PC Is A Problem

For John, BLUF:  Being polite is one thing, and we all should be.  Being PC is a different thing and we shouldn't.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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At New York Magazine is a look at Political Correctness run amok.♠  The title is Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say.  The sub-title is "How the language police are perverting liberalism."  the author is Mr Jonathan Chait.

The story starts out discussing Mr Omar Mahmood, a Muslim student at the University of Michigan (Mr Chait's alma mater), who was harassed over a column he wrote for a school newspaper.  No the protestors were not anti-minority or anti-Muslim.  They were the politically correct bien-pensant of the campus.

His column, published in the school’s conservative newspaper, had spoofed the culture of taking offense that pervades the campus. Mahmood satirically pretended to denounce “a white cis-gendered hetero upper-class man” who offered to help him up when he slipped, leading him to denounce “our barbaric attitude toward people of left-handydnyss.” The gentle tone of his mockery was closer to Charlie Brown than to Charlie Hebdo.

As a side note, The Michigan Daily, which employed Mr Mahmood, fired him for not writing a letter of apology to a fellow student staffer, who felt "threatened" by the column.

Mr Chait the goes on to talk about the pushing, in Academe, of "Trigger Warnings" as a way of helping The overly sensitive.

Trigger warnings aren’t much help in actually overcoming trauma — an analysis by the Institute of Medicine has found that the best approach is controlled exposure to it, and experts say avoidance can reinforce suffering. Indeed, one professor at a prestigious university told me that, just in the last few years, she has noticed a dramatic upsurge in her students’ sensitivity toward even the mildest social or ideological slights; she and her fellow faculty members are terrified of facing accusations of triggering trauma — or, more consequentially, violating her school’s new sexual-harassment policy — merely by carrying out the traditional academic work of intellectual exploration. “This is an environment of fear, believe it or not,” she told me by way of explaining her request for anonymity. It reminds her of the previous outbreak of political correctness — “Every other day I say to my friends, ‘How did we get back to 1991?’ ”

Hat tip to Memeorandum.

UPDATE:  Someone forgot John's Bottom Line.  Tsk, Tsk.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I wonder of the use of the term "run amok" would be non-PC, if the PC Police understood it?