why p.c. was invented
If there’s anything more depressing than Chris Bertram’s encomium to Castro’s Cuba, it’s this little gem on the Corner, which follows the following argumentative garden path:
1) Obama’s mother was a young white American woman who married a foreign black man;
2) In the 1950s and ’60s, such unions occurred “always through politics” and “usually the Communist Youth League”;
3) “Obama’s family, later, (mid 1970s) in Hawaii, had close relations with a known black Communist intellectual”;
4) “Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing [sic] the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama’s mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student”;
5) It is therefore “time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family’s background.”
Iron-clad logic. But who knew — until now — that political correctness was invented in clairvoyant anticipation of Barack Obama’s presidential run?
UPDATE: Commenter David has pointed out that Lisa Schiffren issued a further statement which could be taken as a clarification, a correction, or an apology, or perhaps a little of each: “Before the week passes by, I want to follow up on a post I had here earlier in the week about Barack Obama’s political background. My relatively brief item has been misunderstood by some, and, on reflection, (in some cases) understandably. In particular, I overstated the connection between hard-Left politics and interracial marriage in the early 1960s, which I regret. My overarching point in linking to a piece about Obama’s earliest political mentoring was to say: We don’t know much about this man, what makes him tick, what grounds him, what his philosophy is. If he grew up during the Cold War in a hard-Left environment, that’s an insight. Does it mean he accepted it all? Heavens no. But it’s an insight all the same.” Part of the problem is that she doesn’t seem to be using the word “insight” in a normal way; another part of the problem is the strange claim that we don’t know much about Obama. But in any case, take it for what you will, and thanks to David for the info.
But who knew — until now — that political correctness was invented in clairvoyant anticipation of Barack Obama’s presidential run?
To be fair, she’s kind of right: the set of customs and social mores usually grouped together under the rubric of “PC” were initially promulgated and supported as a method of mitigating the number and effect of specious attacks on well-known targeted groups that were particularly likely to be so attacked successfully, in precisely the fashion that she has done.
— SomeCallMeTim · Feb 23, 08:24 PM · #
And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish?
Maybe I’m being obtuse, but how exactly is it unnatural for a man and woman to have common interests (e.g. political activism), meet each other pursuing those common interests (e.g. the Communist Youth League), then find they are romantically and sexually attracted to each other? Sounds like the most natural thing in the world, to me.
Given the biases of the surrounding culture, I can understand the “not easy” part — at one time love between a Montague and a Capulet wasn’t easy either. Nevertheless, I have yet to meet anybody so blinkered as to describe the connection between Romeo and Juliet as “unnatural.”
You’re right, this is depressing.
— JA · Feb 23, 09:55 PM · #
She actually backed off the literal reading most have given it the next day.
— David · Feb 24, 12:29 AM · #
Political Correctness is a measure of thought control akin to Newspeak. It prevents people from saying things that are true but inconvenient to Liberal worldview. The way saying the truth was inconvenient to Stalin. It is no accident that Orwell based his work on the BBC. Which then as now was overrun by PC fanatics.
PC prevents newspapers and tv stations from running pictures of Black criminals. Whenever the suspect’s race is omitted, particularly for a heinous crime, it’s a good bet the suspect is Black (or Latino). PC prevents discussion of why Black men commit crimes out of proportion to their representation in the general population. PC prevents discussion of Michelle Obama’s desire for racial separatism as expressed in her thesis in Princeton and how that expresses itself in anti-Education, anti-middle class values, etc. in the Black community. PC prevents discussion of how Black-on-white rapes vastly outnumber in absolute and proportional terms White-on-Black rapes.
The effect is a lack of sanity checks on cases like Tawana Brawley or Crystal Mangum. Lurid and not credible allegations of White-on-Black rapes are trumpeted by the Media because PC prevents a reality check on what they fervently believe.
PC prevents an honest discussion of the Jena 6 — football stars excused for violent behavior after thuggish behavior because they were well, football stars (including Mychal Bell punching a 17 year old girl in the face) until things got totally out of hand.
In Obama’s case, it prevents honest discussion about how his selection of a church that explicitly rejects “Black Middle classness” reflects his fears of assimilation into America, his desire for a separate Black identity as his wife has expressed many times, or how his preacher’s love affair with Louis Farrakhan represents his views.
PC prevents people asking Obama if he also rejects “middle classness.” If he also believes (as his wife does) in a separate black culture and identity. If he also rejects education, deferred gratification, law-abindingness as “acting white.” If he shares Louis Farrakhan’s view that Judaism is a “gutter religion.” If he still (as he wrote in his autobiography) dislikes on sight white men?
PC prevents an honest discussion of Obama’s mother — relationships with charismatic but abandoning third world men one after another that ended up ruining her life. Like Clinton’s mother squared. [Obama’s father was a bigamist, married to both his mother and a Kenyan woman, at the same time. Later he was a polygamist, an alcoholic, and died in a drunk driving accident.] PC prevents a discussion of Obama’s privileged and rich upbringing in Hawaii, where his wealthy white Grandparents paid for exclusive Prep school, one of the nation’s best.
— Jim Rockford · Feb 24, 08:53 AM · #
Most people have very little idea about who Obama is, which allows this State-of-the-Art politician to give them whatever impression they want to have of him. Almost nobody other other than Shelby Steele has read his 1995 autobiography with any insight, in part because we aren’t supposed to think hard about “A Story of Race and Inheritance” (to quote its subtitle), and in part because Obama wrote it to be elegant but tedious to decipher. Other than that almost unreadable book, this verbally gifted man left almost zero paper trail from throughout the 1980s and 1990s — a single NPR commentary is all that Lexis-Nexis can dig up that he published in his 20s and 30s. He’s a stealth candidate, what David Souter was to the Supreme Court.
I’ve spent a huge amount of time studying Obama, and, still, all I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence is that his head is in the center and his heart is way, way to the left. Which one would win when he attains his lifelong ambition? I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say his head would win during the first term (he’s cautious, self-disciplined and incredibly ambitious), but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s promised his wife that his heart would win during the second term.
— Steve Sailer · Feb 25, 02:52 AM · #
If anybody is interested in what the college relationship between Obama’s father and mother was like, read the parts in John Updike’s 1978 novel “The Coup” about the future dictator of a Sahelian country’s late 1950s college romance in Wisconsin with a girl from the Chicago suburbs. Just as with Obama’s parents, it ends in a bigamous marriage that turns out disastrously. It’s uncanny how close Updike came to depicting what we now know about Obama’s parents. (Updike has a black African son-in-law and daughter-in-law, so he’s thought hard about these things.)
— Steve Sailer · Feb 25, 03:00 AM · #