Bending His Jackson

One great thing about America is that we're big enough, and feisty enough, to put conversation-killing ideas like political correctness (PC) where they belong, i.e. in the dustbin of sociological history. Not that it doesn't take a while, but one can see progress here and there. One thing that really does help is the American sense of humor and general irreverence, which -- unfortunately for them -- the rest of the English-speaking world is hard pressed to share. Most of them come off, most of the time, like stuffed shirts -- or people who are afraid of their own shadow -- or both at once, which is a real trick. PC, which has devolved into a minor irritant in this country, has assumed virulent, plague-like form in Canada, Australia, and England. The most recent example is a British outfit -- government-sponsored, mind you -- called the National Children's Bureau (wow, can't you see all those American social workers salivating at just the thought of something like that over here), which has declared that "toddlers who say 'yuck' when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior." Well, I guess that could be the case if the "flavorful" foreign food was served by parents who, at the same time, said, "Here's your dinner, dear, and remember, this recipe came from some other country, and that country is full of loud, obnoxious, violent, and bad-smelling darkies, so that's why we're giving you some of their food." I suppose we have to give the British government credit for at least describing foreign food as "flavorful" -- the implication being, theirs isn't. There's a refreshing bit of candor. And of course it's also curious that they are operating on the premise that a child can be "racist" even if its parents aren't. Well gee, if that's the case, where do you suppose they get all those racist ideas? Not the public schools, certainly.

Also being totally ignored in all of this is the natural human instinct, on the part of children in particular, to be very cautious and conservative when it comes to trying new foods. This is something that has kept the human race alive for eons, which is, I guess, why the British government is so intent on suppressing it.

Plus, what happens to all those "Mr. Yuck" stickers now? Will British parents be ordered to get those racist symbols off their bottles of iodine and rubbing alcohol? Once again it appears that PC and societal self-destruction go hand in hand.

But back to the good old USA for a minute. As I said, PC was invented here -- by Hillary Clinton, in fact, and she has arguably suffered the most to date from its implementation. We have discussed, at length, how she and her trophy husband had to hold off for weeks -- months! -- before they could bring up the subject of Barack Obama's blackness in the campaign. And once they did, they were thoroughly criticized and made to feel like... well, like whiplashed chumps, which is what _everyone_ who runs afoul of PC is supposed to feel like. So the PC monster turned on its maker in, really, fairly short order as social trends go. For this we can all be thankful. PC will never be the same now that its inventor has been spurned by the supposedly docile and malleable American electorate.

The result, of course, is that Obama rode the PC wave to the point of clinching the nomination, deftly taking the weapon out of Hillary's hands and wielding it on his own. Problem is, PC only applies to _inter-_racial transactions. Within the black community, there ain't no such thing, and there are no holds barred. That's why Obama was able to dump Rev. Wright with such dispatch, and with no repercussions. Imagine a _white_ politician dumping Rev. Wright (in the unlikely event such an act would ever be necessary): Whoo-ee! Burn, baby, burn! But now comes another "Rev.", namely Jackson, and guess what, he's mad at Obama for "talking down" to black people by pointing out problems that are particularly acute in the black community -- that have been basically intractable, in fact -- for decades... not that Jesse Jackson seems to give a damn. Jackson is the head of the "victimhood" wing of black America, and Obama, to his credit, is trying to make at least some inroads on behalf of the "responsibility" wing, exemplified by Bill Cosby, for example. This, of course, threatens Jackson's entire power structure... his world view... his perennial argument and complaint... his "meme"... his excuse for making bad rhymes and going on boondoggles over the country... and all the rest of it. So of course he's going to talk back. What business is it of Obama -- who's not even an authentic black person, after all -- to start hanging out black dirty laundry (OK, it's not the best metaphor ever, but it will have to do) in front of white America, just to get votes? Much better to keep up the blizzard of excuses and alibis to justify eternal entitlements (and a "leader for life" role for Jackson).

What we have here is not a failure to communicate -- the parties are communicating quite well, in fact. It's more like a generation gap that contrasts the old victimhood/entitlement mentality with the "get up off your ass and do something about it (besides setting fires)" mentality. So in that sense Obama is moving in the right direction, and Jackson is slouching toward obsolescence in the mode of a, say, black Ted Kennedy or Robert Byrd. So it's all good. But what's best about it is that the race card has been neutralized. So the real issues might just, for once, get a hearing.