Although this blog has been quiet for a while, I have been thinking about some things I’d like to discuss. One thing I’ve been deliberating on lately is the notion of politically correct speech. I’ve heard some of my right-wing friends and family criticizing the concept recently, and I was considering writing a blog entry on it, but it didn’t seem all that relevant right now. How ironic that in the midst of my contemplation on political correctness, Ann Coulter would step up to give me something to which I could respond. I suppose I should thank her, but since good manners are lost on her, she would not appreciate the gesture.
Prior to Ms. Coulter’s nasty comments on March 2nd, I had been thinking about why so many conservatives have a problem with politically correct speech. One thing I’ve noticed is that they just dislike the term. “Politically correct” suggests some kind of federal consequence for saying the “wrong thing.” The idea is unpleasant, like something out of Orwell’s 1984: Say the wrong word, and Big Brother will come for you!
I guess some people have forgotten the genesis of the term. “Politically correct” originally applied to politicians who have to be worried about offending voters. Like many words and phrases in the English language, however, it evolved, adopted by the general public which co-opted it to mean “any expression that might be considered inappropriate or insensitive.” Perhaps we should simply change the term to something more suitable, say “human decency,” “cultural sensitivity,” “social awareness,” or even “Christian morality,” after all Jesus would never have called anyone nasty names.
No matter what you call it, though, rudeness and inappropriate language has historically been and should continue to be punished. When I was little, there was a kids’ show on the local TV station that ended with Cowboy Bob reminding us all, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” And the message was reinforced in elementary school. I got in trouble once for getting mad at my playmates and calling them “faggots,” and I remember being confused when the fifth-grade boys got in trouble for playing a game called “Smear the Queer.” They were allowed to continue playing the game, but they weren’t allowed to call it by that name anymore. Since I didn’t really understand the words “faggot” or “queer,” these situations seemed very strange to me. That was 1981, years before anyone ever spoke of political correctness, but we were still facing unpleasant consequences for calling people rude names.
Now, I grant that our government should not punish us for being rude. We cannot make words illegal. Freedom of speech is too important; however, the First Amendment of our Constitution does not exempt us from being polite; it simply means the government cannot make us be polite. Sadly, no one else wants the job either these days. Parents and society don’t police language much anymore. Cursing in public seems to be far more prevalent than it used to be. In fact, for all the whining and worrying about the dangers of politically correct speech, people seem to be saying whatever they want more than ever. With the advent of cable TV, satellite radio and the Internet, we have infinite outlets for our freedom of expression. Anyone can say anything and get an audience. And they are often rewarded for being rude or outrageous. (See also Rush Limbaugh, South Park, Jerry Springer, Anna Nicole Smith.) Pushing the envelope of acceptable language and behavior has become the great American pastime.
Still, as a society, we do get rankled now and then about something one of our celebrities says. Mel Gibson’s chauvinistic and anti-Semitic tirade got him a lot of bad press and lost him thousands of fans as did Michael Richards’ now-infamous “n-word” rant. Grey’s Anatomy star, Isaiah Washington, faced a similar firestorm for calling a gay co-star a “faggot.” (Sorry, gay friends.) Gibson, Richards and Washington all went to rehab because when a celebrity gets caught being stupid, hateful or criminal, the fashionable thing to do in Hollywood is to go into rehab to show remorse. (See also Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.) It seems American society does still have a little common sense when it comes to name-calling. Freedom of speech or not, it’s still rude. Just like we learned as kids.
Enter Ann Coulter. As might be expected from a woman who makes her living with hateful language, Ms. Coulter takes issue with people being held accountable for rude speech. So on March 2nd at the American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference, she used her prodigious linguistic powers to kill several birds with one stone. In one fell swoop, she managed to be insult liberals, Democrats, homosexuals, John Edwards, Hollywood celebrities, advocates of cultural sensitivity, and anyone with good manners. Pretty slick.
But I have a bit of advice for her and all those who denounce political correctness: Be careful of whose team you’re playing for. Do you really want to speak like a bigot? Like a chauvinist? Like a homophobic gangsta rapper? Like a 10-year-old playground bully? People who defend Ms. Coulter’s right to use the f-word, who support Mr. Richards’ use of the n-word, who bristle at the public reaction to Gibson’s anti-Jewish speech need to beware of the company they are keeping.
Of course, Coulter is not going to change. Like so many people who take freedom of speech to its ridiculous extremes, she’s mean-spirited, greedy, and self-serving. She chose her words very carefully to take on the many groups she hates so much. She does not believe that Edwards is gay. (After all, he has more evidence of his heterosexuality than she has since he is married and a parent, and she is neither.) She wanted to shock people, garner more attention, sell more books. She claims to be smart, and one would assume she must be since she has a law degree and several published books to her credit. With such language skills, one would think she could come up with something more clever than resorting to name-calling that I can hear from any bad-mannered little punk on the street.
Still, I wish we could disarm hate-mongers like Coulter and Limbaugh, Gibson and Richards by ignoring their words. Words do, after all, get their power from those who hear them, not those who speak them. There is nothing intrinsically evil about the sounds “fa,” “g” and “ot.” We use the sounds in lots of decent words like “fashion,” “goblin,” and “hut.” But when we string the sounds together and add a lot of personal baggage and cultural experience, we end up making the resulting word into a potent expression.
When my son was two years old, he started quoting entire speeches from the movie Toy Story. One of his favorite lines was “My ship!” Unfortunately, he had trouble discerning the hard “P” from a hard “T,” so it came out “My shit!” People would gasp and look suspiciously at my husband and me, and we would have to explain it to them. We hesitated to correct our toddler, though. We didn’t want to embarrass him, or, worse, alert him to an inappropriate attention-getter. We just kept repeating it back to him properly, emphasizing the “P” sound at the end. I wish we could do the same with people like Ms. Coulter. Contrary to her behavior, however, she is not two years old.
If we could ignore people like her, if the hearers could pretend words don’t matter, she and the other name-callers would have no ammunition. But no matter what the little ones say on the playground, words can hurt even more than sticks and stones. Those of us who were lucky enough to have good moms and dads, though, were taught that “If you can’t say anything nice…” I guess Ms. Coulter missed that lesson.
