[mediawatch] Joe Bennett Has Been Sold

I’ve been waiting for this to come online: Joe Bennett’s DomPost column on Political Correctness from Jan 31. It is a shining example of the type of curmudgeonly foolishness that is so frequently celebrated in newspapers.
In the column, Bennett sets out to provide an overview of Political Correctness, and to demonstrate why it should be opposed. He sets about this task with enthusiasm, but of course falls into the amateur trap: he doesn’t question his premises. Bennett’s Political Correctness is the fictional product of 1980s U.S. right-wing spin. He accepts it without realising that he’s been sold.
Joe Bennett, you have been sold. What you rail against doesn’t exist. It is a straw man designed expressly to give you something to rail against. Your column is unwitting propaganda, bought and paid for over twenty years ago.
Here’s Joe’s history of the term:
the term “political correctness” was coined to scoff at [a set of naive Leftish attitudes]… The word “correctness” implies that certain opinions are right by definition… Such a posture is called totalitarianism. It has killed millions of people… And that is exactly the danger that the phrase “political correctness” was invented to warn against and to deride.
But that warning and that derision have dissolved. People now use the term as though it meant what it said, as though there were indeed a right way of thinking and speaking. There isn’t.
The first paragraph, at least, bears some funhouse-mirror resemblance to the truth. References on wikipedia suggest that the term was used within the social movements of the 60s and 70s, as a way of mocking those who became too concerned with doctrine.
The second part is outright nonsense. There are no people who use the term ‘as though it meant what it said’. (There are some serious usages on the left, but not many, and not in the sense that Bennett gets at here.) This is a fantasy existing in Joe Bennett’s mind but not in reality.
“Political correctness” is a term used by cultural conservatives who are upset by challenges to their cultural dominance. It is used to discredit these challenges by imagining them to be part of a widespread conspiracy of social engineering. As an imaginary conspiracy it is, by nature, incoherent – witness the confusion over whether the new “violent” All Black haka was an example of political correctness gone mad (they only get away with it because its something Maori!) or was a victim of political correctness gone mad (they won’t let us have it because it’s too violent for their delicate sensibilities!).
Bennett’s whole column is confused and full of ridiculous claims, but this is perhaps the most ridiculous section:
The politically correct argue that language is tilted in favour of people in power, which means old white men… With its concern for the downtrodden, the outsider, the perceived victim, political correctness tilts the balance the other way. To take one inflammatory example, it is now unthinkable to call black people niggers. But it remains fine to call English people Poms. There may be a difference of degree there, but there is no difference in principle… the correct can’t have it both ways.
That’s right: political correctness tilts language in favour of those who are not old white men, because old white men can’t call black people “niggers”, but black people can call old white men “poms”.
This “inflammatory” example is Bennett’s big zinger, the one that is meant to stun us into sensibility. But it’s ridiculous. Bennett talks about power relations but it’s obvious he has no understanding of how they work. (Besides which, what’s he saying, that everyone should be free to call people niggers if they want?)
Bennett’s column isn’t really an argument – it’s just a muddle of thoughts roughly stranded together. It is far from the commanding summary I suspect he wishes it to be. It concludes with Bennett coming out firmly against political correctness, for the way it stifles free speech, and for the way it doesn’t have a sense of humour. That’s one mighty big straw man you’ve got there Mr Bennett. Go easy, you might hurt yourself when you punch it.
The bigger issue, of course, is why this kind of nonsense is given such privilege in our newspapers. These sorts of messages are given reverent space right next to the newspaper’s own editorial and the cartoon. Apart from designated-leftie Chris Trotter, is there a single columnist in the DomPost or the Herald who would do anything but nod in approval at Bennett’s blathering?
I don’t mind the curmudgeons. They have their place, deluded old fools that they are. What I mind is the diet of all-curmudgeon, all the time. We deserve better.

9 thoughts on “[mediawatch] Joe Bennett Has Been Sold”

  1. Nice post Morgue.
    The curmudgeon is one of the two things that are, in my opinion, ruining a lot of media and causing media to have a negative impact on society.
    The other is, of course, the sales-driven focus that means that selling the product is more important than anything else. And fear sells, and sells well, so it’s become an imperative of far too many media sources to create and foster fear; turning Tuhoe criminals into terrorists, and an aggravated burglary into a home invasion.
    A lot of newspapers (and other media services) were founded from some kind of political idealism or desire to change the world. Similarly, many journalists start their careers feeling the same. But there, within the industry, the drive for sales creates cynicsm, and (as we all know) so does getting older. And the young idealists become the curmudgeons, and the activist newspaper becomes a scare sheet.
    What are we going to do about this? Each year that goes by I feel this situation is becoming more and more dangerous.

  3. Thanks Scott. What to do – I dunno. I keep hoping that the pressure of the internet will change things (and there have been signs of that, Tze Ming Mok’s now defunct Yellow Peril column as one example of a blogosphere voice being channelled into print) but I might be waiting forever before anything substantive comes out of this.
    I genuinely don’t know.

  4. I love this part:
    “Political correctness tends to see people as groups rather than as individuals. And among those groups it has goodies and baddies.”
    Because, y’know, the Right never puts people into arbitrary groups (like race, class or age) and says “They’re bad, we’re good.” Never never never happens. The Right is all about getting people out of groups and not playing favourites. I see them do it all the time.
    And besides which, they’re FUNNY. The Right are so fucking funny I fall out of my chair just looking at them.

  5. So the “Politically Correct” are bad and evil because they (supposedly) claim to be ‘Correct’, but the “Right” are fine for claiming to be, well ‘Right’.

  6. I have a pretty simple heuristic for vetting the worth of an argument.
    If you use the term “political correctness” or any derivative (PC, politically correct, etc) to describe a position with which you disagree, then your argument isn’t worth listening to. Because it’s not an argument. “PC” is just a bogeyman to invoke to make your listeners reflexively recoil. Because PC is bad, unthinking adherence to received dogma with no free speech. Don’t associate with that! Instead, think like I do!
    Like all heuristics, this falls down occasionally, but it works a good percentage of the time.
    And to pick up the other point: a lot of commentators are coasting on their radical reputations from 30-odd years ago. “I am a radical force for free thought!”, goes the refrain, “just look at all the stuff I published between 1967 and 1988!”. See also Rosemary MacLeod, Germaine Greer, etc. Like lefties don’t get old and reactionary like everyone else, eh?

  7. Joey: yeah man. There’s a lot of hullabaloo on the Wikipedia talk page for PolCorrectness where people say “hey, isn’t hardcore rightwing language control emanating from Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin exactly the same kind of thing?”
    Jack: I share your heuristic. Your point about the “old radicals” makes me think that most of these commenters came up through the journo/media ranks. There’s no diversity of voices because they’re selected from a pool of usual suspects. Hmm.

  8. A while ago I was involved in a discussion where a group of (white, male, my agish) workmates were cheerfully affirming each other that because of political correctness, it would be inadvisable for them to physically prevent a toddler they didn’t know from wandering onto a busy road. I was stunned!!

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