Political incorrectness redux

PC describes language, policies or measures designed not to offend any particular group of people

‘Political correctness’ (PC) first came on my radar in the mid-1970s when I was working as a local government social worker. It was as I recall a gradual understanding that there were ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ ways not only to use language that was derogatory or demeaning to people in general, but a need to recalibrate entire paradigms. Its spread and deployment in UK was marked by labelling the term as something us do-gooders used to impose a particular ideology on the rest of the population. It gradually gained a kind of normative currency, if grudgingly, and remains a bugbear of the rightwing pretty much everywhere and is not infrequently cited as an example of a restriction on freedom of speech.

To be precise PC describes language, policies or measures that are designed not to offend or put at a disadvantage any particular group of people ( …I am sure you can see where I am going with this) and it has entered the body of law internationally at virtually every level but remains widely ridiculed and satirised. There are places where you can get prosecuted at worst or severely admonished at best for failing to press the PC button before opening one’s mouth or going into print. Enter President-elect Donald Trump.

Not only has Mr Trump turned American politics on their head he has ripped away the veneer of political correctness that has been unwillingly worn by an entire group of people, mostly but not exclusively from the right politically. They voted for a man whose innumerable breaches of the PC firewall they were prepared to accept, indeed ignore and often embrace as a kind of ‘new normal’ as a rejection of a set of political values that they had come to despise.

It mattered not — or at least not enough to deflect their voting intent — that Mr Trump has at various times demonstrated sexism, racism, misogyny and done so repeatedly. He has characterised Mexicans as ‘rapists’ and threatened to bar all Muslims from entering the USA until he finds out ‘what is going on’. He has graphically described his inappropriate touching of women and ridiculed people who are disabled, specifically a male reporter that he particularly disliked who suffers from a neurological condition. Some of the women that came forward to accuse him of sexually abusing them have been called ‘fat’ or ‘unattractive’ — so unattractive that Mr Trump would not be inclined to assault them anyway. He clearly has standards in this matter. You are safe if you fail to meet his attractiveness criteria.

The American — indeed the global — media reported all this in exhaustive almost forensic detail. Trump supporters were to be found in front of microphones daily — men and women, young and old — defending their champion who in the end went on to take the biggest job in the world. The next President of the USA is a man who is more than happy to make a grab for the genitals of any woman that takes his fancy — and he says on record that he is unable to control this as well as the urge to kiss them unannounced and certainly unwanted. Just the kind of chap you don’t want to get twitchy around a nuclear trigger.

There is probably not a politician in the world that does not come to the job without carrying luggage. The stuff of their pasts, the unwise comments caught on tape, the extra-marital affairs that surface at inopportune moments — and they are not infrequently forgiven or excused their peccadilloes. But Mr Trump is in a different league peccadillo wise, and he has given voice and power and permission to cast off the PC shackles, to many millions of Americans and by extension anybody in the rest of the world feeling similarly trammeled. There will be no immediate rolling back of legislation to protect minorities, but dangerously explicit permissions have been given, the restraints eased on what is and what is not acceptable behaviour or language. That permission has been created, brokered, and will likely be quickly institutionalised by the man who in 71 days walks across the threshold of the White House with his family. How quick — and easy — it was to burst the PC bubble.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2016.

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