A few years ago a journalist sitting near me in the office said “oh no”.
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A few minutes after she said this, a person from outside the office arrived and they had a few words in a corner. They had been exchanging, by email, some words about a third person, and then the person from outside the office had accidentally sent her email to the subject of their criticism.
My advice was to ring the person and grovel. That’s a technical term for own up and face the music.
I thought about that when a person in the public eye did the same thing recently. He had used some nasty words about a female journalist – and then sent the email to her by mistake.
That might have little or even nothing to do with political correctness, but I thought of it as I sat down to write about political correctness.
Some people in our country, and perhaps other countries, are worried that they can’t say anything without sending it to their lawyers first.
The Australian Union of Students said people became aware of “political correctness” when they became victim to what was considered undesirable.
I came across a website recently that included what it called items of “political correctness gone mad”.
They included a Seattle school referring to spring spheres instead of Easter eggs; the BBC replacing brainstorming with thought showers in case epileptics would be offended; a United Kingdom job recruiter’s use of the words “reliable” and “hard working” rejected in case some lazy people objected; some stores in Australia banning Santas from saying “ho ho ho” because it was too close to American slang for prostitute.
To be politically correct is to choose words and sometimes actions that avoid disparaging, insulting or offending people because they belong to oppressed groups. This is highly commendable.
So far as I can tell, the term began to take hold in the middle of the 20th century.
Senator Cory Bernardi of Australia, commenting on political correctness, suggested a few years ago he did not need to be welcomed to his own country, because he was born here and as such was just as indigenous as anybody else. He mentioned a group that had renamed fairy penguins little penguins in case homosexuals would be offended.
A Victorian school allowed Muslim students to leave before the National Anthem was played, in case it was against their culture, and 40 students left.
There are many examples of political correctness that are good, in the interests of equality. But in my opinion – and you might disagree -- there are some that go too far.