Disneyland.

One good example is the removal of pirates chasing women and replaced with pirates chasing food. This has been re-introduced, but why remove it in the first place?

The initial editing, then replacing, then removal of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

The Enchanted Tiki Room was a target until Walt's daughter intervened for them to leave it alone.

In Anaheim, we are inundated with Spanish audio in Disneyland. Yet if you look around, a great deal of attendees are Asian. Where will it end?

The audio track of Nature's Wonderland was criticized by feminists for sexist remarks. Seems as if whiners get more attention from Disney than those that love the place.

Political Correctness - insensitivity battling hypersensitivity (or vice versa) with ignorance as the weapon of choice. What a kerfluffle!

In my experience, there are more complaints about than examples of "Political Correctness gone wild". As with many subjects, the most egregious examples receive attention and distort the extent of the problem. But I agree that it is a problem.

That, to me, is one of the most infuriating examples, as is the annual overblown "Merry Christmas" vs "Happy Holidays" debate and the so-called "War on Christmas".

The way I see it, the cognitive dissonance caused by contradiction of one's world view may cause an individual or group to respond in ridiculous (or worse) ways in an attempt to force the world to fit their beliefs. The problem exists at both ends of the PC debate, and each extreme is to be resisted for diverting attention from more pressing concerns.

According to the article, "judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues". Becta, "a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools" is "standing by the judges' verdict."

It seems to be a case of Regarding the "Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep" article, in context, using a "variety of descriptive words in the nursery rhyme to turn the song into an action rhyme," words like "happy, sad, bouncing, hopping, pink, blue, black and white sheep" and exchanging "boy and girl at the end of the rhyme" to "encourage the children to extend their vocabulary and use up some energy" seems innocuous and, IMHO, did not warrant the offense it caused, ironically, to PC critics.

However, the "warning that the nursery rhyme Baa Baa black sheep should not be taught in schools because it was "racially offensive" is ridiculous, as evidenced by the fact that the guideline was dropped "after black parents condemned the advice" as such. 


But "healthy principles" are often just philosophical ideals that require reasoned interpretation to make sense in the real world, e.g., the old overused example being "Does the golden rule make it OK for a masochist to inflict pain on others?"

"Give no offense" is a similar construct. Everyone's "offense" perception depends on personality traits, upbringing, mood at the time of occurrence, and a myriad of other factors: some are offended by mere disagreement of any kind with their own biases or opinions, others aren't offended by the most extreme personal insults.

PC laws/regulations are, in effect, an attempt to define the allowable limits of "offensiveness", which amounts to making punishable that which is entirely subjective. This is not entirely unique: a cop can give you a ticket (which courts will uphold) for driving 50 in a 65 zone if he feels it's faster than is safe for existing conditions. One can rationalize the reasonableness of the ticket example by claiming that the cop is an "expert" in driving and such, so his opinion is more valid than that of just a "normal" driver, but it seems non-sensical to me that an equivalent argument can be made that there is an "expert" (or 12 "experts" in a jury) in offensiveness evaluation whose opinion should count more than anyone else's.

And that is the fundamental problem. The disproportionate emphasis is most often given to those who are members of some power/voting bloc, or members of a group who are "victims" du jour in popular culture, or . . .? There is no objective standard.

I believe the principle that "everyone has a right not to be offended" is diametrically opposed to the concept of free speech. The two cannot be "balanced" in any reasonable way: any enforcement of the first comes at the expense of the second. Given that the rights of free speech are critical to a free society, protecting people by law from being exposed to speech that may be offensive to them diminishes the overall health of that society.

To my humble knowledge, there are no laws in the US about PC. The laws are about prohibiting discrimination in the workplace or violation of the constitution (church/state for example). Slurs directed at a minority member or the minority are generally considered evidence of discrimination in the workplace. For example, the lady boss has a sign on her desk that says, "Women have to produce twice as much in half the time to compete with men.... fortunately, that's not hard to do!" Humor? Would you feel the same with if there was a blatant, consistent pattern of promoting only women into management? You can construct similar circumstances surrounding religion, ethnic background, disability, etc., etc. So, is the sign PC or is it discrimination?

Some fine lines there to be sure, but there are also some good reasons for having those laws. Wouldn't "no offense intended" be pretty hard to define, too? Could the law exclude extremely offensive remarks because the individual making the remark didn't know any better?

That said, yeah, we're overreacting.

There are laws about inserting prayer into school, who can marry whom, and there are attempts made to define the beginning of human life according to the religious beliefs of specific groups. A majority may agree with these laws and these attempts, but they are still all about PC.

Defining what is acceptable is a messy but necessary process that helps maintain societal boundaries - and health. Like any ongoing process undertaken by any heterogeneous group, it is prone to occasionally swing too far in one direction or the other.

When I was young, the accepted for an officer of the law was "policeman", but times were changing. I had an aunt who bristled upon hearing anything other than "policeperson", "chairperson", "personhole cover", etc; over time society seems to have gotten used to saying "police officer", seems to have become pretty flexible with chairman/woman, and seems to have rejected "personhole cover" for having carried things too far. Even my aunt - the kind of feminist with the tendency to hurt her own cause - finds this acceptable.

I think a better example would be decency standards, which are more a product of subjectivity than traffic law. Roads and cars are engineered to be safe within certain limits under certain conditions. Whether conditions become unsafe for the posted speed limit is not supposed to be an arbitrary judgement, but one made based on measurable conditions - wind speed, visibility, rate and type of precipitation... That's not to say that officers don't make errors in judgement (that may well be upheld in court).

I also think that the risk of political incorrectness is ridicule (social sanction) rather than fine or incarceration (legal sanction).

I think some of these examples are a stretch as there's usually some degree of legal/Constitutional substance behind them. Of course, I guess that would depend on how one defines PC. The lines are often hard to draw between PC taboos and hate speech, for example.

A number of years ago, I remember someone facetiously suggesting that the mailman in the future be called a personperson. :cool:

I wonder why the term "politically correct" refers only to English. I think that there's no similar linguistic process in any other language of the world.

Not so. You have the exact same term in Norwegian.

Partial quote from Wikipedia:

"Several political figures claim that political correctness is a serious movement aiming to change the nature of Western society. Thus, Peter Hitchens wrote in his book The Abolition of Britain, "What Americans describe with the casual phrase .... political correctness is the most intolerant system of thought to dominate the British Isles since the Reformation". Lind and Buchanan have characterized PC as a technique originated by the Frankfurt School. According to Lind and Buchanan, the work of the Frankfurt School aimed at undermining Western values by influencing popular culture through Cultural Marxism.[20][21] Buchanan, says, in his book The Death of the West: "Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a regime to punish dissent and to stigmatise social heresy as the Inquisition punished religious heresy."[citation needed]"

It's all a commie pinko plot !

I meant that we in Russian also have the term "политкорректность" - [polit-korektnost']:)
But there's no such thing here in Russia. If the man is black we call him black - and it is normal. If someone is mad, he's mad and not 'mentally challenged'. The blind aren't 'optically handicapped' etc.
I study English for a long time already and I perfectly understand the origin and the sense of this linguistiс phenomenon. But it is difficult to explain to some people, especially elderly, why a person they have called bum since their childhood turns into a 'Displaced homeowner'. I tried to put a bit of humor in my post, I hope you see it:)
Political Correctness originates from the most ugly and hard-edged Euphemisms, that defy all the laws of natural evolution of language. such language is fictional, unreal. And language cannot exist in half-dead and fossilized form. It is an organism that needs expression. For people movement means life. Expression means life for the language.

i hope I put it all clear

If you're really interested about how these (and other) strange-seeming behaviours develop, you could do worse than read some of the books of the late American anthropologist Marvin Harris. I'm guessing you're in the 60% who still reads books. ;)

Amazon link

Bookaholic would be a good description -- my wife and I probably spend 2 or 3 K a year on books. :) Thanks for the link -- I ordered it from Amazon.ca. Now reading Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought".

I can barely believe the post of cwtnospam being anything near PC speech or actions. This has to do with liberty and what constitutes freedom. This has nothing to do with Political Correctness and everything to do with ones own personal and political agenda.

LOL! What do you think PC is? Political Correctness is about inhibiting freedom. It serves no other purpose than to subordinate other people's beliefs.

Favourite PC expression:

Migrant workers = Third country nationals....