Political Correctness Gone MadFreddy Woo writes: "I once worked on an animation to help highlight the issues homeless people face in winter. The client was happy with the work, then a note came back that the ethnic mix of the characters were wrong. These were cartoon characters. They weren't meant to be ethnically anything, but we were forced to make one of them brown, at the cost of about 10k to the charity. This is how your donations are spent. Wisely as you can see."
How has PC affected you? (Please add your own tales - not five-year-old news stories cut-and-pasted from other websites)
(, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 10:20)
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PC? What PC?Folks, PC is like a mythical beast prowling around Dartmoor. No-one ever sees it, only vague tracks, and the odd missing sheep. It is defined by its effects, not by being anything. Yes, I’ll get to the point in a minute.
In ye olden days, people were nasty to other people for rather crude reasons i.e the colour of their skins.As time progressed, we got more sophisticated and expanded it to involve people who liked touching other people of the same gender’s naughty bits. And so on. So some well-intentioned people devoted considerable time and energy to sorting this out with a whole bunch of laws ‘n shit. And by and large it seemed to work. Not a magic bullet, but things gradually got better. As someone who grew up in the late 70’s/early 80’s in Jockland with a Bangladeshi fostersister, I can guarantee you that.
And then…the PC thing. Just like Health and Safety, it is used as an excuse by the incompetent, the lazy and the exploitative to make sure that no-one can do anything, ever. It’s not the legislation, it’s the interpretation, usually by cretinous public employees/ HR pillocks desperate to justify their own existence and often publically funded role in ‘Multicultural Britain’.
Hanyway, here’s the good bit, and the heart of the con. The screaming headlines about PC gone mad/immigrant geese ate my hamster sell papers. Lots. And we go for it every time. It’s a self-perpetuating monster, as companies, councils and so forth believe the myth and introduce even sillier policies to avoid offending anyone, ever. When you throw Merkins and their ridiculous legal system into the equation, then things start getting even sillier. If you go back to the original well-meaning legislation, it doesn’t ban hanging baskets. Or Christmas. Or anything, much, apart from being irrationally nasty to people.
However, the industry (which is what it now is) depends not just on Guardian reading Lesbian Dwarf Outreach Diversity Consultants from Islington, but also the Daily Heil reading ‘disgusted of Bournemouth’, and all of us who go along with the myth like sheep.
There are those who play the system, and play it well. Some of the nastiest pieces of work I have experienced have been of an ethnic persuasion, who used the race/religion thing as the 100% universal get out of jail free card. However, I have met just as many pale anglo types who equally nasty, unscrupulous wastes of oxygen.
These people who implement the ever more ridiculous policies should be fed into a woodchipper. Anti-Discrimination is a noble cause, but someone who spends their entire life looking for things that might offend someone needs to be kept away from sharp objects. And then pushed off a cliff. Don’t believe them. Political Correctness hasn’t gone mad, but those who worship at it’s feet have.
Viva la revolucion!
(Oh, and try and be nice to nice folks, and tell the twattish ones what they are, and stuff like that)
Apols for length and rambling, as Mr Street-Porter once said.
(, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 15:39, 2 replies)
*applause*You said a lot of the things I didn't even think about. Self-perpetuating is pretty much bang on!
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Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 16:08,
closed)
HuzzahA wonderful post. I've just started working in a far more PC environment than I'm used to. As a working class labour voting lesbian from the Black Country I am myself a "minority" and also grew up around sufficent amount of kids of Asian/Afro-Carribean/Yam Yam descent to not be constantly on the lookout for things that might offend.
I was doing an event the other night when two of the women I worked with had a tut that there were ham sandwiches, as it would "offend Jews and Muslims". I was gobsmacked. I've yet to meet a Jew or Muslim who gets offended by ham in their presence, unlike the said vegetarian ladies.
As middle class straight white Guardian readers they are terrified they might offend someone, but have lived for so long in their white middle class Guardian reading enclaves that they're not quite sure how they might end up doing it. I still can't get my head around it.
(, Sun 25 Nov 2007, 2:33, closed)
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