Amid All the Talking, Meaning of ‘PC’ Got Lost

It is one of those phrases we throw around reflexively, convinced that we share with our fellow citizens a collective notion of what it means. But every now and then a debate emerges on radio talk shows, in the workplace, in news stories or magazines.

What does “politically correct” mean to us these days? Is political correctness an outlook, a set of values, a political ideology?

I found myself facing those questions last week, when several readers used the phrase to characterize a column I’d written suggesting that a woman whose drinking binge resulted in her children’s death deserved more than a year in jail.

“Thank you for taking what is probably a politically incorrect stand--demanding justice for those babies,” wrote Loretta Moss.

“You are right on with your assessment,” said Irene Baker. “It may not be politically correct to take such an attitude, but I’m anti-PC anyway.”

Maybe I’m a bit out of step, but I don’t consider valuing children’s lives and touting personal accountability to be anti-anything. What, I wondered, does politically correct really mean?

The phrase was first coined in the 1980s, during campus debates over freedom of speech. Then, academic institutions were moving to ban “hate speech” that expressed intolerance for any racial, ethnic or special interest group. Opponents charged that the new rules promoted “political correctness” at the expense of intellectual exchange.

Soon the phrase “politically correct” became associated with a liberal political agenda that embraced concepts such as feminism and multiculturalism. Liberals complained that conservatives hijacked the term and used it to suggest that ideas once considered politically progressive were, instead, the result of mindless pandering.

Now, the phrase has morphed even more, so that it represents a valueless sort of uber tolerance; a refusal to condemn anyone for anything. And it has infiltrated our conversation. A check of Los Angeles Times files shows the terms “politically correct” or “politically incorrect” cropping up just 10 times in the newspaper in 1988. In 1989 it was 30, the next year 64. By 1992, they appeared 461 times, in stories on every subject from sports to music to fashion to religion. And since the start of 2002, we’ve deemed something politically correct or incorrect more than 60 times, almost once each day.

Bill Maher, host of the television talk show “Politically Incorrect,” characterizes political correctness as “the elevation of sensitivity over truth.” He says his brand of political incorrectness sets him apart from the crowd. But is that really true anymore? “It’s all gotten pretty confusing,” admits Bruce Herschenson, conservative political commentator now teaching at Pepperdine University. “I stopped watching ‘Politically Incorrect’ because it became so politically correct, it made no sense to me.”

Some say we can blame the “talk show mentality” that pervades society. We’ve been primed to view the world as left versus right, good against evil. We’ve been deluded by reliance on sound bites into thinking that a single view on a single subject sets your place on the political spectrum.

And the term “politically correct” has become our shorthand way of dismissing some idea or person with whom we disagree.

“The charge of political correctness wipes away all the thinking that led to those views ... by implying that they are merely fashionable, that they don’t have content, that they are not legitimate dissent,” says professor Martin H. Kaplan, associate dean of USC Annenberg School for Communication. “That diminishes their power and elevates the opposing view.”

It stifles debate, Kaplan says, by casting some in the role of unthinking sycophants and others as brave renegades. “It’s a way of saying, ‘If you hold that view, you’re not a free thinker.’ No one wants to be labeled that way.”

Now, the battle over political correctness is claiming prisoners on both sides, as our cultural landscape shifts and values once considered unpopular--such as patriotism and religious faith--have emerged to carry the day.

So we see an instructor at an Orange County community college temporarily yanked from the classroom for insulting Muslim students as he denounces terrorism, and a university professor in Texas threatened with firing after he protests the war in Afghanistan and insults our sense of patriotism.

And we wind up uncertain over whether it was the political correctness or incorrectness of his stance on issues such as gay rights and abortion that cost Richard Riordan a shot at the governor’s seat last week. And we wonder whether political correctness really has anything to do with politics.

Because my views--and probably yours--are drawn not from politics, but from values and experiences. And if they are conservative some times and liberal others; correct in some eyes and incorrect in others; messy and unpredictable and contradictory ... well so, sometimes, is life.

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Sandy Banks’ column runs Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.