The Big Picture: Correctitude

[millertime059]

I agree with your general theme here (people bashing PC are often just being jerks) there are times where the 'PC police' get a bit crazy.

Two examples of what I mean, politics and Hollywood. In politics often you see such mental gymnastics take place to sling mud at the opposition. Words are twisted in completely counter intuitive, and often just plain fallacious manners. One recent campaign in my area twisted the words of one politician to try and paint them as anti-semitic, despite the politician being portrayed as such being Jewish. All this under guise of being PC. Buh what?

As for my other statement, how many times have you seen a movie where there is token character (insert race/ gender/ disability/ other minority status here). It's insulting all around. It insults the audience by pandering to them, and it insults anyone who is a member of those minority groups by portraying them in broad, often one dimensional, strokes. I'm not saying all (or even most) such characters are PC centric, but you've seen them before. They prevent true social progress by portraying those groups as one note plot devices, rather than people.

So yes, most of the time people using that anti-PC defense are just being trolls or jerks, don't dismiss the idea that sometimes the people using it have legitimate gripes.

 

[standokan]

Nice one Bob, though I don't think that it'll change anything in online arguements, and it especially won't change trolls but stills, thanks for putting the truth out there.

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

Hard hitting video with a lot of good points.

but I still think PCU is a fun movie(although horrifically dated)

 

[McMarbles]

Bob wins a billion internets this week.

 

[aguywhoknowsaguy]

The Anti-thinker lives!

 

[teh_Canape]

he sounded pretty pissed at the ending

 

[qbanknight]

Damn Bob, this is one of those Big Picture videos that I completely agreed with you, spot on mate

 

[Redem]

If the feminist orthodoxy turn out to be godzilla I'm sure a lot more people would be behind it

While I had my issue with TBP previously this one was very good

 

[tkioz]

Well I agree some of what he has to say this week, but not all of it. There is a undercurrent of political correctness that annoys the living shit out of me.

What's wrong with Chairman? Why do we need to change it to the clunky unnatural sounding Chairperson for example? Yeah I get the actual chair might be a woman, but woman and women have man and men in them, so big bloody deal. Let it be a language hold over like calling a judge "your honour"

Oh another that really irks me, if the flight attendant thing, there were already perfectly acceptable English words for those jobs, Steward and Stewardess, what the hell was wrong with them? And while I'm on the subject of jobs, you're not an auto repair technician, you're a mechanic, there are perfectly good words that people refuse to use for stupid reasons.

It's one thing, for example, to change a phrase from something like "retarded" to "developmentally challenged" (though to be fair they mean pretty much the same thing, one just has a long history of use as an insult as well), but come-on there is a thing as going too far; just look at that LA ordnance that wanted to change how hard drive jumpers were labelled, it took an issue with "master" and "slave". ( http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp )

 

[themyrmidon]

Of course someone using a politically incorrect term in a mean, insulting way is just trolling. Context is what matters when it comes to being PIC, and a lot of the PC backlash isn't necessarily being PIC, but simply hating it when things are made PC that don't need to be.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Carlos and Jeff are really funny :'(

please don't quote me just to tell me they're not, waste of everyones time

 

[wildcard9]

I'm taking a Chicano Studies class right now as an effort to connect with my Mexican American youths. You see, my parents raised me under an American identity as opposed to a Mexican-American identity; meaning that they focused on teaching me English first as opposed to teaching me Spanish. Upside was that I became the fine, upstanding geek citizen I am today as opposed to the walking, talking stereotype known as the "cholo". Downside: I get flack from one side that I'm not "Mexican" enough and I get flack from the other on why I get "butthurt" they start talking about how "Illegal Immigrants" (really Mexicans) are ruining the country.

I identify with whites more than I do with Mexicans by consequence, not by choice. My Dad and by extension his family have seen the worse of what happened to Mexican-Americans during the 60's and 70's and for the most part have become bitter about it to the point where their views are borderline WASP. Being in this special situation of identifying and being identified with both parties, I've taken it upon myself to call out white people when they're being racist or insensitive and calling out Mexicans for the same and acting like stereotypes. While I'm not a believer in "Political Correctness", I am a believer in common courtesy, and strongly believe that when either side throws slurs and then retaliates by saying they started it first or that they're playing "PC police", it makes you a bigger douchebag than what you already are.

Preach on, Bob. We need more people like you in the world calling out other people's BS.

P.S: "Gringo" is not a racial slur on par with the N-Word: it just means "white person" while the other is a hateful, disgusting term. That is all.

 

[ratman995]

Police in britain are sometimes called pc just to say

 

[Sepiida]

Though I disagree with some of the specifics of you argument (Resident Evil 5 for example) on the whole it is nice to see someone take the opposite and in my opinion correct view on the subject of political correctness in this day and age.

I really wonder what ever happened to the concept of politeness. Sure disagreeing with people is all well and good, hell it's the only way we make any progress as a species and society, but attacking people in the insulting manner that seems so prevalent today is not only ugly but straight up bad debating. First rule of arguing: the person's ideas are fair game, the person is not. If you can't express your opinion without attacking the person in some way, or shouting for that matter, then you probably don't have a good argument.

Anyways rant over. Bravo sir, bravo.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The controversy surrounding Resident Evil 5 wasn't about the stereotypical tribal zombies. Most people didn't even know about that untill they played the game. It was about whitebread-American Chris Redfield killing zombies in Africa. And since most people in Africa happen to be black, so too were the zombies.

The stupid tribal zombies were ridicules, but it was the imagined scenario of white vs. black that people went all apeshit over. It just went to show that we hadn't left any of that sordid business of the past behind us. Had it been Chris Redfield killing zombies in Japan nobody would've made a peep.

 

[Crimson_Dragoon]

Good show, though I question why you're attacking Jeff Dunham for this. Sure, he has some racist puppets, but his comedy doesn't really deal with political correctness (at least not that I've seen). If you're calling him out for racist jokes, you also need to call out every comedian you mentioned at the end there.

Carlos Mencia, on the other hand, I can totally understand. You'd be hard pressed to find a joke of his that doesn't attack political correctness.

 

[Saris Kai]

The only problem I have with political correctness is how its resulted the definition "being equal" gradually changing to "being identical" when that isn't what it means and is factually incorrect. I have no problems with equality between people but stating people are identical when its quantifiable that they are not is retarded. Women should be able to be firefighters but they should take the same test as men, here in Canada they don't and they can pass with results a man would fail with on the physical exam. Yes it means more female firefighters but if a small framed man would fail with those scores why should a woman be allowed to pass with them?

 

[JimHawking]

Half of what Bob said was right the other half was frankly pretty stupid.

-People using anti-political correctness as a shield, yeah screw them.

-People going WAY out of their way to avoid being "offensive" can be very annoying. For example, the insistence that the the phrase Arab terrorists is somehow offensive drives me a bit crazy.

No offense Bob you clearly don't have a very good grip on politics, your doing what bad comedians do. Most comedians can't do competent political commentary and confuse preaching an ideology (typically liberal) with wit. Stick to geekdom, you actually have something interesting to say about that.

 

[brazuca]

Finally an episode about social science I could really, but really feel it. I'm a law and history student. I'm also multiethinic, not in the Halle Barry, Barack Obama way. No I mean in the multi with more than one nationality way. PC (not personal computer) is much of a higher issue in US. Mainly 'cos the withe burden in the late XIX century and early XX became guilt.

What you could metion though and that would become another episode is the context that words are used. Negro is offensive, but only in the US in brazillian portuguese that is the correct way to treat african descendent. Wanna know another language that is the right way, italian. Also the word ******, nigga or whatever some say it, 'cos it took me sometime to see either as a latino or a black or a italian descendt, is offensive. Problem is that lot's and I mean a whole bunch of african american say it and it's only offensive in some cotext (well if you are white, asian, native americam or not black enough u can not use that word, guess it's a perk about being african AMERICAN). ¬¬

If Movie Bob chooses to go back in this topic he really should talk about affirmative actions and the 1960's social moviments. Not only in the US, I know, I know the show is for residents of US in the first place, but this topic is sooo inter connected with the world after WWII and the globalization. Just look Middle East now! Who started those riots huh?

 

[Dastardly]

Correctitude

MovieBob discusses the difference between being politically incorrect and just being a big, fat jerk.

Watch Video

To pose some challenging questions, I guess I'd have to ask why updating Huck Finn is a small deal to you, while something like the Thor change gets the green light. I don't have strong feelings either way, but glancing at these two highlights one of the problems with knowing the difference.

For some people, it's a big deal... for others it's not. And those who feel inconvenienced by what they view as a "small deal" are going to be flustered. To me, the line has to do with reality.

Here's what I mean--let's say you've got a college in New England that is 80% white, 10% black, 5% hispanic, and 5% martian. Whatever. If they take pictures around campus for a catalog, without carefully staging and selecting where/when/who, you're going to probably end up with a selection of pictures that fall along those percents. And if it does skew, mathematically it's just going to skew toward the biggest group.

Now, realistically, the folks designing that catalog should try to ensure the pictures represent the actual diversity of the campus. If there are no pictures of non-white folks, that should be corrected.

Unfortunately, a common attitude is that the catalog should show 25% white, 25% black, 25% hispanic, and 25% martian. If a billboard has 4 people on it, one should be of each race/ethnicity/species. But that isn't representative of reality in that school--or possibly in that STATE. Are we claiming that the state should stop accepting new people (kids included) until those percentages have balanced out?

I agree completely with you on people being jerks, but I disagree that there isn't some heavy-handedness in the application of "political correctness," when it is used to paint the image of a reality that isn't there, and for which there is no reason for it to be there. Would our country be substantially improved if all cultures had equal populations? I don't think so, and it would be impossible to enforce. Instead, our country would be substantially improved if the cultures learned to get along together in their current numbers, and in whatever numbers the future might hold.

When we use so-called "political correctness" to ensure that what we show and say matches up with present reality, that's fine. When we use it to make a Pleasantville version of a false reality, I think we're crossing a line that just doesn't need to be crossed.