The Big Picture: Correctitude

[lumpenprole]

I'm late to this party, but just wanted to Bob to know (as if he's reading this far in) that I agree totally. My favorite on this subject:

George Carlin would have a fucking field day with "women who worked as prostitutes"

As he'd probably say it's bullshit redundancy so that people could cushion themselves from reality (maybe not in those words).

Yeah really? You think making fun of people who's children had been murdered would have been his play? I met him once, and he didn't seem like that kind of guy, but maybe you're right.

Yes I think he would make fun of the terminology they use, he makes fun of language like that quite a lot. But I don't know, he's dead although I would appreciate it if you would stop pretending that I'm taunting them for having a murdered daughter.

Well, you see, that's the whole point of Lee's bit. Yes it is cushioning people from reality. But the reality is that their daughter was murdered. So cushioning them from that is not a political move, it is a nice thing to do.

Carlin spoke truth to power. Not to victims.

 

[Rebelcommander6]

Bob, you do hold a very valid point for the most part, despite that I have seen the opposite of your arguments in my life. I try to not have any harmful speech in any of what I do, and I don't think that any group is inferior, but people have come out of the wood work and lumped me in with the "popular" conservatives just because I have no shame about my political beliefs (you know what I mean by popular)

 

[SamElliot'sMustache]

The N word was invented by American pro-white hate groups as a dehumanizing term for blacks, so if a white person uses that word, it would be understandable for a black person to assume that said white person sympathizes with those groups. Sure, racial wounds heal over time, but the state effectively assisted those groups in persecuting blacks as recently as fifty years ago; the Holocaust is almost twenty years older.
Also, is there anyone who slams on the world of right wing punditry like this who has any direct experience with it at all, other than brief clips of Fox News carefully selected by The Daily Show? Because I've never met them.

Had to tolerate listening to Glenn Beck the other day during my lunch break. The carefully selected edits by Jon Stewart actually make them seem less dickish.

 

[loip9114]

Pfffh very hard topic you took there. Believe that a mere few minutes can't even start to tackle this issue. I didn't agree with you on the first time listening, while it's not bad that you definitely show some emotion as in frustration (perhaps even anger) about the issue. It kinda weakened your argument in my ears. But I gave it another shot and again I didn't agree, but on the subject of people saying enforcing political correctness is wrong and use it to be an asshole. Fair enough.

However, I think we are getting ourselves way to far in this whole political correctness thing. We want to be politically correct, even if the side we are politically correct to aren't it themselves.
I don't want to be a jerk and hurt everybody, but I am biased since the day I began using my senses and brain. I am biased by everything in life, be it from others or from myself. Thus when I say something and it might seem biased and hurt you, sorry but that's just how it is. Other people can easily say stuff without them knowing they hurt me, but I don't care.
But yeah still I don't want to offend people, but I don't want to on my toes for the rest of my life.

I agree that jerks shouldn't claim they are hero's if they clearly ment to offend, but then again you took the internet as example. No place makes it easier to hide your intentions than the faceless internet.
On the other side I despise people who take the "I'm the victim"-role as easy as they breath more than those jerks.
Political correctness are two combined words that I hate overal and I believe we should all be less sensitive sometimes as in sensitive to other people's words.

Not every word that's being said is thoroughly thought about.

 

[Lucifron]

Snip

You were generous with your mainly's and mostly's, and thus find yourself in a pretty solid position.

However, your perspective is somewhat limited, and what is branded as political correctness in certain countries, e.g. Sweden, has a completely different definition and the result that certain topics can not be discussed in public without a barrage of unfounded allegations being fired in the direction of the speaker. I suppose you might call it reverse-douchebag-political-incorrectness.

And for the record, if one really wants to "acknowledge diversity," you would perhaps agree that shoehorning a black actor into the role of someone who was beyond any conceivable doubt white isn't the best way to do it. I doubt that the reason for casting whatever his name is as a member of the Norse pantheon was in order to acknowledge anything, and while the reason may not be giving into political correctness as you define it, I can't think of any satisfactory explanation.

 

[Vault Citizen]

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. When I was younger I was on the anti pc bandwagon but now I'm unconvinced that it even exists and prior to this episode I've been thinking how it is funny that characters in tv are described as unpc when they are infact just being rude.

 

[restoshammyman]

i agree but! i do like the dead terrorist. it is funny.

 

[Mantonio]

Just because it's the twenty first century doesn't mean you can just mix and max races on characters. That's a - in my opinion - ridiculous idea.

I hate to be part of the 'What Next?' brigade, but where does it end? Race is something that does exist and is part of a characters physical description. It's not something that you should just mess around with. It would be like rebooting Captain America (the first one that is, Steve Rogers) except that this time he's black. Sure you could do it, but at the end of the day Steve Rogers isn't black.

Aaaand I got went off on a bit of a tangent there. Basically, I think that you shouldn't just change a characters race for the hell of it. This applies to the Thor movie as well.

 

[winter2]

Ol' Bob sounded a little angry today.

 

[loip9114]

I don't think I've ever disagreed more with you.

I'm a firm believer in being an equal opportunities asshole.

I'll call anyone for anything I choose to. I don't pick on certain races, creeds or genders or use anything like that as a springboard for my assholery. But being called a bigot because I'm taking the piss out of someone for being an idiot, or a thug, or a ditz. Just because of their Creed, race or gender..... That doesn't sit well with me.

Political correctness, regardless of it's etymological source, is today used as a means of carebearifying the planet.

That's just something I'm not going to get behind.

Oh. And the Thor thing.... Yeah. That's wrong. They're NORSE Gods. From NORSE mythology. They're going to look EUROPEAN!

Can you imagine what would happen if there was a film about the Hindu Gods and they cast Kali as a 8 armed white chick with blue eyes?

Oh that's not OK? But the other way around is fine?

I like things to be authentic. I take just as much issue with a white guy being cast as sinbad or Cpt' Nemo as I do with a black or asian guy being cast as a white character.

That is what we should be moving away from. If the race isn't a fit for the role. Then they're excluded. Regardless of what race they are. Black, white, yellow, caramel. I don't care. If it's not right.... IT'S NOT FUCKING RIGHT!

Don't even get me started on the ridiculous backlash Res 5 got. Denying that some tribes in Africa still dress that way is both racist and moronic.

And the exaggerated weapons... Racism? Pyramid head had a pretty exaggerated weapon... is that racist too?

You're not smart or heroic for ignoring a double standard. And yes, society is full of them. On both sides of every race/gender line. Political correctness. Whether you choose to accept the term or not, perpetuates them.

Propably going to catch some flames here too, but I do agree. But there is another side to that story. While you (rightfully) flame anybody who makes a mistake, Simply for making that mistake, seperate from gender, race or what-so-over. That's fine, that's good in my perspective. That's called being equal.
That is also the negative side of being equal. If you are equal you get yelled at equally if you fuck up equally. That seems fair right?

However, the other side is that some positive decisions like hiring somebody isn't completely seperate from the race, gender or believe things. This is more the subject to tackled in my opinion. But you didn't say anything about that, so don't take this is an insult or offense. It's just adding something to the already big discussion.

But yeah that's propably the double standard you were talking about.

 

[370999]

The objection to the law is simple

Ill-informed objections often are.

it limits people's free speech and has a very ugle assumption behiend it, that of people instantly turning racist the moment they see or hear Wilders so we need these political elites to deal with it.

It has no such "assumption" behind it, your claim is simply stupid. Why not do some reading and try to be an exception to the rule: someone who objects to hate speech laws and actually knows the first thing about their limitations and justifications? Then you might have something interesting to say. In the meantime, I see no need to believe that liberal societies are required to be "tolerant" of the "free speech" of political movements that despise tolerance and free speech, even as they try to shelter behind them.

Funny, I find you are acting quite uncivilly. I have no beef with you but if we are going to get into a slagging match I don't think there is any real need to keep posting.

Could you explain to me how I am being ignorant. What exactly makes Fitna such a heinous piece of work that it's author needs to be prosecuted? In particular can you explain why he can be branded " a little Hitler" and that be permissible but Fitna is not. Mind you Wilders was aquited recently which I view as very good, but I iamgine you view as monsterous.

Of course liberal societies should be tolerant. I tolerate the mad Islamist raving about the evils of western decadence, the racist, etc. If you feel they should be curshed what you are reverting to is a belief that discourse should be policed. Who polices it? How familiar are you with the Canadian Court of Human Rights and then huge problems it and it's cohorts have in justifiying it's behaviour? It seems to act otherwise is to slowly infringe upon civil liberties. And I don't think anyone wants that.

Incidently I've noted you've defended the casting of the acotr for Heimdall, would you of taken the same approach to the casting of "The Last Airbender"? For me it is a non-issuse, Directors are free to cast who they want and if you don't think it is a good choice don't see the film but I am interested in hearing you explain what serperates the two casting choices morally.

 

[ironlordthemad]

Um just want to point out that bob's image of a soapbox saying "I'm gonna get up on this." should have been at the start. Other than that I'm just going to leave this topic as its flame war fuel...

 

[MarsProbe]

Not bad, but I don't remember the resident evil 5 racism scandal being quite like how you portray it. I'm pretty sure the complaints were "whitey killing blacks" and not "misuse of tribal imagery" But hey, I could be wrong.

Edit: Before the MovieBob defense force comes to crucify me, here's a quote from a group of the complainer's since the original article has been taken down.
http://gamepolitics.com/2007/08/01/african-womens-blog-critical-of-resident-evil-5-trailer

I thought tht was the case as well. In fact, I do seem to recall the initial outcry at least partially revolving around an image that showed our muscular white American hero Chris pointing his gun at seemingly rabid group of black people. This being before we knew there was a Sheva and they then added white people to the hordes of the infected. Also, as I recall Yahtzee saying in ZP, it's not that the developers of RE5 were being mean when it came to the tribal peoples in the game, it's just they weren't being incredibly smart...

Anyway, PC doesn't usually bother in the sense that Bob is mainly getting at here. It's when the term is used as an excuse to try and alter the way people to talk, or outlaw words that have long being in common use. Such as, whoever it was that decided that "retard" is now a word you can't ever use. Ever. Or whoever thinks that "thought shower" is somehow an acceptable substitute for brainstorm. Not counting the fact that "thought shower" just sounds, well, retarded. Really, they do need to know that a word or phrase like that can't suddenly be deemed offensive.

Oh, and don't get me started on the "safe" reworking of "Baa Baa Black Sheep". As in "baa baa wooly sheep, have you any wool". Well, most likely. You did just say it's a wooly sheep after all. Ridiculous.

 

[Tornd]

Was almost expecting him to say: "I'm Bob, and that's the Big Picture...asshole."

But, on-topic, I constantly make racist/misogynist jokes...to my black girlfriend. I don't think making mean jokes necessarily makes you a jerk/bigot/what-have-you, it's the context. If you walk up to some random black guy and call him a ******, then, I agree, you are a complete tool.

 

[reachforthesky]

Dude, the point of Wikipedia is that everything has an external, credible source.[citation needed]

Fixed.

Not everything is sourced properly.

The example used in the video was. Seriously Bob, while as usual I'm in complete agreement with the main idea of the video, please don't use your privileged powers of addressing a community to take verbal potshots at a vast well-cited and strictly maintained source of free information. I figured you would know better, Wikipedia really doesn't deserve half the flak it gets.

Edit: In regards to the rest of the video, I agree the PC accusation is thrown around way too often by the most despicable kinds of people, but I would argue that there are some situations where the accusation stands.