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Political Correctness Gone Mad
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And in a gutless act of political correctness, "Pizza Day" will now be known as "Italian-American Sauced Bread Day".
This title, taken from an infamous Catch Phrase of the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, can refer to one of two things.
In some cases, this might be literally about political correctness taken too far, presented through a Granola Girl or Soapbox Sadie who embodies the negative aspects of the PC movement.
Alternatively, along the same lines, a governmental authority (often a local council) is accused of being over-zealous to the point of parody in trying to avoid offense to minority groups - not unlike the Culture Police but in the other direction. Certain words or phrases are said to have been "banned", as if Chipping Sodbury Borough Council has any power over the English Language. In particularly severe cases, what is being 'banned' in order to spare the offense of minority groups are things which even the minority groups openly state that they are not offended by, as no reasonable person would be. Often, the body in question are not only being overly cautious, they're also naively playing right into the hands of the kind of bullying bigots who object to any kind of tolerant treatment of these groups by giving them a platform to complain about how 'oppressed' they are.
Usually, a range of urban myths are presented as examples of Political Correctness Gone Mad, such as ...
- Blackboards in school being renamed "Chalkboards" to avoid offending black people.
- Some schools having a "holiday tree" every "Winter Holiday Season," or even more drastic ...
- City councils "banning" Christmas to avoid offending Jews, Muslims, pagans, and other religious/non-religious folk.
- Manhole covers being renamed "Personnel Access Units" to avoid offending women.
There's also a rather pervasive tendency for some commentators to cite instances of over-the-top health and safety legislation as this despite the fact that political correctness deals exclusively with trying to prevent causing offense by using specific language and the two things are entirely distinct. Basically, if the incident is a particularly stupid re-labeling of something then you are probably looking at this trope. If not, then it's simply a more general instance of well-intentioned stupidity.
All of this is especially ironic, considering that Political Correctness took on its contemporary meaning when the radical left began using it as a self-aware joke about the intrusion of Academic feminist and socialist argot into their everyday lives.
On the other hand, the satire may be pointed in the other direction; the characters using the phrase may be the kind of far-right-wing conservative who sees the iron maiden as a soft punishment for shoplifting, in the way that Daily Mail readers are generally seen. On a linguistic level, these people can often be heard bemoaning the loss of the word "gay" to the English Language ( Douglas Adams' Meaning of Liff defines "Ainderby Quernhow" as a person who has never used the word in any context except this complaint), or that the British national dish is now chicken tikka masala instead of fish and chips or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, despite the fact that chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow (which needless to say doesn't stop people having fish and chips or roast beef; you're free, if you want, to have a chippy tea on Friday, a curry on Saturday and a roast on Sunday and the food police won't come round).
Examples of actual political correctness
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Comic Books
- Marvel Comics' Black Panther once changed his name to "Black Leopard" to avoid association with the actual Black Panthers
 . Of course, this was in 1972, when the latter were active, but still...
- It was changed back very quickly because in the Marvel Universe the Black Panther is a name that goes back centuries and BP pointed out that he wasn't going to let himself be defined by a group of people he disagreed with anyway.
- After Infinite Crisis, the DC Comics Christmas one shot was going to be named "Infinite Christmas". It was solicited and advertised as such, but when it actually came out it was called "Infinite Holiday", pretty much eradicating the original pun.
Film
- The movie PCU is a Wacky Fratboy Hijinx film set against the backdrop of an I-can't-believe-it's-not-Berkeley college where everybody protests everything. The movie's climax actually had the students protest that they were not going to protest.
- Parodied in Undercover Brother; the predominately black B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D organisation has exactly one white employee, Lance (who is stereotypically 'white' — i.e nerdy, uncool and lame), who only has his job there because of affirmative action. He's often heard complaining about their politically incorrect attitudes towards him.
Lance: Always trying to shut the white man down.
Conspiracy Brother: THAT'S RIGHT! That's Right!... Oh, ain't right
- At the beginning of Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Zack's Black Best Friend accuses his boss (who is Asian) of racism because he wants him to work on "Black Friday". Later, we learn that he successfully filed a lawsuit over this.
Literature
- Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron takes place in a future dystopia where everyone has been made equal by handicapping devices which curtail excess intelligence, strength, creativity, beauty, or any other natural advantage (and if you had an unnatural advantage, such as skill due to training, you were only allowed to use it to make yourself average). There's even a government official (The "Handicapper General") whose job is to oversee this. She's fond of using shotguns as a tool of equality. The TV movie had a similar take. The government remakes the world to look like the 1950s (because that's when Americans are thought to have been happiest); the death penalty is enforced—on live television—for crimes like jaywalking; in schools, you fail if you score too low... but also if you score too high; you're supposed to be embarrassed if you beat someone in chess too easily... And people are in favor of all this. One government official (in order to rule, of course, they must be free of the devices that inhibit them) explains to Harrison in a borderline non-sequitur that while this has resulted in a marked decline in, for example, the arts, if it had meant an end to atrocities like what happened in World War II, he would put the gun to Beethoven's temple (they were listening to Beethoven while watching footage of World War II) himself. (This was meant to lampoon what Objectivists and conservatives thought communists were like in the Cold War.)
- Also, in Sirens of Titan, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent has people handicap themselves so that everybody is equal—for instance, a good runner always carries a heavy bag to slow him down, or somebody with good eyesight wears glasses that nearly blind him.
- Some Discworld novels feature the Campaign for Equal Heights, who protest about using terms like "short weight", and insist employers should hire three dwarfs for every two humans because humans are half again as tall. Most of their campaigners are human; dwarfs are baffled by the whole thing. (And if they do feel insulted by humans, they can make their feelings quite clear without any help, except possibly a battleaxe. Generally, though, a dwarf will answer such insults by outworking a human, making better stuff, getting more money, and buying his business out from under him.)
- There is also at least one human who has renamed himself Strong-in-the-arm and cranked up his prices because "Dwarf Made" is a synonym for quality. The campaign for equal heights can't complain because it would require them to draw attention to his height as a disqualifying point.
- There are also the
undead "differently alive", not the same as dead "living impaired" (or more rarely "vitally challenged") persons.
- "Differently alive" is those who still live, like vampires (hereditary) and banshees. "Living impaired" counts those who have died, but are still walking around, like zombies. Except in rare instances that those who have died and aren't walking around are considered lazy by people who should really know better (Reg Shoe, mostly). There was also, for a brief time, a group of humans who wanted to protect troll rights. Trolls never joined, because they thought they already had plenty of rights, what with being multi-ton masses of living stone.
- In Goblet of Fire and continuing on afterward, Hermione founds S.P.E.W. in order to free the house elves from slavery. The majority of the characters roll their eyes at this, suggesting that Hermione is taking it too far. It's later revealed that even the elves are against it, since (aside from one specific example) they like being slaves. In a later subversion though, it becomes quite clear that the House Elves are frequently abused by their masters, which seems an abused-spouse level wrong whether the elves are happy with the situation or not, suggesting Hermione is not as crazy as thought. Word Of God has it that she goes on to a happy career in the Ministry of Magic, working for better treatment of house-elves.
- To clarify the situation, though, it's not the abuse they like... it's the work. They gain personal satisfaction from being hardworking servants. The abuse they can live without...
- The thing Hermione doesn't grasp is that at least for the non-abused House Elves, freeing them isn't the equivalent of liberating a slave in their eyes; it's the equivalent of sacking them in disgrace.
- Hermione's mistake is in assuming that Dobby was the norm-she should have paid more attention to Winky, who, having been hired on by Dumbledore after her freeing by Barty Crouch, is so distraught by the clothes that she refuses to do any work, instead choosing to spend all her time sitting in the corner getting slammed on butterbeer (a non-alcoholic drink probably something in the vein of near-beer) and wallowing in depression. She surfaces from her moping only long enough to chastise people who say bad things about her ex-master and be offended about her salary. Dobby at one point confides that he has to do all the cleaning work in Gryffindor Tower because the other other elves are so offended by Hermione's little knitted caps that they won't go near the place.
- The non-fiction book Who Stole The News mentions an incident when a reporter on an aircraft carrier was reprimanded for saying that the blast from a jet plane could "blow a man overboard". He was told to change it to 'person', whereupon he pointed out a) there were no women on board US navy aircraft carriers in a combat zone (it was the first Gulf War) and b) it was a Man Overboard drill not a Person Overboard drill.
- This troper recalls a story (though not its name), in an anthology of Sci Fi stories called 2041, in which a high school student was trying to get her fellow classmates to read Shakespeare's plays while increasingly bizarre censorship blanked out the text entirely. For example, one group got Polonius's death in Hamlet censored because "curtains don't kill people, people kill people."
- It's by Connie Willis. Moreover Interflora wanted the scene where Ophelia is gathering flowers removed because it reflected badly on flowers. In the end only the very first scene between the guards complaining about the cold night was left. It was short some lines to boot.
- Curtains don't kill people?
- The book The Language Police by Diane Ravitch provides many Real Life examples of absurd politically correct censorship in children's textbooks and reading tests. Material forbidden by "anti-bias" committees included:
- Women sewing, cooking, or doing other household chores;
- References to mice, rats, insects, reptiles or other animals that might disturb children (also references to owls, because some cultures consider them a bad omen);
- A story about a blind mountain climber (because it implied that blindness makes life more difficult);
- A "silly old lady" (lest this be taken as a stereotype of all old ladies);
- Prehistoric creatures or fossils (because evolution could be controversial);
- Any references to wealth, poverty, or social class distinctions;
- Any references to specific religions or their traditions, or specific secular traditions like birthday parties (lest this alienate children who don't celebrate them);
- Any references to specific geographic regions or their landscapes or climates ("regional bias");
- Any portrayal of anyone that could be construed as the least bit stereotypical, such as Asians being intelligent or girls finding math difficult— the board favored using the reverses of these stereotypes.
- "Once upon a time Blob the Blob blobbed down to see Blob. They end."
- The use of the word "down" in the previous sentence implies that the second Blob is inferior to the first Blob. The word "over" should be substituted.
- Wait a second... wouldn't the reverse of "Asians are intelligent" be "Asians are morons"? How, exactly, would Asians be more comfortable with that depiction?
- Maybe they think Asians will prefer to be seen as hip and Street Smart rather than Asian And Nerdy?
- Incompetence by Rob Grant is set in a future United States of Europe where it is illegal to discriminate candidates for employment not only on the grounds of gender, age, race or creed, but on actual ability to do the job, with predictable results.
- MAD Magazine, appropriately enough, had an article like this wherein at the close of the article one person got to join the NBA despite being dead.
- Let's not forget about the horrible circus accident where a six-foot-tall "midget" clown suffocated inside a clown car along with his three-foot-tall co-workers because of being hired via affirmative action.
- A sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News went even further: the dead worker should be paid overtime because he spends so much time in the office. Tom Lehrer did almost exactly the same.
- Pick any book by a native author for an aversion. The Indians will refer to themselves as everything from Indians to dogeaters, will definitely not be vegetarians, and many other PC Magical Native American stereotypes will be averted.
- Karen Traviss's explanation as to why she wrote in gay Mandalorians is political correctness gone mad. This troper welcomed the idea, but her explanation makes it seem lame. Especially when she included "able-bodied" on her list of things all Star Wars characters are.
- Since the Mandalorians' Badass Army nature comes in part from extensive Spartan-style training, she really doesn't need an explanation for why some of them are homosexual. Same thing happened to the actual Spartans.
- A duo of "children's books" called Politically Correct Bedtime Stories take this trope and run wild with it, to the point of parody and turning the old classics into something new and amusing in their own right. Ant and the Grasshopper? Ant gets arrested for illegal stockpiling. Princess and the Pea? The "Princess" turns out to be a medium who channels many different spirits, which makes for interesting mealtimes at the castle. Little Mermaid? The rescued prince ends up getting a genetic procedure done so that he becomes half-man, half-prawn, instead of her going to live up with him. And then there was the "Politically Correct Alphabet"...
- Though this is never explicitly stated in the book, it's likely that Political Correctness Gone Mad played a role in the development of the Utopia Justifies The Means society of The Giver. Even color is eliminated. Not just skin color — all color.
- There is a story called The Highest Treason by Randall Garrett. A society where you cannot say that one man can be better than another in anything, promotion is strictly according to age, and that society is quickly losing a war against aliens. So, the protagonist, as a desperate patriot, joins the enemy, helps them conquer a planet, and slaughters the people there, showing the humanity that one person can be worse than another. In the end, the humanity is victorious, and their philosophy is now that one man cannot be better than another in everything.
Music
Television
- Some TV shows will have someone use the term "pot calling the kettle black", and the black people will give this person a look. Do people in real life think this term is racist? Or do writers think Viewers Are Morons about it?
- Maybe this is justified, maybe not, but this troper recalls an episode of Scrubs where Elliot had apparently been practically assaulted for singing 'Swing low, sweet chariot' at a karaoke, and outright told she, as a white person, could never try to sing that song. At the end of the episode she does again and is given a murderous look by a black doctor. Granted the song has a lot of history attached to it, but given in England it has been adopted as the anthem of the national Rugby team (according to the other wiki after cheering on one of the first black players ever to play for the country) and tens of thousands of mostly white people sing it spontaneously at every match, is it maybe a little harsh to categorically state no white person can ever sing it? Or just never while in America? Note to keep it down while watching the rugby while in the pub while in the Usa.
- There will not be any rugby on in the pub in the U.S.A. (And yes, to Americans, black spirituals are still very much connected to the slave society in which they originated, and no, that's not likely to change anytime soon. Remember, slavery is a much bigger issue in America's history than Britain's.)
- In a 30 Rock episode, Liz discovered that she simply could not tell her black date that she disliked him as a person without being Mistaken For Racist. At the end of the episode, the following conversation is set to inspirational music:
Liz: Can't one human being not like another human being? Can't we all just not get along?
Steven: Liz, I wish it could be like that. And maybe someday our children or our children's children will hate each other like that, but it just doesn't work that way today.
Liz: So what you're saying is that any woman that doesn't like you is a racist.
Steven: No, no, no, no, no. Some women are gay.
- In the first episode of My Name Is Earl, Earl refers to a gay man as "gay", then to avoid offending him follows up with, "Sorry... Homosexual-American?"
- A Touch Of Frost has Detective Frost winching every time he accidentally uses a phrase like 'keeping in the black' in front of his black coworker. She eventually tells him that he doesn't need to alter the english language for her.
- An episode of The Thin Blue Line parodied this, with Fowler ordered to get everyone at the station up to standard on political correctness. He makes a series of embarrassingly awful attempts to express enlightened views about race, gender and sexuality: "That would be the pot calling the kettle ... er ... African-American!"
Video Games
- When Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa was still running, it featured this trope for the holiday season. The AFS referred to it as "Seasonal Holiday Observance" or SHO, where major military bases would sport a "Festive Seasonal Holiday Observance Flora" (Christmas tree), under which soldiers could find "Holiday Hats" (a Santa Claus hat). The political correctness was probably tongue-in-cheek given the overblown military acronym style of the names.
Web Original
- On Homestar Runner, resident Granola Girl Marzipan hosts a disturbingly politically correct school program called L.U.R.N. in the Strong Bad Email coloring. Students are referred to as "life-blossoms", classes are in a variety of environmentally conscious topics such as "eco-algebra" and "talking to animals", and coloring is done with crayons that have "politically correct" names (like "Crimson Suggestion" for "red") and can't actually be used to color, "so that no one life-blossom shines brighter than any other".
- In Red Vs Blue, Andy is a sentient bomb, and Caboose tells everyone to refer to him as an "Explosive-American."
- Don't even get Doc started with this. Any time anyone says anything that could possibly be construed as offensive toward anyone at all, he jumps in with the inane politically correct version. Most notable in one of the holiday specials, where he constantly corrects even himself.
- Sarge, of course, would have nothing to do with it. It doesn't work out well for him.
- This school announcement.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In a latter-day episode of The Simpsons, the school is segregated according to gender by a staunch feminist, and Lisa is so disappointed with said feminist's "How do numbers make you feeeeeeeeel?" style of teaching (complete with light show) that she crossdresses herself into the boy school.
- In an earlier episode, the kids bought ice cream from an ice cream van called "Native American Ice Cream (formerly Big Chief Crazy Cone)".
- South Park does this one several times a season. In "Death Camp of Tolerance", the kids are sent to the titular camp after they complain about Mr. Garrison being "gay"... when they're trying to say that Mr. Garrison is performing sexual acts in front of the class.
- Additionally, in "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson", Randy Marsh (Stan's dad) gets hounded everywhere as "that Nigger Guy" he goes because he accidentally used a racial epithet on national television, even after he literally kisses Jesse Jackson's ass while seeking forgiveness. This episode slowly turns into a subversion of the trope by the end, though, when Congress becomes so outraged by the oppression of Randy Marsh and others like him that they ban the epithet "Nigger Guy", stating that while "nigger" and "guy" are perfectly acceptable words on their own, put together they're unspeakably repressive.
- A quick explanation of how- It was wheel of fortune, the bonus round, the clue was "People that annoy you" and the letters were N_GGERS. The answer? Naggers.
- "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" in which Mrs. Brofloski protests the school's Christmas play so that he school will remove the overtly Christian elements. The priest counter-protests that if they take Christ out of Christmas, they'll need to take out all the stuff about Santa Claus as well. They have to take down the Christmas tree due to objections by environmentalists and the lights because it may offend epileptics. One person even claims to be offended by mistletoe, though they don't explain why. So, what they get is an abstract avant-garde musical, with all the third graders prancing around in black unitards to ambient music and chanting. It's not received well, and the audience breaks out into a riot.
- Jimbo was offended by people who drove around with open coffee mugs and complained when they spilled it on their lap.
- In the Sealab 2021 episode "The Policy", nearly everyone on Sealab abuses the affirmative action policy to get promoted to Captain... except for Quinn, who's too proud and too sensible, and Stormy, who's too stupid.
- The animated show Pelswick had some examples of this. The title character, who uses a wheelchair, is often referred to as "differently able". In one episode he anonymously published a cartoon in the school paper that people objected to on the grounds that "differently able" people might be offended by it... and then blithely withdrew their complaints when it came out that Pelswick was the artist.
- Lampshaded in Venture Brothers where Jefferson Twilight fights Blackulas for a living. When asked if he only fights African American vampires, he responds "No, because some of them are British. Look ... I fight Blackulas. I don't know what the PC term is for that."
Real Life, aka "some people really need help"
- This troper can remember his sixth grade school band playing "Tequila" but having to shout "Tomata" (which isn't a real Spanish word, mind you) instead because apparently the mere mention of alcohol was too much for our sixth-grade ears. Even this tropers' very politically correct mother thought the idea was ridiculous.
- At my school, it was "Chiquita", then "Banana", then "Sasparilla" in subsequent verses. I didn't notice it at the time, but now that I tell the story, "Chiquita" has problems of its own...
- During a meeting over traffic tickets in Dallas County, Texas, one of the commissioners, who was white, referred to Central Collections as a "black hole of paperwork". One of the black commissioners immediately objected and corrected his "racist" colleague, saying that it was a "white hole of paperwork". Yes, really. In the fourth comment down, one reader asks whether this story is from The Onion. It was not.
- For the people who haven't read the link: The white commissioner called Central Collections a "black hole" to say that it's "a department in which all paperwork that enters becomes lost." You know, like a real black hole. "White hole" would have been fine as an analogy if the department spewed out constant paperwork instead. Clearly, that other commissioner's reaction to the usage of "black hole" was not grounded in any common sense.
- "In 1997, Texan resident Leonso Canales Jr. decided that the first syllable of the world 'Hello' was offensive and came up with 'Heaveno' instead. He successfully - yes, successfully - lobbied the local authorities and now the official greeting in his county is 'Heaveno' rather than 'Hello'. I want to vomit." - Stephen Fry. And no, he wasn't kidding. Check the Wikipedia article on Hello.
- A New York teacher was fired after she read a book about racial tolerance to her third-grade students after parents accused her of racism. The title of the book? "Nappy Hair."
- To quote Adversity.net, "one of the children's parents happened upon several photocopied pages from "Nappy Hair" in her child's folder, and - without bothering to read the book itself - duplicated the pages, including a not-too-complimentary note about the "white teacher" who had been teaching presumably demeaning, racist stereotypes to their black and Hispanic kids. The parent distributed this package of misinformation throughout the neighborhood to many families who did not even have children in Ms. Sherman's class."
- If the parents in the neighborhood had bothered to READ the book, they'd have found out that A) the book was written by a black woman; B) far from being demeaning or racist, the book focuses on minority children learning to accept and love themselves as they are; and C) the author, Carolivia Herron, stated that Sherman used the book appropriately and as she, Herron, would want it used.
- Children's books are a touchy subject. Astrid Lingren's third Pippi Longstocking book takes the children to a far-away land, whose inhabitants are referred to as Negroes in a polite manner. The word happened to have no negative connotations in Sweden circa 1950. A recent edition discarded the Grandfather Clause and replaced the word with various equivalents, causing an uproar among the Swedish literati.
- There's been some controversy in the UK over the nursery rhyme "Baa Baa Black Sheep." In 2000, the Birmingham City Council briefly banned it, claiming that it's racist. In 2006, a group in Oxfordshire called PACT altered the rhyme, replacing "Black Sheep" with "Yellow," "Green," "Pink" and even "Rainbow Sheep." Although PACT did not do this out of racial sensitivity, you'll find people advocating the change on racial grounds anyway, saying that "substituting the word 'black' for other colors serves as a way of teaching children colors—even yellow, which has its own racial connotations." Haven't these people ever seen an actual black sheep before?!
- Rosalie Maggio's politically correct dictionary suggests using "fast as you can say Jack or Jill Robinson" and avoiding the word "blacksmith".
- David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington DC, resigned after his use of the word "niggardly" to describe the city budget was mistaken for a racial slur.
- This troper lives in the Seattle metro area, an area known half-jokingly to have declared war on Christianity in the name of political correctness. This became a lot less of a joke in December 2008, when a public school district's calendar included every winter solstice holiday known to man, but somehow left out Christmas.
- Similarly, every year here you can expect people to protest the indignities of Thanksgiving and the various children's pageants and presentations that gloss over the horrors of native/colonial conflicts. Interestingly, none of the many local native tribes are ever involved in this nobly righteous indignation (and astonishingly, some of them appreciate the message of setting aside differences in the name of human compassion), so clearly it falls to the superior white man to save them from such travesties of justice.
- On the subject of Seattle, the city sits within a jurisdiction called King County. King County was founded in 1852 and named for William King, the then Vice President of the United States. As King was an ardent defender of slavery, it was decided in the 1980s to find a better namesake, and ultimately the name was changed from King County to... King County, the difference being that it was now named after Martin Luther King Jr., who aside from once visiting Seattle in 1961 has no historical or cultural connection to the area. One suspects this was done just to shut people up.
- Of course, this is the state of Washington... and Washington never came within two thousand miles of the place.
- Besides the name, it also changed the county's logo to a picture of Dr. King, which looks unbelievably tacky to this local troper.
- Then there's the movement to change the Anno Domini dating system (AD/BC) to a politically correct "Common Era" system (CE/BCE) ... but it's the same system, whitewashed to remove references to Christianity. Advocates defend it by saying that the Gregorian Calendar is globally used and non-Christians shouldn't have to acknowledge a religion they don't follow (yet the original Roman/Norse month and day names remain). This has backfired to an extent, because it's just as common to refer to "CE" as the "Christian Era."
- On a side note, this has been "successfully" integrated in some countries during their Soviet period, such as Poland. It is only recently that some of the people in those countries have gone back to using AD/BC terms.
- The actual reason cited by historians for the switch is that the historical person of Jesus is so nebulous that even if he existed exactly as described in the Gospels, the year 1 CE is likely not when he was born. Even most Christian historians agree that it's a guess at most, and it's virtually impossible to pin it down more closely at this stage of the game. Therefore, the terms "before Christ" and "Anno Domini" are not even accurate, so why use them?
- The anno Domini system was intended by its inventor, Dionysius Exiguus, to set the year of the birth ("incarnation") of Jesus, though he used it in the context of calculating the dates of Easter for each year from 532-626; ironically, Dionysius seems not to have used it in any other context. It was adopted for the dating of history by the Venerable Bede, who popularized it, but even in the Middle Ages it was criticized as inaccurate by historians such as Otto of Freising.
- A much better proposal is the Holocene calendar, which converts easily from the proleptic Gregorian calendar, simply by adding 10000 (prepending the year by a "1"). While this has some 'roots' in the AD/BC calendars, it covers essentially all of human history in positive years (the Holocene era is the current era - approximately from the end of the last ice age). While this calendar is 'strictly' off the timeline by about 300 years (12009 for Holocene calendar, compared to the ~11700 for Holocene era), those 300 years are used to sync the Gregorian and Holocene calendars for more easy conversion - and isn't a huge issue, given the Holocene era start date is just an approximation anyway!
- Actually, the AD/BC thing was something this Troper had to learn about in school, actually. Not something I bring up often, but I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and they always used CE/BCE instead of AD/BC. And I grew up with that in mind, so that's not too unusual, honestly.
- Far more irksome is the use of BP - Before Present, instead of BC. Except logically, the present is [i]now[/i], and thus 2000 BP would be 9 AD. Bloody anthropologists.
- "Present" is defined as AD 1950, and it's used for long-ago events because the two thousand-plus years since the supposed birth of Yeshua bar Yosef don't really matter in the context of things that happened millions of years ago.
- There have been two instances of British schools trying to rename "The Three Little Pigs" to avoid offending Muslims and other religions. When the story is circulated amongst people who are afraid of "Muslim takeover", the fact that even the Muslim Council of Britain thought it was stupid is left out.
- Stupid but not that surprising - this troper's mother writes textbooks for international students learning English. The publisher has sent out a list of things that must not under any circumstances be incorporated, including any mentions of: pork products, alcohol, bars (even if soft drinks are being ordered), hugging and kissing between people who aren't married, dogs in the house. The stupidity is painful - by far the largest market for this particular textbook is pork-loving China. Also, if your religion does forbid you from consuming certain items, you probably ought to learn what the English words "bacon" and "beer" actually mean, so you don't order them by mistake. Another publisher simply prints an alternative Middle East edition.
- There's a double standard here; most foreign language textbooks and courses for English speakers include cultural information on the countries in which the target language is spoken, including points of possible Values Dissonance, and this is almost universally seen as a good idea by both educators and learners. The perfectly reasonable thinking being that a traveller to a foreign country should not only be able to converse with the locals but understand something of their culture.
- Tiny Muskens, Roman Catholic bishop of Breda in The Netherlands, actually suggested that the Dutch Christians call God "Allah" so as to make Dutch Muslims more welcome. To put it into perspective, this makes as much sense as American Christians calling God Dios in order to make the Hispanic Americans more welcome.
- Which is sad, because in at least one Muslim Country a non-muslim can get into legal difficulties for "referring to God as Allah."
- Which in turn makes said country look ridiculous in the eyes of many Muslims, especially the ones that know Arab and Maltese Christians constantly refer to Allah during mass, this being the correct Arabic and Maltese word for the monotheistic deity regardless of religion.
- Saddest of all is that there exists a bishop who lets people call him "Tiny Muskens."
- The ire raised over the bar-sport of dwarf-tossing. Few ask the actual dwarves what they think about it. The dwarves make good cash and like it. I don't blame them. Getting paid to be safely thrown onto a soft object? Sign me up.
- It was actual dwarves who led the fight for the ban, dude.
- This is very similar to what happened to "circus freaks". When people started to protest "freaks", it was the freaks themselves who fought back. After all, they were making very good money just standing around and nobody else would hire them - the same people who were protesting sure-as-hell weren't going to hire Jojo the Dog-faced Boy! In the end, it was advancing medical knowledge that did in the circus freaks. Seeing the Elephant Man is cool. Seeing someone afflicted with lymphatic filariasis is not.
- What also hurt freak shows is the quality of medicine. When you can cure 80% of the things that used to lead people to join freak shows, there's far fewer freaks to actually fill out a show.
- The school board in this troper's area banned his school's marching band from playing "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," because it could offend Christians. Their response? Replace it with "Devil Went to Jamaica." The school board reversed its decision the next day.
- A marching band played "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"?!
- According to a buddy of this troper who did it, flutes and some kind of brass instrument can be played in sync to approach the sound of violins. Apart from that, you've just got to be hardcore enough to keep up and stay in tune.
- This troper's marching band did it once using just alto sax soloists for the fiddle parts (unfortunately, it was the year after this troper — an alto sax player himself — graduated). Sure, it didn't sound much like a fiddle, but it was still pretty awesome. Those parts are a challenge on any instrument.
- This troper's brother played it in his high school orchestra, complete with the conductor reciting the lyrics; appropriate, since we live in Georgia. The only change was to the phrase "son of a bitch".
- Searching fark.com for the phrase "precious snowflake" will point up a few good examples (and some irrelevant ones, thanks to Sturgeons Law).
- Some of the efforts to change the mascots of sports teams and schools have fallen into this, due to such things as the Native American mascot happening to be based on a local tribe ...
- Some of it is justified; look at the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo and the Chief student dancer at the University of Illinois. Now that's Did Not Do The Research—costumes based on stereotypes. Mind you, the NCAA does allow Native American-themed team names and mascots if the tribes give their blessing. For example, Florida State won't be giving up their "Seminole" nickname anytime soon.
- The fact that a tribe exists to give their blessing is the only thing saving them. Compare the feathers on the logos of The Utah Utes (acceptable) to those of the William & Mary Tribe (offensive).
- Matt Groening once mentioned on a DVD Commentary for The Simpsons that one of his children's sports teams was not allowed to be called the Red Devils because of some parent's objections. One can only imagine their mortification if they knew Manchester United, one of if not the biggest football teams in the world, is commonly referred to as the Red Devils.
- The German soccer club 1. FC Kaiserslautern is commonly know as "Die Roten Teufel vom Betzenberg" ("The Red Devils of Mount Betzen" or so :) and NOBODY GIVE A SHIT! (but that might be due to the fact that it's not happening in the US)
- What about the Tampa Bay
Devil Rays Rays?
- The Kaplan AP English Language book has a list of "Do Not Use" terms, stating that instead of using a term like "disabled person," you must use "person who is disabled," and other, even more Mind Screw statements.
- In the disability rights community this is referred to as "Person-First" terminology. Noteworthily, the Deaf community wants nothing to do with it.
- Nations killing pigs or banning pork imports after the 2009 Swine Flu scare. For this reason, as well as to be more accurate, people were encouraged to use the official name of influenza A (H1N1). Other than the original source (which has not been proven to be pigs) you get it from person to person contact, not pigs. The virus is actually a mix of pig, bird, and human flus.
- Averted by the US Navy and Air Force. The lower ranked personnel are called Seaman and Airman whether male or female. Seaman Apprentice Jane Smith is what you call her. There is also Hospitalman, Fireman, and, for Seabees, Constructionman.
- These days, referring to anyone as "seaman" has hazards completely unrelated to political correctness.
- The newspaper in this troper's town changed the word "gay" to "homosexual" every time it occurred. This led to the newspaper changing a man's last name from Gay to Homosexual.
- This Troper heard of an online news source using a word filter like that because it was very right-wing and they believed that homosexual dehumanizes gay people because it sounds more clinical. So this actually is Bigotry Backfire.
- The American Family Association is probably who you are thinking of they recently during the Olympics changed an article about Tyson Gay to "Homosexual breaks Greene's US record in 100 at trial".
- Real Life aversion; a lot of people think that "call a spade a spade" refers to shovels or cards.
- A number of newspapers have "solved" the "problem" of writers using the word "black" instead of the more politically correct, but overly long "African American", by running a search and replace over articles. This has lead to numerous examples such as:
- Referring to a company's economic turnaround as having "gotten back in the African American".
- Referring to the day the Great Depression started as "African American Tuesday".
- A local columnist wrote about Florida's spring wild-flowers, including the "African American-eyed Susans".
- You mean like the song Back in African-American?
- And labeling a good number of black people who are African non-Americans, Americans of non-African descent or people who are simply not African or American as 'African-Americans'.
- This Troper found possibly the worst example on the IM Db message boards: Parvati Patil from the Harry Potter books. She's a Briton of Indian descent.
- The example of urban myths concerning "blackboards" being renamed to "greenboards" is actually true, but it's more of an aversion because the reason for the name change was to call them by their actual color (green rather than slate black).
- This troper has not seen a blackboard in years after they became superseded by whiteboards. He knows that it's only matter of time before someone suggests that this terminology "enforces the myth of Aryan supremacy" or something...
- This troper's school teams had to change their names. The original name was the Chiefs. The Superintendent of the area claimed that it was offensive to local Native Americans. This troper'd like to point out that his school was well known for being very good at various sports. He would also like to point out that not only were there ZERO Native Americans on the side of the Superintendent, there were actually several AGAINST her.
- This wouldn't happen to be the school that changed its team names to the Comets? With the every so Does This Remind You Of Anything depiction of a comet would it?
- Moreover, "chief" is hardly an exclusively Native American term.
- Amazingly averted at this troper's former middle school. The team name has long had Unfortunate Implications name of the Trojans (naturally, from before the famous brand name)... Somehow, in spite of this occasionally causing actual, real harassment, it doesn't get changed.
- There was much hand-wringing over the decision of the City of Toronto to dub their Christmas tree a "Holiday Tree". Everyone knows it's a Christmas tree, no other holidays involve a giant evergreen bedecked in red and green ribbons and stars, but somehow it's better if you leave the word "Christmas" out.
- This Houston Chronicle article. A frightening mix of this trope, Wall Banger (the author gets shocked that there are black zombies in New Orleans and in the middle of Africa), Double Standard (the author's okay with "blasting Nazis in Call Of Duty... not having a problem lighting up Imperial Army in World at War" but not that you have to shoot black zombies in L4D2 and RE5) and Did Not Do The Research (the author apparently hasn't played Call of Juarez for more than an hour, according to the comments)
- Some schools in Britain have renamed the song "What do we do with a Drunken Sailor," to "what do we do with a Grumpy Pirate".
- I'm guessing they also cut some of the more colorful verses? Wait, that's the entire shanty. Damn.
- So a pirate (who kidnaps, steals, murders, rapes, etc.) is more PC than a sailor (a guy who works on a boat) who drinks a little alcohol??
- In commercial aviation cockpits have become "flight decks" apparently to avoid offending aviatrices, despite nobody ever actually complaining about the term as far as this troper knows.
- What? What's wrong with the word "cockpit"... Oh crap, now I see it too. I can't un-see it. You ruined the word for me!
- The name actually comes from the fact that it's so small, like the pit used for cockfights. Surprised that the Animal Wrongs brigade didn't suggest it.
- A Welsh council now suggests 'Spotted Dick' be named 'Spotted Richard', though the primary reason was to cut down on childish sniggering in the canteen rather than to avoid offense.
- The UK school curriculum for geography forbade references to "underdeveloped" or "Third World" countries a while ago, instead insisting that the term "developing country" be used instead. Now that's not PC enough either, and the correct term is "LEDC/MEDC" (Less/More Economically Developed Country.)
- Possible aversion: There's a growing movement of PC technicians who wish to change the designation of hard drives to "primary/secondary," as opposed to the honestly-disturbing "master/slave."
- Any Zero Tolerance policy, ever, full stop.
- When the swine flu virus broke out in the US in 2009, there were many people who thought that the name "swine flu" was insulting to Jews and Muslims...because their religions don't let them eat pork.
- And what, pray tell, was their "better" alternative? Mexican Flu.
Close Real Life, aka "some people really need help"
Examples of people complaining about it
Comics
Literature
- In the first Harry Potter book, Uncle Vernon is presented as a Mail reader and makes some comments indicating a reactionary viewpoint. Vernon's sister in the third book is a much more extreme version of this, making comments about standards falling because of children not being beaten often enough.
- In the book version of Layer Cake, one chapter shows the protagonist at a barbershop with his con artist friend, who is pretending to be plummy aristocrat "Lord Hugo". In this persona, he expresses some very "Mailesque" views (reinstating national service, complaining about giving Hong Kong back to the "slope heads", etc.) and hearty endorsement from both the other patrons and the staff. At the same time, the protagonist is pretending to be a South American footballer who doesn't speak English and is addressed to his face as a dago and similar ethnic slurs.
- Harry Flashman is an interesting case. He subverts Politically Correct History through being a man of views typical to his kind: extremely racist and politically incorrect, speaking of what we would consider unambiguously good individuals like anti-slavery activists as crazy liberals. However, the author increasingly uses him to point out the follies of the above as the series progresses.
- Granted, he lived before political correctness existed, but Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond is definitely one of the most reactionary heroes in Edwardian mystery/suspense, even though he was written in an already pretty reactionary time. Drummond was fond of flogging communist villains to an inch of their lives and these villains tended to be Jewish intellectuals. In one encyclopedia of mystery fiction, the editor posits that were Drummond an actual person he would likely have become a committed Black Shirt during the 1930s and 1940s.
Music
- Brad Paisley and the Buckaroos released the Cowboy Christmas Song, with the word Christmas getting bleeped, then the word White, finally leading them to sing the original version, ignoring the bleeps.
Television
- DCI Gene Hunt from Life On Mars is highly politically incorrect and rather popular with the viewing public because of it. One of his more printable quotes is:
He's got fingers in more pies than a leper on a cookery course.
- Another particularly politically incorrect example:
Gene: Dealers are so scared, we're more likely to get Helen Keller to talk. The Paki's in a coma, the evidence is about as hard as Liberace's dick when he's looking at a naked woman, and all in all, this case is going about as fast as a bunch of spastics in a magnet factory! [ Beat] What? Sam: I think you left out the Jews....
- Incidentally, Helen Keller was a public speaker.
- She was also dead in 1973.
- One subplot on The Sopranos involved the fiercely Italian guys from Tony's crew butting heads with a native American group protesting their town's Columbus Day parade.
- In one episode of Jonathan Creek, a police officer who rails against the death penalty being abolished turns out to have been the murderer and becomes the subject of a rather dark version of Hypocritical Humor.
- From Doctor Who:
Shakespeare: "Who are you, exactly, and, more to the point, who is this gorgeous blackamoor lady?"
Martha (British, of African descendant): "What did you say?"
Shakespeare (apologizing): "Oops. Isn't that a word we use nowadays? An Ethiop girl, a schwab, a Queen of Afric?"
Martha (angry): "I can't believe I'm hearing this…"
The Doctor: "It's political correctness gone mad."
- An entire episode of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is an extensive deconstruction of this phrase.
- The entire series of Love Thy Neighbour. Interestingly, it was made durring a time when political correctness extended as far as not using the "N" word (at least not in public), but it seems to make a mockery of racism and intolerance as a whole despite the liberal use of derogatives.
- Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special lampshades this trope at least twice:
Jeff: Well, Walter, you look very festive. Happy Holidays!
Walter: You know, there's something I've been wanting to say for a while: Screw you, it's Merry Christmas!
- And later, with Achmed the Dead Terrorist, who has donned a Santa Claus hat for the occasion:
Jeff: I like your Christmas hat.
Achmed: Oh, don't say "Christmas"; it's a Holiday Hat.
Jeff: Whay can't I say Christmas?
Jeff: You're afraid of offending people? But you're a terrorist; you kill people.
(beat)
Achmed: That's different. Killing folk's is easy; being Politically Correct is a pain in the ass!
Western Animation
- The actual phrase is used on two separate occasions in the animated show Bromwell High.
- On one occasion, one of the teachers suggests kidnapping someone and when told that's illegal he utters the phrase.
- In Looney Tunes: Back In Action, Porky Pig and Speedy Gonzalez complain about not getting much work because of this.
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