seeing it in the speech codes, which are judging speech not by what it objectively means, but by how somebody perceives it, over which the speaker has no control.”
The sense that PC had gone too far became mainstream. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh lampooned hard-line feminists as “femi-Nazis.” In 1993 comedian Bill Maher’sshow
Politically Incorrect
debuted on Comedy Central, and in 1994 James Finn Garner wrote
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
, which turned classic children’s stories into absurd tales of princes who had weak knees and princesses who did not need princes.
Even President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, seemed to sense the change in the political winds when he famously moved to the center after the 1996 election, with more socially conservative policies on criminal sentencing, welfare, and tax cuts for the rich.
Members of the Left, sensing that political correctness was losing steam, tried to fight back. They made the case in books and in debates that instances of political correctness—like those in the
Times
article—had been either greatly exaggerated or completely made up, twisted by conservatives to divide people in order to win elections. Some liberals, like Camille Paglia, a popular feminist professor, went a step further by saying the right wing had distorted political correctness to stop the advance of gender and racial equality in America. Another professor, Doug Smith, asked what was so bad about Stanford students being required to read the book
I, Rigoberta Menchú
, as well as
The Republic
and
The Prince
. He pointed to a double standard in which conservatives showed the same intolerance to a free market of ideas they charged liberals with imposing on the world. “What is so intolerant,” he asked, about having students read one book on a Guatemalan peasant woman who comes to support socialism and feminism, as well as the Greek philosophers? “One could easily and glibly describe Plato and Machiavelli as intellectual hirelings whose works are for the most part apologetics for authoritarianism,” wrote Smith.
The Left saw arguments over the concept of political correctness rising to the point that the public no longer remembered the problem—inequality, bias, and racism—that politically correct language was intended to cure. In her 1993 debate with Judge Bork, Professor Linda S. Greene put it this way: “If you can force us to discuss censorship instead of discussing … sexual harassment, censorship instead of discussing the question how we are going to transform our institutions into more diverse places, then you have set the terms of the debate and prevented a discussion of the real issues. And it seems to be a great cause of glee on the right, among conservatives, that they have been able to change this debate.”
By 2001 British essayist Will Hutton, writing in London’s
The Observer
, followed the same line of what looked like left-wing surrender to conclude, “Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism.… What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right
Robert Bork, who became a conservative icon after he was denied a seat on the Supreme Court—by Democrats on the Left who attacked him as too controversial because he openly expressed a conservative, and definitely not politically correct, judicial philosophy—joined in the attacks on political correctness. In a 1993 debate with Professor Linda S. Greene of the University of Wisconsin Law School, he spoke of the frustration felt by many when he said: “Political correctness, I think, is something that is widespread in this society and it’s part of a mood of radical egalitarianism which has taken hold.… And we’re seeing it in the speech codes, which are judging speech not by what it objectively means, but by how somebody perceives it, over which the speaker has no control.”
The sense that PC had gone too far became mainstream. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh lampooned hard-line feminists as “femi-Nazis.” In 1993 comedian Bill Maher’sshow
Politically Incorrect
debuted on Comedy Central, and in 1994 James Finn Garner wrote
Politically Correct Bedtime Stories
, which turned classic children’s stories into absurd tales of princes who had weak knees and princesses who did not need princes.
Even President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, seemed to sense the change in the political winds when he famously moved to the center after the 1996 election, with more socially conservative policies on criminal sentencing, welfare, and tax cuts for the rich.
Members of the Left, sensing that political correctness was losing steam, tried to fight back. They made the case in books and in debates that instances of political correctness—like those in the
Times
article—had been either greatly exaggerated or completely made up, twisted by conservatives to divide people in order to win elections. Some liberals, like Camille Paglia, a popular feminist professor, went a step further by saying the right wing had distorted political correctness to stop the advance of gender and racial equality in America. Another professor, Doug Smith, asked what was so bad about Stanford students being required to read the book
I, Rigoberta Menchú
, as well as
The Republic
and
The Prince
. He pointed to a double standard in which conservatives showed the same intolerance to a free market of ideas they charged liberals with imposing on the world. “What is so intolerant,” he asked, about having students read one book on a Guatemalan peasant woman who comes to support socialism and feminism, as well as the Greek philosophers? “One could easily and glibly describe Plato and Machiavelli as intellectual hirelings whose works are for the most part apologetics for authoritarianism,” wrote Smith.
The Left saw arguments over the concept of political correctness rising to the point that the public no longer remembered the problem—inequality, bias, and racism—that politically correct language was intended to cure. In her 1993 debate with Judge Bork, Professor Linda S. Greene put it this way: “If you can force us to discuss censorship instead of discussing … sexual harassment, censorship instead of discussing the question how we are going to transform our institutions into more diverse places, then you have set the terms of the debate and prevented a discussion of the real issues. And it seems to be a great cause of glee on the right, among conservatives, that they have been able to change this debate.”
By 2001 British essayist Will Hutton, writing in London’s
The Observer
, followed the same line of what looked like left-wing surrender to conclude, “Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism.… What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right
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