Times of India, India
Feb 8 2010
The PC Bandwagon
Prasenjit Chowdhury, TNN, 8 February 2010, 01:16am
Is Jesus Really God? – Scholars examine the facts about Jesus’ claims
to be God :
The latest victim to political correctness is no other than Santa
Claus, who according to a Monash University public health expert,
promotes
obesity, speeding, drunk driving with his portly belly and a fondness
for a brandy-fuelled spin on the sleigh. The childhood legend does not
inspire a healthy lifestyle, says the study. That a gift-peddling
Santa can be rapped on his knuckles for conveying ‘wrong’ messages to
millions is proof enough of the burgeoning strength of the political
correctness (PC) brigade which is threatening to engulf our lives. US
president Barack Obama and his Homeland Security secretary Janet
Napalitano have scrapped the terms ‘war on terror’ and ‘terrorist
attacks’ to replace them with more politically correct terms such as
‘overseas contingency operations’ and ‘man caused disasters’.
According to new PC terminology, which calls for a hygienic,
sterilised language, there are some novel suggestions in which
shoplifters would be called ‘non-paying customers’, burglars would be
referred to as ‘unwanted house guests’, stealing as ‘borrowing without
asking’ and so on. We must call an old fogey ‘gerontologically
advanced’, a drug addict ‘chemically challenged’ and an alcoholic an
‘anti-sobriety activist’. A columnist in a leading magazine argued
against formal restrictions on free speech, contending that laws
against Holocaust denial and the denial of the Armenian genocide were
wrong because they discouraged the honest expression of opinion.
Political correctness, according to him, amounted to virtual stricture
on non-Muslim Europeans from criticising Muslims.
Political correctness is the name of the new fad. I am afraid that it
is only a matter of time that the PC brigade begins to nitpick on a
Ray film or a Tagore novel. It has long been argued that the Tintin
comics stereotyped India and that Kipling’s jungle child, ready to
embrace the good of the Christian civilisation, has not been fair to
our image in the West. But should we ask our children to stop reading
Kipling and Tintin for that? The famous Indrajal Comics had white
Phantom ruling over the tribal African population. Does that invoke
memories of colonialism? Should we regard The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and Pride and Prejudice as politically incorrect
novels? The jury is out on that. The canons of political correctness
are so rigidly oppressive that you can’t openly berate homosexuality,
nor afford to disavow global climate change. My objection to PC is
that it dictates us to say what we should think as right and not what
we think as right.
inion/edit-page/The-PC-Bandwagon/articleshow/55453 49.cms
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress