The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate.
by Sarah Dunant
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| published
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1994
by Virago 1994.
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| binding
| Paperback |
| isbn
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1853818348
(isbn13: 9781853818349)
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| ebook |
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| pages
| 224 |
| date added
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10-14-07
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modern-culture-innit
This book was published in 1994. 14 years later the war of the words and attitudes rages on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/tal...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/feat...
It's a war about when we say "we"...more
This book was published in 1994. 14 years later the war of the words and attitudes rages on:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/tal...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/feat...
It's a war about when we say "we" what do we mean and who are we anyway. "We" used to be white, male and middle aged as is well understood. Things were SO much simpler. That identity has now been put on trial and found guilty of perverting human consciousness. Justice has been done, it was taken out and shot. A letter stating that it lost its life in brave service to the empire has been sent to its family who weep over old photographs and tell each other what a beautiful person we used to be, how we were always kind to our black slaves and never chastised women lightly. So far so good. A job well done. But then the liberal, intelligent people who had dismantled this ugly superstructure either went mad or were replaced like in "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" by some other people who looked like them but were completely insane and started barking on about chestnuts being dangerous for kids, ice cream being dangerous for kids, cholesterol and sex being dangerous for everyone, Enid Blyton was a racist, Tom and Jerry was as bad as American Psycho, you can't smoke within a mile of another human being, and everything now had to be printed in 46 different languages including this review. It was very confusing and it still is. All those stories from the right wing press about kids being banned from singing "Baa Baa Black Sheep" - I thought they were all made up. But then Georgia (aged 6) sang "Baa Baa Woolly Sheep" to me. But it always seemed to me that the people complaining about pc were just right wing shits who were fuming that they couldn't call black people, gay people and women the various names that they wanted to. Same people who moaned on about how the word "gay" had been traduced and co-opted and now couldn't be used properly as if their human rights were being tramped all over.
But then in comes the human rights and health and safely people with their own whole-other-arguments and what was a life-affirming and successful campaign has become a hideous thousand armed beast which ties us up in mind-forged manacles every time we try to think straight. Should a guy who preaches jihad against the West be deported from Britain? Er, is he a foreign national? Yes. Well then, yes he should. Oh but his family are all in the UK plus the country he came from uses torture regularly so that would be breaking the human rights convention. Okay. What did the human rights convention say about liquidating 20,000 civilians during the Shock and Awe campaign in 2003? Not a lot really. But we can't sack a Moslem man if he refuses to guard the Israeli embassy in London. One thing leads to another. I sound like Theodore Dalrymple on acid. Helllp meeeeee.....
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