March 31, 2006
Political Correctness Encore Une Fois Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:45 PM EST Joshua Zeitz writes, “In an article on Hillary Clinton’s prospective run at the presidency, Douglas MacKinnon mocked the ‘smoke-free, racially diverse, politically correct back rooms from which’ the Democratic party’s high officials operate. (The Weekly Standard, February 20, 2006.) Is MacKinnon advocating a world populated only by white smokers? Probably not. But in lambasting the Democratic party’s self-conscious embrace of racial diversity as “politically correct,” he clearly makes the connection between pluralism and “political correctness.” It seems to me that Douglas MacKinnon (whom I don’t know of, but then I don’t read The Weekly Standard) is simply making a list of Democratic political fetishes, among which are racial diversity and political correctness. He is not connecting the two; Mr. Zeitz is. He also writes about the Concerned Alumni of Princeton group (long defunct, I believe), which he describes as having “bitterly opposed opening the university’s doors to women and minorities.” I have read, and do not doubt, that the group opposed having female undergraduates. That strikes me as a reasonable thing to oppose, although I doubt that I would have done so had I gone to Princeton. (I have always been amused by the fact that while my father went to Princeton, class of 1941, the only one of his four children to go there was his daughter; his three sons went elsewhere. I went to Vanderbilt, which has been coed since the day it opened in 1872.) But “bitterly opposed” to having minorities at Princeton? Does Mr. Zeitz really think that a young, ambitious, highly intelligent Princeton man, hoping one day to sit on the federal bench, would have gone anywhere near such a group in this day and age? Please. The “editorial” is transparently satire, sophomoric satire, perhaps, but satire. By the way, I notice that Mr. Zeitz does not bring up Yale’s utterly bizarre decision to admit—presumably in the name of “diversity,” what else could be the reason?—a former and unapologetic spokesman for a regime that committed just about every barbarity in the book. That sort of diversity is important to liberals, it seems, while the Yale faculty’s intellectual diversity runs the gamut from A to B. With Sesame Street, again, I think Mr. Zeitz fails to grasp what Mary Eberstadt is saying. Sesame Street is, I suppose, politically correct (I’ve never watched it; I was of the Howdy Doody and Lone Ranger generation of kiddy TV watchers), as she describes it. She doesn’t mention diversity, at least in the quote Mr. Zeitz gives. What she does mention, some what obliquely, is that the idea that women can have full-time careers and be full-time mothers is dubious and many women who grew up watching Sesame Street agree with her. Mr. Zeitz quotes Neil Cavuto of Fox News (at last, a Zeitz conservative I have actually heard of! although I rarely watch him) as saying “‘we [are] getting too politically correct here’ in scoring California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for calling opponents of his policies ‘girlie-men.’ Maybe this is a question of humor and taste. Liberals presumably have none, while conservatives have lots. But is it ‘politically correct’ to take exception to comments that equate weakness with femininity?” I think Mr. Zeitz has proved his case that liberals have no sense of humor. First, it equates weakness not with femininity but with men who act feminine. That’s not the same thing. It is more than possible for women to be both strong and feminine. Ask Margaret Thatcher. Second, who made the phrase “girlie-men” famous in 2004? A guy who turned a set of overdeveloped muscles and an accent into a spectacularly successful Hollywood career (although not on my nickel; I’ve never seen a single movie the Governator ever made; Shakespeare in Love is my idea of a great movie). To Schwarzenegger’s persona (if not his real-life self) every man is a girlie-man, just as Jack Benny thought everyone but he was a spendthrift.
Finally, Christmas, a subject I’ve written about on this blog before. If I worked at Wal-Mart, I’d probably say “Happy Holidays” too. Life is short, and there are a lot of grumpy people in the month of December. But frankly, since Christmas is in reality a worldwide holiday celebrated by hundreds of millions—billions probably—of people who are not even nominally Christians, I don’t see a thing wrong with generally wishing people a Merry Christmas. I do, indeed, think banning the phrase from public discourse because it might offend someone is sensitivity run amok, the definition of political correctness.
As far as I’m concerned anyone can wish me happiness or merriment in any way, shape, or form they would like to. I need all the happiness and merriment I can get. I am not offended by good wishes, however put, and I think that anyone who is offended by those good wishes not phrased to their satisfaction should see a doctor about having a chipectomy on their shoulder. I often disagree with John Gibson (although he’s Edward R. Murrow compared with Bill O’Reilly, who gets me reaching for the clicker at warp speed), but not on this issue.
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