America. Even the language being used in newspapers to describe the U.S. war effort became an issue when Vice President Cheney insisted that waterboarding terrorists—flooding a suspect’s covered head with water to create the sensation of drowning—was not “torture.” ScottHorton, writing in
Harper’s
magazine, said the decision by the top editor of the
New York Times
, Bill Keller, not to label waterboarding as torture amounted to following “politically correct” dictates coming from conservatives. “This is not merely being politically correct; it is being politically subordinate.… Bill Keller’s political correctness couldn’t be more clear cut.… This is precisely the sort of political manipulation of language that George Orwell warned against in ‘Politics and the English Language.’ ”
The country music singers the Dixie Chicks were branded as traitors after one of them told a foreign concert audience that they were ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush. Radio stations refused to play their songs and hosted bonfires where they burned their CDs and merchandise. Entertainers like Tim Robbins, Mike Farrell, and Janeane Garofalo, who questioned the wisdom of going into Iraq, were told they should just shut up. They were accused of damaging the morale of the troops and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And in a provocative recycling of the term “speech code,” reminiscent of the Right’s complaints about left-wing insistence on politically correct language twenty-five years earlier, it was now the liberal
New York Times
columnist Frank Rich who used the phrase “speech codes bequeathed by 9-11” to defend, of all people, Rudy Giuliani in his criticism of the rebuilding of Ground Zero.
So while my friends at Fox frequently and courageously expose the use of this tactic of political correctness by the Left, it’s important to remember that the Right plays this game too. It shouldn’t be given a free pass, because the net negative effect on the discourse is the same, no matter who’s doing it.While the Left mostly uses PC on minority identity issues like race and ethnicity, the Right uses it on issues of piety and patriotism.
Since Reagan, the Right has used wedge issues like abortion, gay rights, and prayer in school to paint its opponents as heretical and hostile to traditional family values. President George W. Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004 was in part attributed to anti–gay marriage ballot initiatives in electorally crucial states like Ohio. The Family Research Council, the Parents Television Council, the American Catholic League, and other faith-based conservative groups, whose convictions I deeply respect, engaged in their own form of political correctness during the Bush years and before. They too are quick to claim outrage and offense when their interests are challenged. For example, take the Catholic Church’s slow response to the scandal over priests abusing children. Church leaders tried to distract the public by casting their opponents as people attacking the church, rather than people attacking sexual abuse of children. They pretend to be the victims to play on loyalty to the Catholic Church and rile up their membership, demonstrate their political clout, and get their leaders on television. Like groups on the Left, they make implicit criticisms of the goodwill and integrity of people who disagree with them. For them, it is about religious sensitivity toward Catholics (and Christians more generally), instead of race or gender. They presume to speak and act for the majority of Christians in much the same way the National Organization for Women presumes to speak and act for all women. Such political correctness should be exposed in whatever form it comes.
The truth about political correctness is that it has nevergone away. It remains a steady feature of American political and cultural discourse and debates. It is a tactic that almost everyone uses when
Harper’s
magazine, said the decision by the top editor of the
New York Times
, Bill Keller, not to label waterboarding as torture amounted to following “politically correct” dictates coming from conservatives. “This is not merely being politically correct; it is being politically subordinate.… Bill Keller’s political correctness couldn’t be more clear cut.… This is precisely the sort of political manipulation of language that George Orwell warned against in ‘Politics and the English Language.’ ”
The country music singers the Dixie Chicks were branded as traitors after one of them told a foreign concert audience that they were ashamed to be from the same state as President Bush. Radio stations refused to play their songs and hosted bonfires where they burned their CDs and merchandise. Entertainers like Tim Robbins, Mike Farrell, and Janeane Garofalo, who questioned the wisdom of going into Iraq, were told they should just shut up. They were accused of damaging the morale of the troops and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
And in a provocative recycling of the term “speech code,” reminiscent of the Right’s complaints about left-wing insistence on politically correct language twenty-five years earlier, it was now the liberal
New York Times
columnist Frank Rich who used the phrase “speech codes bequeathed by 9-11” to defend, of all people, Rudy Giuliani in his criticism of the rebuilding of Ground Zero.
So while my friends at Fox frequently and courageously expose the use of this tactic of political correctness by the Left, it’s important to remember that the Right plays this game too. It shouldn’t be given a free pass, because the net negative effect on the discourse is the same, no matter who’s doing it.While the Left mostly uses PC on minority identity issues like race and ethnicity, the Right uses it on issues of piety and patriotism.
Since Reagan, the Right has used wedge issues like abortion, gay rights, and prayer in school to paint its opponents as heretical and hostile to traditional family values. President George W. Bush’s victory over John Kerry in 2004 was in part attributed to anti–gay marriage ballot initiatives in electorally crucial states like Ohio. The Family Research Council, the Parents Television Council, the American Catholic League, and other faith-based conservative groups, whose convictions I deeply respect, engaged in their own form of political correctness during the Bush years and before. They too are quick to claim outrage and offense when their interests are challenged. For example, take the Catholic Church’s slow response to the scandal over priests abusing children. Church leaders tried to distract the public by casting their opponents as people attacking the church, rather than people attacking sexual abuse of children. They pretend to be the victims to play on loyalty to the Catholic Church and rile up their membership, demonstrate their political clout, and get their leaders on television. Like groups on the Left, they make implicit criticisms of the goodwill and integrity of people who disagree with them. For them, it is about religious sensitivity toward Catholics (and Christians more generally), instead of race or gender. They presume to speak and act for the majority of Christians in much the same way the National Organization for Women presumes to speak and act for all women. Such political correctness should be exposed in whatever form it comes.
The truth about political correctness is that it has nevergone away. It remains a steady feature of American political and cultural discourse and debates. It is a tactic that almost everyone uses when
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