So-Called Political Correctness
From what I've read (which admittedly is not a whole helluvalot), the term "politically correct" entered the lexicon in the late sixties from Maoist circles, and they meant it quite literally: certain lines of thought were not deemed correct when measured against their political standards.
The wider leftist/progressive community then adopted it in an ironic sense to poke fun at the hardcore Maoist types and that's pretty much where it stayed for a while -- hovering around in perpetual air quotes -- until conservatives found it in the late 80s and began to parade "political correctness" as an exemplary strawman caricature of leftists positions in general, especially the ones related to minority empowerment and self-determination.
So you hear total bullshit like "vertically challenged", as if anyone had ever seriously proposed that we refer to short people as such, and my personal hardon and inspiration for this thread, the "I'm not PC therefore I am smugly self-justified in using whatever offensive language I like because I'm rebelling against THE MAN/liberal media/pinko commies trying to stifle my freedoms" excrescence.
I just could not hate that more. Whether it's laziness, ignorance or maliciousness which drives it, that dismissal of COMMON DECENCY and FUCKING MANNERS as nothing but playing politics while the dismisser's utter lack of giving a shit is presented as a principled stance makes me want to beat myself to death with my own shoe.
Figuring out that terms like "coloreds" or "negroes" are outdated and offensive isn't exactly brain surgery, after all, and I'm sick of hearing some bullshit leftist chimera which doesn't exist and never really did used as a justification for people's ethnocentrism/pathologically self-absorbed laziness.
Okay. Rant over. Carry on.
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