It’s possible to agree with Jesus on the Grievance Brigade and with Mo on his assessment of the President-elect. It should go without saying that one can teach Huckleberry Finn without being called a racist. Not, however, that one should look to Mr Trump for a contribution to rational discourse…As for this cartoon: weak punchline.
my anecdotal experience is that those who complain the most about political correctness are generally the same people who’ve never refrained from saying anything on their mind, it’s just that they’re tired of being made to feel bad about it.
what nicolas sarkozy called “la droite décomplexée” nails it: what they really want is to stop feeling bad about their ideas. they want to be able to call other people faggots if they so feel. it bugs them to think that we would call them bigots as a result. it’s the “fundamental right to hurt other people without being hurt back” religious freedom.
[…] New Jesus and Mo strip called “jump”, comes with the tags generation snowflake, political correctness, Trump. And indeed, he seems to be talking about Trump as an end to “political correctness,” which it’s not. […]
Political Correctness is a de facto restriction on true Freedom of Speach, a moment of reflection will reveal that it really could not be any otherwise.
Freeedom of Speach across the modern world, and indeed throughout history, is an extremely rare commodity: very hard to win but perilously easy to lose. For it to achive it’s maximal power and impact it needs to stand unviolated, without any restriction or censure, no matter what.
In a truly free and open market place of ideas and rational discourse there should be no place for constraint or limits – the fact that some might feel offended or that others might be offensive is utterly irrelevant.
Political Correctness, of any hue, represents a clear and present danger to Freedom of Speach and, if solely on that basis alone, I should be opposed at every step: no matter what.
@reid: if you read what i wrote carefully, you’ll find that i’m not advocating for or against so-called political correctness. i’m merely opining that the people who complain about it the most are precisely the ones who ignore it.
i’m also pointing out that using the “political correctness” thought-terminating cliché is a way of censoring speech, which seems like a contradiction when complaining about one’s speech being censored.
freedom of speech is the right to say almost anything, and this is fine with me. it is not, however, the right to say anything and go unchallenged. challenging an idea seems to be pretty much the essence of this “market place of ideas”.
@author: tagging “trump” seems like a sure-fire way to attract a whole new audience.
The people that complain most about political correctness just want a different vocabulary. ‘Patriot ‘ for ‘ mouth-breather, racist thug or useful idiot’. ‘Truther’ for being sceptical of the government’s official narrative. And ‘Great Again’ for ‘Fascist’.
Philosophical principles and ideological propositions should stand and fall on their own merits; with due regard to empirical evidence, reason, logic and rationality. This must surely involve the preference of objectivity over subjectivity; or at least it should do if the goal is rational discourse without any fear or favour to preconceived vested interests.
Human nature being what it is, the Street, Playground or Battlefield are seldom conducive venues for balanced discussion – here we require the social lubricant of manners, prescriptive hierarchies and rules of engagement to avoid needless conflict (have you ever tried reasoning with a drunk?).
However, wherever rational discourse is required Political Correctness is anathema – you just need to step out of your own subjective bubble and political/religious preferences.
Philosophical principles and ideological propositions should stand and fall on their own merits; with due regard to empirical evidence, reason, logic and rationality. This must surely involve the preference of objectivity over subjectivity; or at least it should do if the goal is rational discourse without any fear or favour to preconceived vested interests.
Human nature being what it is, the Street, Playground or Battlefield are seldom conducive venues for balanced discussion – here we require the social lubricant of manners, prescriptive hierarchies and rules of engagement to avoid needless conflict (have you ever tried reasoning with a drunk?).
However, wherever rational discourse is required Political Correctness is anathema – you just need to step out of your own subjective bubble and political/religious preferences.
Those who decry political correctness generally seem to want to behave as inconsiderate assholes without fear of social censure. I am totally for political correctness. It simply means taking the feelings of others into considerations when discussing ideas, or attaching labels.
It also is often inaccurate as well as inappropriate, as in when one calls a political opponent a “retard” That is offensive to the mentally challenged, and most likely not accurate as a pejorative. I can discuss ideas without using language others find offensive.
The only time political correctness gets up my nose is when it tries to rewrite history and purge words that are now taboo from literature. It’s not the words that are politically incorrect, it’s the thought and intention behind them that is. There is nothing politically incorrect about the word “nigger” for example. Using that word to describe your neighbor is not only politically incorrect, its the badge of a reactionary dickhead.
I get offended when I read something like “The woman called him the N word.” as if it is the word itself that is offensive. As if we all don’t know what the N word is. This is right in line with writing f**k in a report, as if we all don’t know what the fuck that word really is. It’s not the words, damn it. It’s the use to which the word is put.
Steve Sherman, you need to re-calibrate your irony meter so that you can recognize a great punchline. Our Author seems to be a bit too subtle for you, though yes, I had to think for a minute before I got it. Author does that to us on occasion. Makes us think that is.
Replace all instances of “political correctness” and variations thereof in your comment with “treating people with respect”, and see how your comment reads then…
I despise the deplorables. I spent years writing against people like them. I did all I could, which – given my limited resources – largely amounted to a single (and rather meaningless) vote.
And your suggestion to Reid to do a search-and-replace of “political correctness” with “treating people with respect” is right on the money…
…but…
In my experience, those who chose to call it political correctness (often with capital PC) in the first place created this problem. Political correctness – again, in my experience, both direct and indirect – rarely seems to address problems. Instead, its proponents insist that we re-label the problems, as if a change of vocabulary will solve a problem itself.
Yes, I’m aware (and can agree, to a limited extent) that in certain contexts, a change of wording can change minds. But that’s the problem – it must be done carefully, and the movement that took up the banner of political correctness by no means approached this with care (ironic, considering their presumed motivations for doing it).
By calling this thing “political correctness,” the movement itself – which could have been noble, but boiled down to a call for re-labeling everything – has backfired, terribly. If it had simply been called what it is – e.g., “treating people with respect” or even (quite simply) “decorum” – then how could those who can be reached argue against it? (Those who can’t be reached were lost anyway, and will ideally be washed away in the wave of enlightenment that I hope may still come and change the tides of future history from this deluge that currently threatens to drown us.)
Given a term to rally against (political correctness) and associating that term with a “side” that they hate means they no longer have to think about what it means (respect, decorum), and can hate it all they want to without fear of a nagging conscience.
Call something what it is, and we all know what is meant – we can debate whether it’s a positive or negative, but we know what it means. Re-label it with a far more arbitrary term, and that’s when the problems begin – it’s hard to have complete authority over the definition of neologisms, and once they’re in the wild – roaming free in a living language – that definition is completely beyond the control of those who wished to introduce it to rational discourse (cf. how “ad hominem” became a way for the ignorant to say “you’re insulting me,” rather than “you’re using your insults as the basis of your argument).
Caveat: you can say “but they’re using it wrong” ’til you’re blue in the face (I know this well). It doesn’t, unfortunately, change anything, let alone their positions. And if the point was to change hearts and minds, then that’s just another way to fail.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, in spite of the fact that people who wish to utilise it to be dickheads will readily do so. And whilst political correctness has its place, I too find that also can be easily misused, hence all the arguments against it going back to free speech.
We all have differences of opinion and I’m okay with that. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when your opinion is based on obstinate, ignorant and unreasonable viewpoints that skew facts and insult basic intelligence.
On the other hand, I have also said plenty of stupid shit and at those times wish I could go back and edit myself. Fine to do online (if there’s an option), not so easy to fix in reality. A pity there are some who don’t feel the need to edit or correct themselves and lay everything bare. It is those people who are now growing more vocal and it makes me dread the upcoming years. More than usual.
Nowadays (at least in Dutch) “Political Correctness” in its negative meaning is often replaced by “Newspeak”. Readers of Orwell’s 1984 will recognise it.
It has at least the advantage of (slowly) letting PC getting back its more positive annotation.
Did the people who wanted to avoid offending call what they were doing being politically correct? I thought that political correctness was applied to the re-labelling as a perjorative by people who wanted to be able to go on calling people niggers, retards, etc. and didn’t like being pulled up on their behaviour. But I admit my memory of many things is not accurate so …
I think that the greatest sacrifice decent humans make in the online world is defending the right to free speech for complete scuzzbags. Alas I think its an all or nothing proposition for our generation. However for future humans (brought up to realise that online words have real world consequences ?) this will probably change.
The idea of online invulnerability is a throwback to the original way we accessed the web (alone, in private, often at night) so it felt like a world divorced from real world consequences. Now we use the internet everywhere and tend to use our own name, people see internet and actual comments as interchangeable. The right to anonymity is dying and hopefully trolling will die too. I think this isn’t a bad thing IF you wish to comment, incidentally I’m Mark from Chester in the UK. Goodbye anonymity.
It’s a good question – as I recall (I was in college when the term was coined and gained traction), the first people I heard using the term “political correctness” were for decorum and respect, but against the rigid rules set that forced everyone to use specific, PC-approved labels. (Disclosure: that hews close to my own view.) They were not decrying the idea of respect and decorum itself, and were decidedly not aching to use any pejoratives while stewing in some pile of their own miserable hatred (cf. the misanthropic miscreants currently celebrating the victory of a jackass who has no interest in defending their interests anyway).
We actually had required student seminars on politically correct terminology (which were even introduced as such, so it’s implausible that “PC” was being used strictly to denigrate it even then).
Anecdotally (but in keeping with my point), in the seminar my brother had to attend (same time period), the floor was opened up to attendees; a young Chinese woman stood and said something to the effect of: “When someone calls me Oriental, I feel like a rug!”
Aside from the unintended absurdity inherent to the young woman’s statement, this assertion always bothered me. I have never – in all my experience – ever heard the word “Oriental” used as a pejorative. I’m not saying it can’t be or hasn’t been used as such; I’m saying the idea is completely alien to me. Growing up, all of my Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian friends used the term themselves, as a catch-all for any ethnicity from southeast Asia known for dark hair, epicanthic folds, and specific linguistic families (along with, as one friend informed me much later, much more viscous ear wax…? I never found out if she was joking or not). The AD&D book “Oriental Adventures”? I didn’t know that was supposed to be “wrong,” and neither did John – one of my three closest friends at the time, who happens to be Korean. (I’ve since come to understand what was wrong with the content of the book, but the term itself is still a puzzlement.)
Then the term “Oriental” was replaced with “Asian.”
Now, my white/Persian wife comes from the continent of Asia (she comes from a town in Russia precisely on the border of Asia and Europe), and Indians (from India) also come from Asia, as do Sri Lankans and a lot of other ethnic groups (in fact, the largest portion of the world’s population is from the continent of Asia!). So already, as many stand-up comics have discussed, it’s a strangely misapplied term that includes people we don’t mean to refer to by it in today’s parlance. That’s not the end of the world – lots of words have parallel and even entirely unrelated meanings (which is something the political correctness proponents often lose sight of, in their zeal to curb potentially offensive language).
I have no trouble calling anyone what they like to be called (as long as it doesn’t obfuscate their intentions: ahem, “alt-right”). So I used the term Asian, as asked. (Just like I refer to transgendered or transsexual people I know by the gender pronouns they prefer…as long as they’re ones that already exist. If they’re making up new ones, I’ll try my best, but it would certainly help if some individuals would stop getting angry at other individuals when the language simply doesn’t adopt those neo-pronouns so quickly or easily.)
But all this word-juggling is what “amuses” (read: bothers the hell out of) me, really, because it didn’t help anything. As an easy example, listen to Ben Stiller’s recorded phone conversation as a man who murdered his twin in “The Cable Guy” (yeah, weird example, roll with it for a moment). Listen to the way he says “Asian” in that recording (repeatedly). I’ve heard (awful) people say the word with precisely the same ugly tone – and worse – to talk about (almost exclusively) people in the aforementioned dark-haired, epicanthus-bearing ethnicities.
In other words: it doesn’t matter what word is sanctioned or not. Terrible people will use whatever words you give them to say terrible things. Good people will do their best to not be a jerk about it even if you don’t put safety bumpers on the edges of every sharp word. Ever hear the difference between a Jewish person saying “Jew” and a frothing anti-Semite saying “Jew”? They’re practically two different words!
I’m not saying it’s all hopeless, but I am saying that the constant re-labeling has not only failed, but failed spectacularly, because it’s a paper-thin disguise over exactly what dr John says: Newspeak. So you have the terrible people who use it (somewhat accurately, to be fair) only as a boogieman for their rallying cries, and you have the misguided (and sometimes well-meaning) people who try to impose it on everyone else…and (if you’ll forgive the hyperbole) the rest of us are stuck in the middle of a gunfight that one side brought rocket launchers to while the other brought picket signs. Even if you agree with the wielders of picket signs on principle: you can’t protect you and yours if you show up to a rocket launcher fight with a picket sign.
@Deimos:
I’m of mixed opinions on the idea of online anonymity. Aside from clearly nefarious reasons to employ anonymity, there are also very legitimate reasons to protect the identities of certain people in certain situations. A blanket “no more anonymity” rule is unlikely to do much of anything but restrict anonymity to those with the power to command it.
And… @Author: apologies. They never seem that long inside this little comment box, but I do know I tend to write long. Seeing them published, I cringe a bit at taking up so much of your thread!
The opponents of political correctness object to its core values of intellectual and cultural relativism. They dare to refute the insane notion; that all ideas carry equal weight and that in the interests of politeness we should remain silent when in the presence of ideas that are patently absurd, dangerous and damaging to our communities.
In the last 40 years, in both the US and Western Europe, The exponents of “Political Correctness” have been engaged in a so far successful attempt to undermine enlightenment values, they are responsible for the acceptance and resurgence of extremist theocracy, Fascism and Anti-Semitism.
An extreme example is the PC acceptance of FGM in the UK. There has not been a single prosecution of a parent for allowing someone to cut a child’s genitals off?
This is”Treating people with respect” folks! Perhaps I should just embrace PC thinking and flush my crusty old enlightenment values down the crapper?
@smee: agreed, though after years of being a profanity-spewing firebrand (albeit a reportedly eloquent, creative-profanity-spewing one), I’ve been trying to at least present more calmly about this insanity. If I come off as too easygoing about it, that’s largely my caution against working myself into a lather.
The PC exponents you describe bring to mind those who hold steadfast to the truism written in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “…all men are created equal…”
Setting aside the de facto sexism of the era, this statement is still utter bunk. All humans are not created equal – hell, if you were using a “point-build” system for us in an MMORPG, we’re not even all created with the same number of points! There’s no getting around this fact. It’s not mean, it’s not unfair, it’s just life: some people are just objectively more capable than others across the board.
But where the picket-sign-wielders miss the boat is that this isn’t a problem. It’s only circumstance. And aphorisms to the contrary, when life hands you lemons, you’re under no obligation whatsoever to make lemonade.
The more charitable read of that moldy old document (if we still want to pretend that these old documents’ exact words matter in modern times, which by the framers’ own admission would be an inane pretense) is that “all people are deserving of at least the same minimum amount of respect, compassion, and consideration until they definitively prove otherwise.”
That “tolerance of intolerance” madness has been a thorn in my foot for years now, too, as it seems to have been in yours. It’s as silly as “be skeptical of skepticism.”
GE: one can express ones stance without resort to profanity. Its a grave error to equate the dribbly brained, tyranny loving exponents of PC with the Freedom loving giants that drafted the US declaration of Independence and the US constitution; they are as alike as chalk and cheese!
It’s like comparing Einstein to the bacteria and detritus that was undoubtedly extant on the soles of his shoes!
GE, “…all men are created equal…” is an incomplete statement which makes people misunderstand it. Nobody has ever been daft enough to think it means we are all literally equal, that the poor or the weak have the same power as the wealthy and the strong.
The complete statement is: “All men are created equal in the eyes of the law.” And the government. This is a noble ambition, and can actually be true on occasion, as when a black man successfully sues a white man, or a female rape victim manages to make charges stick against her attacker. Of course it’s more often a goal and an ideal than a reality.
By the way, while your post was long, it was well worth reading.
GE : anonymity is fine for looking or using but I think that comments should have consequences. However as I said previously this isn’t for our generation, we have enshrined the rights of scuzzbags into our way of life. Any attempt to remove it will be seen as big brother thinking.
Incidentally the current story arc on South Park series 20 covers this whole topic better than I ever could.
@smee: I don’t like (or tend) to curse up a storm in someone else’s home (which includes Author’s site or anyone else’s), but I do advocate not shying away from the full arsenal of English vocabulary when the time, place, and circumstance call for it. One can express one’s stance without resorting to profanity, but sometimes one can express one’s stance more effectively by resorting to it. 😉
(My brother and I were apparently considered masters of the art when we were still writing about this stuff regularly. I try not to argue if anyone thinks I’ve actually mastered something.)
@Darwin: too true! Certainly, it’s the omission of the second part of that statement that causes the misunderstanding, and the incurious rarely move beyond that. Apologies for my (mis-?)appropriation of the first half to bolster my point, as it was essentially just an over-extended metaphor for the way that some folks prefer “falsehood and forced politeness” over “truth and genuine respect.”
And thanks for the complimentary response – although I’ve only posted here a handful of times in the last decade, I do read these threads frequently, and seeing your avatar is always a good sign that the conversation’s going the right way.
@Deimos: good points. And I caught a couple of the recent South Park episodes, though real life has precluded the possibility of watching any program on purpose lately. If you’re saying I should take the time to sit down and watch the full plotline, I’ll take the hint – I’ll check it out as soon as the tempests let up.
And despite its nominal opposition to the wise if satirical words of Douglas Adams, I very much dig your username.
As a performer of comic songs, most of them written in a less considerate age, I thought I should weed out the politically incorrect content, rather than risk offending people with a limited grasp of irony and a political axe to grind.
So I went through the repertoire, and took out went all the swearing, all the smutty innuendoes, the 60’s druggie slang, the sexist references to ‘girls’, the singalong choruses of jingoistic nationalism, and other instances of family-unfriendly vulgarity.
Afterwards I must say I felt cleansed, and spiritually renewed. But all I had left was three verses, all from different songs, so it all had to go back in again. Political Correctness, as others have noted, is mostly about about encouraging positive expectations of people; being considerate and reasonable, and that is to be applauded.
But comedy is about subverting expectations, exposing their weaknesses and hidden irrationalities; in the most general terms, we laugh hardest when our sense of reality is offended by the revelation of some undeniable truth about ourselves (or others), some previously unexamined prejudice or conceit.
In that sense, all good comedy is offensive; it makes you think, and react spontaneously and honestly. And in countries where thinking, spontaneity and intellectual honesty are a threat to established order, clamping down on free speech always starts with the comedians and satirists; the people who can hurt the despots’ feelings with the truth about themselves.
@hotrats: Another username I’m always happy to read here!
And (as a performer and writer myself, most frequently comedic) I agree with your assessment…so long as I can assert a specific understanding of what “offensive” means. Offense is subjective – something that those who wish to re-label everything, rather than simply promote respect and understanding, tend to forget.
One can take offense or not, and I fully grant that it’s not always a choice – people can find some things outright offensive, whether or not they “try” to take umbrage (cf. the humane reaction to genocide and other such horrors, or the justifiable reaction to some terrible event that one has prior experience with). But “giving” offense? That’s something that isn’t guaranteed even if you’re trying really, really hard. Think: incompetent insult comics, or the folks who bomb at Comedy Central roasts.
Ironic, therefore, that offense can only be definitively determined by the victims, not the perpetrators…but if we place the responsibility of restraint on the perpetrators across the board, we run far too dangerously close to outright censorship and “thought police” stuff. I think it’s more important to call out the people we agree offend on a global scope rather than take away the words they use to do it. That way, we can work towards a vague but workable consensus – and when people offend in order to do good, we don’t prevent them from doing it.
So, “all good comedy is offensive” – agreed! But the offense is most often specific and targeted. And while I disagree with the “punch-up, punch-down” criticism of comedy on principle (because it’s far too arbitrary in practice), the second-best comedy does tend to give offense specifically to those who really deserve to be offended…usually because they’re the ones the rest of us can agree are so broadly offensive themselves.
(The first-best comedy playfully offends only our brains’ grasp of reality and normality. Though maybe that’s just my opinion, there.) 😀
You have expressed my sentiments far better than I did so myself. Thank you.
As to the matter of anonymity; trolls aside, there are more than a few who are obliged to conceal their identity as a means of self preservation. Not everyone resides in a country, community or indeed in a family, where freely speaking your mind does not result in grave consequences. Not to mention the those whose careers and social positions impose certain restrictions and expectations upon them that the wider public seldom consider or are even aware of.
The loss of anonymity will silence many voices that cry out to be heard which I suspect, at least in part, is the very intention. Passively silencing people can be as effective as a bullet for making them effectively go away for good.
It’s not so hard to find yourself on a career and family destroying list that some would gleefully exploit for their own religious or political ends. I know as I’ve been professionally involved in dealing with the dreadful consequences of such acts.
Reid thank you. The restrictions of which you speak are what the exponents of PC rely on! This is patently demonstrated by the progressive enemies of free speech and exponents of PC on this site. Time and again they portryay themselves as nice reasonable people and those who have the temerity to question their opinions as monsters or the equivalent of Nazi’s, Stalin pol pot etc.
The problem with political correctness, as with so many good ideas, is that some people simply take it too far*, often to the extent that it comes full circle and becomes offensive to many. An example of this is.can be found in an article by Ophelia at her excellent Butterflies & Wheels blog.
Ophelia quotes the mission statement of the National Network of Abortion Funds which, in its almost fanatical zeal not to exclude various trans- people, does not refer at all to women, who are realistically the only people likely to require an abortion. By trying to be inclusive of the few people who might want to use abortion services but who do not self-identify as women, the authors of the statement have managed to insult the largest oppressed group in the world.
See http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/what-means-this-word-women/
When it comes to acceptable language and behaviour I tend to go with Aussie comedian Adam Hills’ definition of pc: don’t be a dick.
* Racism is another case in point. According to the morality police known as The Horde who patrol the comments section of Pharyngula, there’s a simple and infallible method of knowing whether an individual is racist and that is to look at their skin colour. If a person is white then they are racist. No kidding. It apparently matters not what one’s personal ethics or views, if one is white then one is racist by default, and nothing can change that.
smee
Question my opinions in a nice reasonable way, actual facts will help your argument. Your unsupported claims suggest you have nothing but an unsupported opinion, probably borrowed, and I won’t respond further.
AoS, Plainsuch:
With this accusation (stalin, Pol Pot etc.), Smee seems to be shouting in a large empty room, and mistaking the echo for a confirmation. I can’t remember anyone here ever taking someone to task in this way, except in obvious jest.
Well, let me be the first to join Smee in his “large empty room” and provide him with an audience.
He’s spot on about FGM, something that PC folk stood by and wrung their hands about, or denied the existence of for fear of racism. May they eventually feel the shame they deserve to feel for their cowardliness, muddle-headedness, and narcissistic desire to put their own self-images of anti-racism over little girls being mutilated.
Maajid Nawaz calls these people the “ctrl-left” and they are the horrible mirrror image of the “alt-right”. Frankly, both wings deserve one another in some festering pit of identity politics. A plague on both their houses. However–the rest of us–those who have some interest in defending liberal values–do not deserve to have the public sphere hijacked by these people.
On a small factual note we have had one prosecution for FGM in the UK and we couldn’t get that right. It was actual corrective surgery and necessary to save the womans life following tearing after a birth. Fortunately the prosecution failed. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/04/first-female-genital-mutilation-prosecution-dhanuson-dharmasena-fgm
Helena, we are asking Smee to qualify his claim that we here at the C&B are ‘enemies of free speech’ who label anybody who disagrees with us as Nazis, etc.
That the left does contain a lot of those weasels you describe is beyond doubt, you just won’t find them here.
HelenaHandbasket: Thank you! someone with guts at last!
Acolyte of Sagan: I didn’t say everyone! There are progressive enemies of free speech and freedom who comment on this site and that comment was aimed at them! They know who they are!
In fact some have immediately revealed themselves in the last dozen comments.
What exquisite Irony to see that they’ve immediately switched into the default
Auto-demonisation mode that I was accusing them of! Joy oh Joy! Oh how the mask slips!
I oppose the genital mutation of both females and males below the age of consent. After they’ve reached adulthood they can, of course, mutilate, modify and tattoo their own bodies to their hearts desire.
I am all for free speech and against political correctness. Especially with racist remarks, or any other type of awful comments… How is a well-intended person supposed to spot the racist if the latter is deprived of his right to say what he really thinks?!?
I think political correctness creates a whole bunch of dishonest people who limit their speech to what the crowd in front of them wants to hear.
I’m not saying that political correctness is the only responsible for Trump’s victory, but it certainly is to me a determining factor.
To sum up, I agree with Jesus on the political correctness part, and I agree with Mo that Trump is a buffoon. I can’t think of a better word to describe him.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
January 23, 2009
It’s possible to agree with Jesus on the Grievance Brigade and with Mo on his assessment of the President-elect. It should go without saying that one can teach Huckleberry Finn without being called a racist. Not, however, that one should look to Mr Trump for a contribution to rational discourse…As for this cartoon: weak punchline.
With you on all that Steve.
yeah, those feminazis and their thought police…
my anecdotal experience is that those who complain the most about political correctness are generally the same people who’ve never refrained from saying anything on their mind, it’s just that they’re tired of being made to feel bad about it.
what nicolas sarkozy called “la droite décomplexée” nails it: what they really want is to stop feeling bad about their ideas. they want to be able to call other people faggots if they so feel. it bugs them to think that we would call them bigots as a result. it’s the “fundamental right to hurt other people without being hurt back” religious freedom.
[…] New Jesus and Mo strip called “jump”, comes with the tags generation snowflake, political correctness, Trump. And indeed, he seems to be talking about Trump as an end to “political correctness,” which it’s not. […]
spot on my friend…. Darwin help us all !!!
Jean-Francois, I’m afraid I must take issue.
Political Correctness is a de facto restriction on true Freedom of Speach, a moment of reflection will reveal that it really could not be any otherwise.
Freeedom of Speach across the modern world, and indeed throughout history, is an extremely rare commodity: very hard to win but perilously easy to lose. For it to achive it’s maximal power and impact it needs to stand unviolated, without any restriction or censure, no matter what.
In a truly free and open market place of ideas and rational discourse there should be no place for constraint or limits – the fact that some might feel offended or that others might be offensive is utterly irrelevant.
Political Correctness, of any hue, represents a clear and present danger to Freedom of Speach and, if solely on that basis alone, I should be opposed at every step: no matter what.
Or indeed ‘Speech’ (delft face slap)!
Reid….. I guess that’s it for good manners as well…….
@reid: if you read what i wrote carefully, you’ll find that i’m not advocating for or against so-called political correctness. i’m merely opining that the people who complain about it the most are precisely the ones who ignore it.
i’m also pointing out that using the “political correctness” thought-terminating cliché is a way of censoring speech, which seems like a contradiction when complaining about one’s speech being censored.
freedom of speech is the right to say almost anything, and this is fine with me. it is not, however, the right to say anything and go unchallenged. challenging an idea seems to be pretty much the essence of this “market place of ideas”.
@author: tagging “trump” seems like a sure-fire way to attract a whole new audience.
j-fg – yeah, I’m not sure it was such a great idea.
SS: My girlfriend had to explain it to me but actually the punchline is a stroke of genius.
The people that complain most about political correctness just want a different vocabulary. ‘Patriot ‘ for ‘ mouth-breather, racist thug or useful idiot’. ‘Truther’ for being sceptical of the government’s official narrative. And ‘Great Again’ for ‘Fascist’.
I could not see comments for this comic until after I commented on the previous one.
I’ll just have to live with it.
Why can’t I share this on facebook any more?
Scratch that. I found it…..
Philosophical principles and ideological propositions should stand and fall on their own merits; with due regard to empirical evidence, reason, logic and rationality. This must surely involve the preference of objectivity over subjectivity; or at least it should do if the goal is rational discourse without any fear or favour to preconceived vested interests.
Human nature being what it is, the Street, Playground or Battlefield are seldom conducive venues for balanced discussion – here we require the social lubricant of manners, prescriptive hierarchies and rules of engagement to avoid needless conflict (have you ever tried reasoning with a drunk?).
However, wherever rational discourse is required Political Correctness is anathema – you just need to step out of your own subjective bubble and political/religious preferences.
Philosophical principles and ideological propositions should stand and fall on their own merits; with due regard to empirical evidence, reason, logic and rationality. This must surely involve the preference of objectivity over subjectivity; or at least it should do if the goal is rational discourse without any fear or favour to preconceived vested interests.
Human nature being what it is, the Street, Playground or Battlefield are seldom conducive venues for balanced discussion – here we require the social lubricant of manners, prescriptive hierarchies and rules of engagement to avoid needless conflict (have you ever tried reasoning with a drunk?).
However, wherever rational discourse is required Political Correctness is anathema – you just need to step out of your own subjective bubble and political/religious preferences.
Is that a wee tear on J’s cheek in the last panel?
Cheeses swept!
Those who decry political correctness generally seem to want to behave as inconsiderate assholes without fear of social censure. I am totally for political correctness. It simply means taking the feelings of others into considerations when discussing ideas, or attaching labels.
It also is often inaccurate as well as inappropriate, as in when one calls a political opponent a “retard” That is offensive to the mentally challenged, and most likely not accurate as a pejorative. I can discuss ideas without using language others find offensive.
The only time political correctness gets up my nose is when it tries to rewrite history and purge words that are now taboo from literature. It’s not the words that are politically incorrect, it’s the thought and intention behind them that is. There is nothing politically incorrect about the word “nigger” for example. Using that word to describe your neighbor is not only politically incorrect, its the badge of a reactionary dickhead.
I get offended when I read something like “The woman called him the N word.” as if it is the word itself that is offensive. As if we all don’t know what the N word is. This is right in line with writing f**k in a report, as if we all don’t know what the fuck that word really is. It’s not the words, damn it. It’s the use to which the word is put.
Steve Sherman, you need to re-calibrate your irony meter so that you can recognize a great punchline. Our Author seems to be a bit too subtle for you, though yes, I had to think for a minute before I got it. Author does that to us on occasion. Makes us think that is.
“I can discuss ideas without using language others find offensive.” Apparently not, eh. 🙂
@Reid Malenfant
Replace all instances of “political correctness” and variations thereof in your comment with “treating people with respect”, and see how your comment reads then…
I appreciate the irony of the last panel. And that most of the people commenting missed it.
@NateHevens (et al):
I despise the deplorables. I spent years writing against people like them. I did all I could, which – given my limited resources – largely amounted to a single (and rather meaningless) vote.
And your suggestion to Reid to do a search-and-replace of “political correctness” with “treating people with respect” is right on the money…
…but…
In my experience, those who chose to call it political correctness (often with capital PC) in the first place created this problem. Political correctness – again, in my experience, both direct and indirect – rarely seems to address problems. Instead, its proponents insist that we re-label the problems, as if a change of vocabulary will solve a problem itself.
Yes, I’m aware (and can agree, to a limited extent) that in certain contexts, a change of wording can change minds. But that’s the problem – it must be done carefully, and the movement that took up the banner of political correctness by no means approached this with care (ironic, considering their presumed motivations for doing it).
By calling this thing “political correctness,” the movement itself – which could have been noble, but boiled down to a call for re-labeling everything – has backfired, terribly. If it had simply been called what it is – e.g., “treating people with respect” or even (quite simply) “decorum” – then how could those who can be reached argue against it? (Those who can’t be reached were lost anyway, and will ideally be washed away in the wave of enlightenment that I hope may still come and change the tides of future history from this deluge that currently threatens to drown us.)
Given a term to rally against (political correctness) and associating that term with a “side” that they hate means they no longer have to think about what it means (respect, decorum), and can hate it all they want to without fear of a nagging conscience.
Call something what it is, and we all know what is meant – we can debate whether it’s a positive or negative, but we know what it means. Re-label it with a far more arbitrary term, and that’s when the problems begin – it’s hard to have complete authority over the definition of neologisms, and once they’re in the wild – roaming free in a living language – that definition is completely beyond the control of those who wished to introduce it to rational discourse (cf. how “ad hominem” became a way for the ignorant to say “you’re insulting me,” rather than “you’re using your insults as the basis of your argument).
Caveat: you can say “but they’re using it wrong” ’til you’re blue in the face (I know this well). It doesn’t, unfortunately, change anything, let alone their positions. And if the point was to change hearts and minds, then that’s just another way to fail.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, in spite of the fact that people who wish to utilise it to be dickheads will readily do so. And whilst political correctness has its place, I too find that also can be easily misused, hence all the arguments against it going back to free speech.
We all have differences of opinion and I’m okay with that. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it when your opinion is based on obstinate, ignorant and unreasonable viewpoints that skew facts and insult basic intelligence.
On the other hand, I have also said plenty of stupid shit and at those times wish I could go back and edit myself. Fine to do online (if there’s an option), not so easy to fix in reality. A pity there are some who don’t feel the need to edit or correct themselves and lay everything bare. It is those people who are now growing more vocal and it makes me dread the upcoming years. More than usual.
Nowadays (at least in Dutch) “Political Correctness” in its negative meaning is often replaced by “Newspeak”. Readers of Orwell’s 1984 will recognise it.
It has at least the advantage of (slowly) letting PC getting back its more positive annotation.
Did the people who wanted to avoid offending call what they were doing being politically correct? I thought that political correctness was applied to the re-labelling as a perjorative by people who wanted to be able to go on calling people niggers, retards, etc. and didn’t like being pulled up on their behaviour. But I admit my memory of many things is not accurate so …
I think that the greatest sacrifice decent humans make in the online world is defending the right to free speech for complete scuzzbags. Alas I think its an all or nothing proposition for our generation. However for future humans (brought up to realise that online words have real world consequences ?) this will probably change.
The idea of online invulnerability is a throwback to the original way we accessed the web (alone, in private, often at night) so it felt like a world divorced from real world consequences. Now we use the internet everywhere and tend to use our own name, people see internet and actual comments as interchangeable. The right to anonymity is dying and hopefully trolling will die too. I think this isn’t a bad thing IF you wish to comment, incidentally I’m Mark from Chester in the UK. Goodbye anonymity.
@Jazzlet
It’s a good question – as I recall (I was in college when the term was coined and gained traction), the first people I heard using the term “political correctness” were for decorum and respect, but against the rigid rules set that forced everyone to use specific, PC-approved labels. (Disclosure: that hews close to my own view.) They were not decrying the idea of respect and decorum itself, and were decidedly not aching to use any pejoratives while stewing in some pile of their own miserable hatred (cf. the misanthropic miscreants currently celebrating the victory of a jackass who has no interest in defending their interests anyway).
We actually had required student seminars on politically correct terminology (which were even introduced as such, so it’s implausible that “PC” was being used strictly to denigrate it even then).
Anecdotally (but in keeping with my point), in the seminar my brother had to attend (same time period), the floor was opened up to attendees; a young Chinese woman stood and said something to the effect of: “When someone calls me Oriental, I feel like a rug!”
Aside from the unintended absurdity inherent to the young woman’s statement, this assertion always bothered me. I have never – in all my experience – ever heard the word “Oriental” used as a pejorative. I’m not saying it can’t be or hasn’t been used as such; I’m saying the idea is completely alien to me. Growing up, all of my Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian friends used the term themselves, as a catch-all for any ethnicity from southeast Asia known for dark hair, epicanthic folds, and specific linguistic families (along with, as one friend informed me much later, much more viscous ear wax…? I never found out if she was joking or not). The AD&D book “Oriental Adventures”? I didn’t know that was supposed to be “wrong,” and neither did John – one of my three closest friends at the time, who happens to be Korean. (I’ve since come to understand what was wrong with the content of the book, but the term itself is still a puzzlement.)
Then the term “Oriental” was replaced with “Asian.”
Now, my white/Persian wife comes from the continent of Asia (she comes from a town in Russia precisely on the border of Asia and Europe), and Indians (from India) also come from Asia, as do Sri Lankans and a lot of other ethnic groups (in fact, the largest portion of the world’s population is from the continent of Asia!). So already, as many stand-up comics have discussed, it’s a strangely misapplied term that includes people we don’t mean to refer to by it in today’s parlance. That’s not the end of the world – lots of words have parallel and even entirely unrelated meanings (which is something the political correctness proponents often lose sight of, in their zeal to curb potentially offensive language).
I have no trouble calling anyone what they like to be called (as long as it doesn’t obfuscate their intentions: ahem, “alt-right”). So I used the term Asian, as asked. (Just like I refer to transgendered or transsexual people I know by the gender pronouns they prefer…as long as they’re ones that already exist. If they’re making up new ones, I’ll try my best, but it would certainly help if some individuals would stop getting angry at other individuals when the language simply doesn’t adopt those neo-pronouns so quickly or easily.)
But all this word-juggling is what “amuses” (read: bothers the hell out of) me, really, because it didn’t help anything. As an easy example, listen to Ben Stiller’s recorded phone conversation as a man who murdered his twin in “The Cable Guy” (yeah, weird example, roll with it for a moment). Listen to the way he says “Asian” in that recording (repeatedly). I’ve heard (awful) people say the word with precisely the same ugly tone – and worse – to talk about (almost exclusively) people in the aforementioned dark-haired, epicanthus-bearing ethnicities.
In other words: it doesn’t matter what word is sanctioned or not. Terrible people will use whatever words you give them to say terrible things. Good people will do their best to not be a jerk about it even if you don’t put safety bumpers on the edges of every sharp word. Ever hear the difference between a Jewish person saying “Jew” and a frothing anti-Semite saying “Jew”? They’re practically two different words!
I’m not saying it’s all hopeless, but I am saying that the constant re-labeling has not only failed, but failed spectacularly, because it’s a paper-thin disguise over exactly what dr John says: Newspeak. So you have the terrible people who use it (somewhat accurately, to be fair) only as a boogieman for their rallying cries, and you have the misguided (and sometimes well-meaning) people who try to impose it on everyone else…and (if you’ll forgive the hyperbole) the rest of us are stuck in the middle of a gunfight that one side brought rocket launchers to while the other brought picket signs. Even if you agree with the wielders of picket signs on principle: you can’t protect you and yours if you show up to a rocket launcher fight with a picket sign.
@Deimos:
I’m of mixed opinions on the idea of online anonymity. Aside from clearly nefarious reasons to employ anonymity, there are also very legitimate reasons to protect the identities of certain people in certain situations. A blanket “no more anonymity” rule is unlikely to do much of anything but restrict anonymity to those with the power to command it.
And… @Author: apologies. They never seem that long inside this little comment box, but I do know I tend to write long. Seeing them published, I cringe a bit at taking up so much of your thread!
The opponents of political correctness object to its core values of intellectual and cultural relativism. They dare to refute the insane notion; that all ideas carry equal weight and that in the interests of politeness we should remain silent when in the presence of ideas that are patently absurd, dangerous and damaging to our communities.
In the last 40 years, in both the US and Western Europe, The exponents of “Political Correctness” have been engaged in a so far successful attempt to undermine enlightenment values, they are responsible for the acceptance and resurgence of extremist theocracy, Fascism and Anti-Semitism.
An extreme example is the PC acceptance of FGM in the UK. There has not been a single prosecution of a parent for allowing someone to cut a child’s genitals off?
This is”Treating people with respect” folks! Perhaps I should just embrace PC thinking and flush my crusty old enlightenment values down the crapper?
@NateHevens
“Whenever rational discourse is required “treating people with respect” is anathema!
Have you ever presented a paper at a science symposium?
@smee: agreed, though after years of being a profanity-spewing firebrand (albeit a reportedly eloquent, creative-profanity-spewing one), I’ve been trying to at least present more calmly about this insanity. If I come off as too easygoing about it, that’s largely my caution against working myself into a lather.
The PC exponents you describe bring to mind those who hold steadfast to the truism written in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “…all men are created equal…”
Setting aside the de facto sexism of the era, this statement is still utter bunk. All humans are not created equal – hell, if you were using a “point-build” system for us in an MMORPG, we’re not even all created with the same number of points! There’s no getting around this fact. It’s not mean, it’s not unfair, it’s just life: some people are just objectively more capable than others across the board.
But where the picket-sign-wielders miss the boat is that this isn’t a problem. It’s only circumstance. And aphorisms to the contrary, when life hands you lemons, you’re under no obligation whatsoever to make lemonade.
The more charitable read of that moldy old document (if we still want to pretend that these old documents’ exact words matter in modern times, which by the framers’ own admission would be an inane pretense) is that “all people are deserving of at least the same minimum amount of respect, compassion, and consideration until they definitively prove otherwise.”
That “tolerance of intolerance” madness has been a thorn in my foot for years now, too, as it seems to have been in yours. It’s as silly as “be skeptical of skepticism.”
GE: one can express ones stance without resort to profanity. Its a grave error to equate the dribbly brained, tyranny loving exponents of PC with the Freedom loving giants that drafted the US declaration of Independence and the US constitution; they are as alike as chalk and cheese!
It’s like comparing Einstein to the bacteria and detritus that was undoubtedly extant on the soles of his shoes!
The exponents of PC, the birth mothers and fathers of snowflakes!
Great thread, folks.
GE, “…all men are created equal…” is an incomplete statement which makes people misunderstand it. Nobody has ever been daft enough to think it means we are all literally equal, that the poor or the weak have the same power as the wealthy and the strong.
The complete statement is: “All men are created equal in the eyes of the law.” And the government. This is a noble ambition, and can actually be true on occasion, as when a black man successfully sues a white man, or a female rape victim manages to make charges stick against her attacker. Of course it’s more often a goal and an ideal than a reality.
By the way, while your post was long, it was well worth reading.
GE : anonymity is fine for looking or using but I think that comments should have consequences. However as I said previously this isn’t for our generation, we have enshrined the rights of scuzzbags into our way of life. Any attempt to remove it will be seen as big brother thinking.
Incidentally the current story arc on South Park series 20 covers this whole topic better than I ever could.
@smee: I don’t like (or tend) to curse up a storm in someone else’s home (which includes Author’s site or anyone else’s), but I do advocate not shying away from the full arsenal of English vocabulary when the time, place, and circumstance call for it. One can express one’s stance without resorting to profanity, but sometimes one can express one’s stance more effectively by resorting to it. 😉
(My brother and I were apparently considered masters of the art when we were still writing about this stuff regularly. I try not to argue if anyone thinks I’ve actually mastered something.)
@Darwin: too true! Certainly, it’s the omission of the second part of that statement that causes the misunderstanding, and the incurious rarely move beyond that. Apologies for my (mis-?)appropriation of the first half to bolster my point, as it was essentially just an over-extended metaphor for the way that some folks prefer “falsehood and forced politeness” over “truth and genuine respect.”
And thanks for the complimentary response – although I’ve only posted here a handful of times in the last decade, I do read these threads frequently, and seeing your avatar is always a good sign that the conversation’s going the right way.
@Deimos: good points. And I caught a couple of the recent South Park episodes, though real life has precluded the possibility of watching any program on purpose lately. If you’re saying I should take the time to sit down and watch the full plotline, I’ll take the hint – I’ll check it out as soon as the tempests let up.
And despite its nominal opposition to the wise if satirical words of Douglas Adams, I very much dig your username.
As a performer of comic songs, most of them written in a less considerate age, I thought I should weed out the politically incorrect content, rather than risk offending people with a limited grasp of irony and a political axe to grind.
So I went through the repertoire, and took out went all the swearing, all the smutty innuendoes, the 60’s druggie slang, the sexist references to ‘girls’, the singalong choruses of jingoistic nationalism, and other instances of family-unfriendly vulgarity.
Afterwards I must say I felt cleansed, and spiritually renewed. But all I had left was three verses, all from different songs, so it all had to go back in again. Political Correctness, as others have noted, is mostly about about encouraging positive expectations of people; being considerate and reasonable, and that is to be applauded.
But comedy is about subverting expectations, exposing their weaknesses and hidden irrationalities; in the most general terms, we laugh hardest when our sense of reality is offended by the revelation of some undeniable truth about ourselves (or others), some previously unexamined prejudice or conceit.
In that sense, all good comedy is offensive; it makes you think, and react spontaneously and honestly. And in countries where thinking, spontaneity and intellectual honesty are a threat to established order, clamping down on free speech always starts with the comedians and satirists; the people who can hurt the despots’ feelings with the truth about themselves.
@hotrats: Another username I’m always happy to read here!
And (as a performer and writer myself, most frequently comedic) I agree with your assessment…so long as I can assert a specific understanding of what “offensive” means. Offense is subjective – something that those who wish to re-label everything, rather than simply promote respect and understanding, tend to forget.
One can take offense or not, and I fully grant that it’s not always a choice – people can find some things outright offensive, whether or not they “try” to take umbrage (cf. the humane reaction to genocide and other such horrors, or the justifiable reaction to some terrible event that one has prior experience with). But “giving” offense? That’s something that isn’t guaranteed even if you’re trying really, really hard. Think: incompetent insult comics, or the folks who bomb at Comedy Central roasts.
Ironic, therefore, that offense can only be definitively determined by the victims, not the perpetrators…but if we place the responsibility of restraint on the perpetrators across the board, we run far too dangerously close to outright censorship and “thought police” stuff. I think it’s more important to call out the people we agree offend on a global scope rather than take away the words they use to do it. That way, we can work towards a vague but workable consensus – and when people offend in order to do good, we don’t prevent them from doing it.
So, “all good comedy is offensive” – agreed! But the offense is most often specific and targeted. And while I disagree with the “punch-up, punch-down” criticism of comedy on principle (because it’s far too arbitrary in practice), the second-best comedy does tend to give offense specifically to those who really deserve to be offended…usually because they’re the ones the rest of us can agree are so broadly offensive themselves.
(The first-best comedy playfully offends only our brains’ grasp of reality and normality. Though maybe that’s just my opinion, there.) 😀
Or in the words of our lord JC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAK0KXEpF8U
@smee
You have expressed my sentiments far better than I did so myself. Thank you.
As to the matter of anonymity; trolls aside, there are more than a few who are obliged to conceal their identity as a means of self preservation. Not everyone resides in a country, community or indeed in a family, where freely speaking your mind does not result in grave consequences. Not to mention the those whose careers and social positions impose certain restrictions and expectations upon them that the wider public seldom consider or are even aware of.
The loss of anonymity will silence many voices that cry out to be heard which I suspect, at least in part, is the very intention. Passively silencing people can be as effective as a bullet for making them effectively go away for good.
It’s not so hard to find yourself on a career and family destroying list that some would gleefully exploit for their own religious or political ends. I know as I’ve been professionally involved in dealing with the dreadful consequences of such acts.
I want to let the author know that both the RSS and Atom feeds are broken :(.
Reid thank you. The restrictions of which you speak are what the exponents of PC rely on! This is patently demonstrated by the progressive enemies of free speech and exponents of PC on this site. Time and again they portryay themselves as nice reasonable people and those who have the temerity to question their opinions as monsters or the equivalent of Nazi’s, Stalin pol pot etc.
The problem with political correctness, as with so many good ideas, is that some people simply take it too far*, often to the extent that it comes full circle and becomes offensive to many. An example of this is.can be found in an article by Ophelia at her excellent Butterflies & Wheels blog.
Ophelia quotes the mission statement of the National Network of Abortion Funds which, in its almost fanatical zeal not to exclude various trans- people, does not refer at all to women, who are realistically the only people likely to require an abortion. By trying to be inclusive of the few people who might want to use abortion services but who do not self-identify as women, the authors of the statement have managed to insult the largest oppressed group in the world.
See http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/what-means-this-word-women/
When it comes to acceptable language and behaviour I tend to go with Aussie comedian Adam Hills’ definition of pc: don’t be a dick.
* Racism is another case in point. According to the morality police known as The Horde who patrol the comments section of Pharyngula, there’s a simple and infallible method of knowing whether an individual is racist and that is to look at their skin colour. If a person is white then they are racist. No kidding. It apparently matters not what one’s personal ethics or views, if one is white then one is racist by default, and nothing can change that.
Smee, care to produce any evidence for that claim? I think you’re confusing us with straw miscreants, you Nazi, Stalinist monster.
smee
Question my opinions in a nice reasonable way, actual facts will help your argument. Your unsupported claims suggest you have nothing but an unsupported opinion, probably borrowed, and I won’t respond further.
AoS, Plainsuch:
With this accusation (stalin, Pol Pot etc.), Smee seems to be shouting in a large empty room, and mistaking the echo for a confirmation. I can’t remember anyone here ever taking someone to task in this way, except in obvious jest.
Well, let me be the first to join Smee in his “large empty room” and provide him with an audience.
He’s spot on about FGM, something that PC folk stood by and wrung their hands about, or denied the existence of for fear of racism. May they eventually feel the shame they deserve to feel for their cowardliness, muddle-headedness, and narcissistic desire to put their own self-images of anti-racism over little girls being mutilated.
Maajid Nawaz calls these people the “ctrl-left” and they are the horrible mirrror image of the “alt-right”. Frankly, both wings deserve one another in some festering pit of identity politics. A plague on both their houses. However–the rest of us–those who have some interest in defending liberal values–do not deserve to have the public sphere hijacked by these people.
On a small factual note we have had one prosecution for FGM in the UK and we couldn’t get that right. It was actual corrective surgery and necessary to save the womans life following tearing after a birth. Fortunately the prosecution failed.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/04/first-female-genital-mutilation-prosecution-dhanuson-dharmasena-fgm
If someone wants to see the sort of thing Smee is complaining about then maybe they need to read this piece of abject self-abasement recently published in the Guardian (here linked with Jerry Coyne’s commentary on it)
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/the-guardian-publishes-the-ultimate-abasement-of-the-left-an-anonymous-writer-flagellates-himself-for-criticizing-islam/
Helena, we are asking Smee to qualify his claim that we here at the C&B are ‘enemies of free speech’ who label anybody who disagrees with us as Nazis, etc.
That the left does contain a lot of those weasels you describe is beyond doubt, you just won’t find them here.
HelenaHandbasket: Thank you! someone with guts at last!
Acolyte of Sagan: I didn’t say everyone! There are progressive enemies of free speech and freedom who comment on this site and that comment was aimed at them! They know who they are!
In fact some have immediately revealed themselves in the last dozen comments.
What exquisite Irony to see that they’ve immediately switched into the default
Auto-demonisation mode that I was accusing them of! Joy oh Joy! Oh how the mask slips!
They really don’t do irony do they?
I oppose the genital mutation of both females and males below the age of consent. After they’ve reached adulthood they can, of course, mutilate, modify and tattoo their own bodies to their hearts desire.
Smee, having looked back through the last dozen and more comments I fail to see the demonisation you claim. Care to be more specific?
[…] Comics – Jesus & Mo […]
I am all for free speech and against political correctness. Especially with racist remarks, or any other type of awful comments… How is a well-intended person supposed to spot the racist if the latter is deprived of his right to say what he really thinks?!?
I think political correctness creates a whole bunch of dishonest people who limit their speech to what the crowd in front of them wants to hear.
I’m not saying that political correctness is the only responsible for Trump’s victory, but it certainly is to me a determining factor.
To sum up, I agree with Jesus on the political correctness part, and I agree with Mo that Trump is a buffoon. I can’t think of a better word to describe him.
Congrats again for your marvelous work, Author.