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Community Corner

'Political Correctness' Has Turned Into a Weapon

It's no longer relevant whether or not something was truly intended as an insult.

Recently, Republican senator Scott Brown made a joke on a radio morning talk show about being thankful that his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Warren, “didn’t take her clothes off” to pay for college, a reference to Brown’s famous nude spread in Cosmopolitan magazine years ago.  

Immediately, Democrats and various women’s groups jumped on his remark as “insensitive to women everywhere.” I didn’t hear Senator Brown make a reference to women in general, so how could he have been insulting women everywhere?

He wasn’t. This is an example of using “spin” and “political correctness” to create controversy in order to get air time simply to push an agenda. They changed what Senator Brown actually said to include all women in general. Not at all what he actually said. They used this new meaning of his statement to create a controversy in order to get plenty of “sound bites” in the media, thus pushing their agenda. Don’t be fooled. Their agenda is not to clean up insults on the airwaves. Their agenda was to malign Senator Brown in order to increase the chances of getting their candidate elected.

This incident made me start thinking about how the concept of “political correctness” has gotten completely out of control. It’s no longer relevant whether or not something was truly intended as an insult. It’s about how can someone use what is said, to attack the person who said it, in order to push an agenda.  

Don’t get me wrong. I think political correctness has it’s place. We shouldn’t swear in church, talk about sex in front of young children or compare the President of the United States to Hitler, as was done just recently. But when we can’t utter certain words, even when simply talking about a concept, it’s gone just a bit too far.

Everything comes down to intent. It’s not so much what a person says or does, but what the intent is behind the words or actions. Is the intent to harm, or is the intent to discuss and understand?

Being offended just by hearing a word, no matter what the context or intent, is intellectual laziness. I’m sure I’m going to incite riots for saying this, but if you have a problem with a word being uttered, no matter what the context is, then that’s work you have to do to get over it. Intent matters. It’s completely different if a word is being hurled at you (or a group) with the intent to hurt vs. if the word is simply being used in a sentence.

Always take a moment before you react to any given situation. To "react"means to act without thought. It’s always better to "act" instead of "react" because "to act" implies thought before action.

It doesn’t serve us or society to act like mindless robots programmed to react to stimuli in a pre-ordained way (although there are many groups out there that would prefer us to). Stop and think about the intent behind what’s being said before jumping to a particular response. It’s not up to society to change because a word bothers a person no matter what the context. It’s the thought that society has to go about it’s day without offending anyone, whether offense was intended or not that has created this excessive need for political correctness in the first place.

Always, if words are used to hurt or insult, then we should all stand up and stand against. But rather than jumping on the current band wagon of this or that “political correctness,” I’d rather be for standing against hatred, bigotry and violence no matter what group or person is being targeted.

The language used to write our laws against hate crimes are getting absurdly long because we keep adding yet another group to the list that shouldn’t be abused. A recent law on bullying had this list in it: “any differentiating characteristic based on race; color; religion; ancestry; national origin; gender; sexual orientation; gender identity or expression; socioeconomic or academic status; physical appearance; or mental, physical, developmental, or sensory disability.”

How about just putting in there “no hatred, bigotry or violence irregardless of anything”?  I look forward to the day when we stop talking about how wrong it is to abuse this or that group and simply take a stand against violence in all it’s forms.

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