Things You Hear on NPR: Yeah, We’re Going to Accuse You of Racism No Matter What You Do

It’s the same old “racism” Catch-22—damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  Disney was criticized for years for supposedly not having enough black characters in their major movies, then for having black actors do some of the voices in the cartoon movie The Lion King.  (Critics said, What, Disney can only have black characters if they’re animals? as well as accusing Disney of casting black actors only as the voices of the villains, which isn’t even close—James Earl Jones played the central character of the king and father, Mufasa, and black actors also voiced Rafiki, Simba’s mother, one of the Nalas, and one of the Simbas’ singing voice.)  Then Disney made The Princess and the Frog, with predominantly black (and non-animal) characters, and was criticized for supposedly playing into racial stereotypes.

Men Are from Mars, Liberals Are from Venus

Via The Volokh Conspiracy: Wonkblog breathlessly reports on “The disturbing differences in what men want in their wives and their daughters”:

When asked what qualities they want in in a wife, American heterosexual men said they value “attractive” and “sweet” women, a national survey recently found. Only 34 percent, however, said they wanted a romantic partner who is “independent.”

Politically Correct Double Standard

Reflecting further on how difficult it must be to relax and make offhand jokes if your world is a minefield of ever-changing PC taboos, I’m reminded of one of Jonah Goldberg’s newsletters.  He remarks that an offhand remark someone made about Indians was “utterly harmless” (true) but would risk the opprobrium of the humorless enforcers if made in their company.  He also makes an interesting point about the double standard involved in accusations of “micro-aggression”:

Associated Press Opts Out of Smearing Conservatives as ‘Homophobic’

From National Review Online’s Charles Cooke I learn that the Associated Press will no longer use the term “homophobia”:

Homophobia especially — it’s just off the mark. It’s ascribing a mental disability to someone . . . .

Feminist Nightmare

Happy Mother’s Day, the final day of National Offend a Feminist Week.  I don’t know whether being told that they have ironically ushered in a Brave New World of women’s degradation will offend feminists or not, but here goes:

In the wake of feminism and the sexual revolution, our society has degenerated surprisingly far (and continues to degenerate?) toward some kind of pre-civilizational nightmare dystopia in which men don’t respect women, and women don’t even respect themselves, as even those who exploit it will sometimes tell you:

(Blog entry)

The reason why I can string along multiple women is because each woman thinks she’s the girlfriend and the others are just women I have sex with.

National Offend a Feminist Week

I’m not sure whether it qualifies, but here’s my contribution to The Other McCain’s National Offend a Feminist Week:

Note that I would never have heard of Offend a Feminist Week (much less participated in it) if not for female blogger No One of Any Import, who explains,

Chrismahanukwanzakah

I just heard a radio ad use the term “holiday elves”.  People have been arguing for years about whether it’s OK reflexively to substitute “happy holidays” for “merry Christmas” everywhere out of some concern for “political correctness”, but when retailers or other big companies do that, at least I think I can understand where they’re coming from.  If they go further and say “holiday elves”, it almost seems to me like unthinking self-parody at that point—what other holiday has any tradition of elves, or what elves are associated with “holidays” generically, outside of the Christmas traditions?  

Washington “a Seedy Place”

In an interview on Laura Ingraham’s radio show yesterday, Ingraham asked candidate Rick Perry about some people’s concerns that he’s a bit of cowboy, that he may sometimes “shoot from the hip”.  In his answer, he said, among other things (quote is approximate),

I’ve never been an establishment figure, and frankly I don’t want to be.  I dislike Washington, I think it’s a seedy place.

Maybe that’s not really shooting from the hip in an answer to a question about shooting from the hip; maybe it’s part of a carefully cultivated “cowboy” persona.  I don’t care, it’s still a great line.

Get this man a nomination!

Contraceptives

Apparently the Pill makes men and women like each other less.  Also, apparently, condoms make women more depressed.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Catholic Church hasn’t been right about contraceptives all along.

Incidentally, political correctness makes it difficult even to talk about such questions.  The Wall Street Journal writer, at that first link, feels compelled to assure readers,

Multiculturalism

I have fond childhood memories of John Cleese in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Disney’s non-cartoon The Jungle Book.  So I was interested to learn (via Five Feet of Fury) that Cleese (“a generous donor to the Liberal Democrats who . . . has appeared in several party political broadcasts”) seems to have joined what may be an emerging consensus that multiculturalism, the West’s great experiment, has failed:

The Baroque Period of Official Multiculturalism

The government of the state of Minnesota has an Office of Minority and Multicultural Health.  (Since today is April Fools’ Day, I’ll add, as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up!)  Are you feeling multiculturally healthy today?

I guess it’s no worse than universities’ calling foreign students “international students”, or calling a black person a “diverse individual”.  But “political correctness” doesn’t just arbitrarily substitute one term for another; I think it also erodes our ability to think clearly about the things we’re talking about.

Support Arizona

You may have heard that Arizona recently passed an immigration law.*  Its critics claim several objections; according to them, among other things:

1—A state has no business dealing with the immigration problem; that’s for the federal government.
(The federal government has chosen not to enforce the border, and that should be the end of that!)