D'Souza is the best-selling author of "Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus," and helped coin the term political correctness.Say what?
I first heard the term "politically incorrect" in the early 1980s, although Wikipedia claims that the phrase circulated in the 1970s. Originally, it was exclusively used by leftists who wanted to knock other lefties down to size. There were quite a few dour, inflexible, endlessly proselytizing "progressive purists" in those days. (The Monty Python team made fun of the breed in both Holy Grail and Life of Brian.) Such people lived to harangue anyone who ate meat or referred to young women as "girls." The only way to beat down such a haranguer was to adopt a Steve Martin-ish sneer while bellowing "Well, excuuuuuse me for being politically incorrect!"
One never heard the phrase unless one attended college or listened to Pacifica radio stations. That situation changed around 1990, when George Bush the elder used the term as a way of portraying all liberals as mean-spirited Thought Police and snooty-patooty Margaret Dumont clones. (Although -- let's face it -- some "Progressive purists" really do achieve an impressively Dumont-esque insufferability factor.) Thus, a bit of lefty self-mockery became a right-wing propaganda meme.
I fail to see what Dinesh D'Souza had to do with the origins of that phrase.
Still, taking my cue from NewsMax, I will henceforth refer to D'Souza as "Dinesh, America's Foremost Thinker" -- which we may shorten to D.A.F.T.
(Side note: I also don't see how Steve Martin has managed to avoid aging since the 1970s. Perhaps he could let us all in on the trick...?)
8 comments:
Sounds like what a Rightwinger would do. Blame Americans. (Although I thought it was the Left that was suppose to do that.)
But if blame is needed then start with the Bush Administration for not listening to warnings and the airlines for not enforcing the boxcutter rules.
It seems to break down into two groups:
The Rightwingers blame Americans for being a certain something; and the Left blames the Rightwingers for incompetent ability in national defense affairs.
Joseph,
I've written about the origins of the term "politically incorrect" a couple of times on DU.Originally, it was a Marxist, especially Maoist, term. We have to keep in mind that one of the alternative terms for Marxist-Lenninist-Communism was "scientific socialism". Practitioners believed that "political economy" was as much a science as, say, physics. As such, there were scientifically "correct" answers to political questions and scientifically "incorrect" answers to political questions. If you believed, for example, that interest on an investment was a return to capital rather than "dead labor" than you were simply "politically incorrect" in you analysis. I believe that one of the first Marxist-Maoists to bring the term into American use was Angela Davis in the 1960s.
While mainstream liberals, neo-Marxists, and progressives generally refrained from using the term, I believe on the left it was largely hard left feminists who actually used the term seriously in the 1970s and early 1980s.
In the 1980s during the resurgence of the right, Reaganites began to use the term to characterize the rigidity of some elements of the left. Ever since it has been an ironic term rather than a term used in its original meaning.
Hamden from DU
steve went grey before he was 40; maybe even 30. so he hasn't had to deal with the normal aging at the normal rate of the rest of us. when we see his old pictures now, the grey hair is still a constant, so he looks the same. but it's really that he started looking older when he was young, not that he hasn't started looking old yet.
i hope that makes sense!
Dinesh is a prime example of right-wing affirmative action: no matter how uninformed, intellectually substandard or downright crazy, non-whites who spout the Repug-Wahabi party line are given 6 figure think-tank salaries, subsidized publishing deals and a TV show. And, of course, receive respectful treatment in the MSM.
Meanwhile, just try to earn a living in the U.S. as a "left-wing" pundit, not matter how well- informed, prescient or scholarly....
I saw the dude on Colbert last night, he was not impressive to say the least and Colbert made him look even more rediculious.
But he is a good example of a sector of immigrant citizens, who have swallowed the American greatness and exceptionalism hook, line and sinker. They believe in the American Dream and see themselves as protectors of it. They are more closed minded than Christian fundementalist. They usually reach success in America (as compared to their original culture, not being bound by the old restraints) and take that to be the evidence of their faith in America. They can be very dangerous (more so than the sheep like religious followers) since they can be used to further the causes of the ruling power base without understanding the complexities and historical sequences that have accured in the US. Another words, they start at 20th century American way of life being unequavically declared the end of history and go forth to prove the theory without a glance to past history or any other factors. In my original culture we have a saying about these kind of people. We call them the bowl that is hotter than the soup.
Speaking of "correctness":
"...airlines for not enforcing the boxcutter rules." -- Anonymous : 2:25 AM
I presume you are speaking about "utility knives", which are NOT "boxcutters". I have worked in a factory where I opened boxes. A "boxcutter" is a tool which fits in the palm of the hand with a tiny bit of blade exposed within a groove, and which could hardly be used as any kind of weapon. Granted, you can cut open a box with a utility knife, but that does not make it a "boxcutter".
I think it started with saying "politically correct" rather than "right" - I remember hearing that in the early seventies.
sofla said...
Increasingly, popular Western culture as driven by American culture is a lowest common denominator bottom feeding cesspool of vulgarity, which might offend many who are not especially religious fanatics or moral puritans.
Senator Daniel "Pat" Moynihan called part of this phenomenon 'defining deviancy down,' and for anyone who has been alive for any significant amount of time, the vast changes of the coarsening of culture are more than apparent.
So, rather than find this guy totally wrong, I believe there may be some truth in his claim that Western civilization, so-called (Mahatma Ghandi was asked once what he thought of western civilization, and he replied it would be a good idea that somebody would try it) has indeed gravely angered fundamentalist religionists of varying stripes across the world, and including among Islamic fundamentalists.
Nonetheless, what was more important, according to the quite clear statements attributed to bin Laden and likely indeed his words and thinking, was the geopolitical interference in the Arab lands by the West. The suppression of nationalist activists there for the benefit of western economic concerns, the installation and maintenance in power of tyrannical dictators who mistreat their own people to maintain their power and therefore maintain their support from the West, and etc.
And beyond that, of course, the Israel/Palestinian issue, putting infidel US troops into the lands which site the holy places revered in Islam, fill out his listed grievances.
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