Whoopi! A Celebration of Runaway Political Correctness
The chilling effects of runaway political correctness have driven countless potentially provocative public and quasi-public discussions underground.
by Rich Herschlag
I grew up in a country that agreed to disagree. Today I live in a country that agrees to cancel. It doesn’t matter who you are. Your cancellation is already in the pipeline. Here it comes now. Looks like this one’s a purely factual statement regarding an ethnic group other than your own, but a member of that same ethnic group with two million followers on social media decided it sounded unsettling coming out of your mouth so you’ll be looking for another job in the morning. Yipee!
Although I still identify as a Democrat, my affinity to the party is rooted in almost a century of attempts to distribute economic opportunity more widely, advocate for immigrants, provide a counterbalance to big business, keep the military-industrial complex in check, fight for civil rights and women’s rights, and legislate for a cleaner environment. But no matter how much the current administration adheres to some version of this platform, effectively battles COVID, and gets people back to work, the general public’s equating Democrats with insane PC culture virtually assures the donkey party will lose at least one house of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. Hooray!
I went to a hifalutin college in the 1980s where the movie Deep Throat was shown by the debate society as a fundraiser and hundreds of student demonstrators stood outside protesting the objectification and exploitation of women. Nonetheless, the grotesque but perfectly legal show went on and everyone had their say. Today, cutting edge Black performers like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle with social observations a thousand times more meaningful and subtle than anything ever gleaned from a grainy porno movie avoid American campuses like the plague. Yay!
In 2022 even in professional sports the focus is style rather than substance and names rather than solutions. The former Washington Redskins have spent two years in PC purgatory calling their franchise the Washington Football Team as if the year is 1890 and 11 scrappy white men under 200 lbs who run a 5.2 second 40-yard dash play both ways. But the Washington Football Team has not hired Colin Kaepernick and will never hire Brian Flores. Rah-rah!
Historically, both the purpose and methodology of almost all progressivism was to promote open and honest discussion of sensitive but important social issues while also respecting a diversity of individuals, groups, and viewpoints. Today, I know the rules and you know the rules. You can comment on, critique, parody, satirize, editorialize on exactly one group—the group you’re in, and if you’re not a member of that group please shove a sock in your mouth and sit in the corner until further notice. If you happen to be a legitimate member of a given group your purity can and will be called into question at any time. Remember, there is always someone purer than you either in the room or on the thread, and your relative lack of make-believe street cred limits you to taking notes and obsequiously nodding your head. Bravo!
The chilling effects of runaway political correctness have driven countless potentially provocative public and quasi-public discussions underground, where the speech is more likely to be toxic, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and vengeful. It’s as if in 20 short years we’ve unlearned dozens of valuable lessons on repression. How scorning masturbation leads to dirtier laundry. How banning birth control leads to more abortions. How criminalizing narcotics creates a massive international underground drug trade. How banning books leads to stupider adults. How requiring celibacy in the clergy promotes pederasty. And not least of all how banning discourse engenders hostility. Three cheers!
My fairly diverse friend group is sick of runaway political correctness but they all like making a living. In subterranean hideouts where folks are asked to leave their phones in a basket outside the door, we might discuss how a million substitutions of the phrase “differently-abled” for the word “disabled” won’t retrofit a single ADA ramp to a single Applebee’s. How a billion capitalizations of the word “Black” won’t contribute a penny toward closing the gap between white family wealth ($184,000 median) and Black family wealth ($23,000 median). How swapping out “illegal” immigrants in favor of “undocumented” immigrants doesn’t provide a single hot meal at the border or rescue one person from sex trafficking. How these psychotic word games burn up more energy than a Bitcoin mining farm, snuff out creativity, dilute empathy, put social dread on steroids, and ironically empower a dangerous, misbegotten white grievance narrative. Awesome!
In a week when an innocent Black man was killed sleeping on a couch by police with a no-knock warrant, climate change-driven severe weather paralyzed a third of the country, the Omicron variant of coronavirus killed thousands, it was reported that the 45th President planned to have the federal government seize voting machines, and the planet remained on the brink of World War III, the biggest media story was the petty two-week suspension of a talk show co-host presenting a less than well researched opinion on the origins of the Holocaust. Whoopi!
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Letters To The Editor
A new feature on The Banter! This week: Woke racism, Tucker the g**p and subscriber cancellations!
As part of our commitment to our wonderful readers, we are introducing a weekly “Letters to the Editor” feature for Banter Members where we feature thoughtful/controversial comments and emails from readers. I’ll be chiming in with responses. If you have a question or want to write to us, please send to: ben@thedailybanter.com
- Ben
A reader writes in response to my piece on Whoopi Goldberg and the “non-liberal left”:
This attempted redefinition of Racism is a perfect example of all the things that absolutely infuriate me about the non-liberal Left. I am FIRMLY on the Left, and seeing those who are supposedly my political brethren spout off such ill-informed, poorly thought out, and just plain awful ideological ideals just makes me sick. Racism is NOT defined by "whiteness", which is another thing they have been working to redefine to encompass everything bad about humanity (just go on the Internet and do a search for the "meaning of whiteness."
This is also who I absolutely refuse to bend to this new standard of capitalizing black (and sometimes, albeit rarely, white.) This does nothing but emphasize and reinforce tribalistic differences between group when we should instead be doing everything to REDUCE these stupid tribal boundary allegiances…
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First, I love the work you guys do at The Banter, so any feedback is my attempt to be helpful. I appreciate so-called "political correctness" because people/coworkers can no longer scream Queer in my face, strangers seldom insult me with impudence in public anymore, etc. Holding people accountable for hate-speech, homophobia, racism etc. is a very good thing. Nit-picking on other quasi-related, not-so-justified forms of discrimination can be annoying and abused. But let's not forget, the original political correctness tag came from people whining about their loss of freedom to hate/insult/bar minority groups without consequence. You may long for the good old days before political correctness but I do not.
When did you guys hire Bill Maher?