The Tyranny of Political Correctness

Surely by now you have heard of the Roseanne Barr kerfuffle. She likened former Obama Aide Valerie Jarrett to a cross between something from Planet of the Apes and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Certainly a crude, tasteless, totally unnecessary put down.

It turns out that Ms. Jarrett has Black ancestry. Per Barr, claiming that it was not the intent to cast a racial slur. Just that there are some rather Simian facial features. Barr claims she had no idea Jarrett was Black.

[BTW my face was once compared to a Marshmallow. That's beyond racist!]

It's my take that Roseanne was going after her looks. Yet, the "racist" label was the first to get the news. And, as we know, Ms. Barr's career is kaput. At least until the book comes out.

It strikes me on more than a few points.

First, how the media is so hair trigger quick to call foul on anything that even comes close to being "inappropriate". There's that young female reporter who claimed that her on camera account of Morgan Freeman's  comment to be sexually inappropriate after he commented on a story about Michael Caine being embarrassed to suggest someone was pregnant when she wasn't. Morgan ventured that he would have liked to have been there. Meaning: to have seen Caine's embarrassment. Yet the reporter claimed that was sexually inappropriate. Also, that Morgan had said/done other stuff, but she didn't have it on tape.

My own approach to sussing out whether in fact a woman is pregnant goes like this: "Are you pregnant? Or, maybe just had a big lunch?"

Anyhow, everyone now refers to Barr's comment as racist. To a person. And, I'll bet you probably are tempted to take that on face value as what's so here.

So here's a point ...

Are we so conditioned like Pavlov's dogs that the media's attempts to frame our reality are taken as gospel, of course filtered through the lens of your own particular selected social-political leaning?

You know, just because someone offers you a choice doesn't preclude the options of selecting neither. Or, mirabile dictu, both!

So without any discussion or discrimination the cry goes out ... "RACIST" ... and, so it is. Or any of the other current unmentionable categories: SEXIST! ANTI-SEMITIC! FASCIST! I'm getting up there, so then there's ... Agist! 

Then there's now the whole conversation about whether there's some double standard operating that nails some folks and lets others pass. What's the news there? Same old, same old.

Or, that President Trump all by himself is responsible for coarsening public discourse. As if. Look at the roster of television shows and movie offerings to see whether anyone else might have some responsibility in that.

The so-called progressive Left has completely shown its own hypocrisy here too. Look at the Queen of the Left air waves, Rachel Maddow. Try something: Watch her nightly broadcast when she's on camera without the sound. Now, there's a show. Or, her other pundit associates. Going on air, all cocksure offering opinions as facts, making speculative associations then discussing the hypotheticals in such a way as to make them seem like facts. Using words loaded with negative connotations. 

Take a look for yourself.