March 31, 2006
Political Correctness Encore Une Fois Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:45 PM EST Joshua Zeitz writes, “In an article on Hillary Clinton’s prospective run at the presidency, Douglas MacKinnon mocked the ‘smoke-free, racially diverse, politically correct back rooms from which’ the Democratic party’s high officials operate. (The Weekly Standard, February 20, 2006.) Is MacKinnon advocating a world populated only by white smokers? Probably not. But in lambasting the Democratic party’s self-conscious embrace of racial diversity as “politically correct,” he clearly makes the connection between pluralism and “political correctness.” It seems to me that Douglas MacKinnon (whom I don’t know of, but then I don’t read The Weekly Standard) is simply making a list of Democratic political fetishes, among which are racial diversity and political correctness. He is not connecting the two; Mr. Zeitz is. He also writes about the Concerned Alumni of Princeton group (long defunct, I believe), which he describes as having “bitterly opposed opening the university’s doors to women and minorities.” I have read, and do not doubt, that the group opposed having female undergraduates. That strikes me as a reasonable thing to oppose, although I doubt that I would have done so had I gone to Princeton. (I have always been amused by the fact that while my father went to Princeton, class of 1941, the only one of his four children to go there was his daughter; his three sons went elsewhere. I went to Vanderbilt, which has been coed since the day it opened in 1872.) But “bitterly opposed” to having minorities at Princeton? Does Mr. Zeitz really think that a young, ambitious, highly intelligent Princeton man, hoping one day to sit on the federal bench, would have gone anywhere near such a group in this day and age? Please. The “editorial” is transparently satire, sophomoric satire, perhaps, but satire. By the way, I notice that Mr. Zeitz does not bring up Yale’s utterly bizarre decision to admit—presumably in the name of “diversity,” what else could be the reason?—a former and unapologetic spokesman for a regime that committed just about every barbarity in the book. That sort of diversity is important to liberals, it seems, while the Yale faculty’s intellectual diversity runs the gamut from A to B. With Sesame Street, again, I think Mr. Zeitz fails to grasp what Mary Eberstadt is saying. Sesame Street is, I suppose, politically correct (I’ve never watched it; I was of the Howdy Doody and Lone Ranger generation of kiddy TV watchers), as she describes it. She doesn’t mention diversity, at least in the quote Mr. Zeitz gives. What she does mention, some what obliquely, is that the idea that women can have full-time careers and be full-time mothers is dubious and many women who grew up watching Sesame Street agree with her. Mr. Zeitz quotes Neil Cavuto of Fox News (at last, a Zeitz conservative I have actually heard of! although I rarely watch him) as saying “‘we [are] getting too politically correct here’ in scoring California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for calling opponents of his policies ‘girlie-men.’ Maybe this is a question of humor and taste. Liberals presumably have none, while conservatives have lots. But is it ‘politically correct’ to take exception to comments that equate weakness with femininity?” I think Mr. Zeitz has proved his case that liberals have no sense of humor. First, it equates weakness not with femininity but with men who act feminine. That’s not the same thing. It is more than possible for women to be both strong and feminine. Ask Margaret Thatcher. Second, who made the phrase “girlie-men” famous in 2004? A guy who turned a set of overdeveloped muscles and an accent into a spectacularly successful Hollywood career (although not on my nickel; I’ve never seen a single movie the Governator ever made; Shakespeare in Love is my idea of a great movie). To Schwarzenegger’s persona (if not his real-life self) every man is a girlie-man, just as Jack Benny thought everyone but he was a spendthrift.
Finally, Christmas, a subject I’ve written about on this blog before. If I worked at Wal-Mart, I’d probably say “Happy Holidays” too. Life is short, and there are a lot of grumpy people in the month of December. But frankly, since Christmas is in reality a worldwide holiday celebrated by hundreds of millions—billions probably—of people who are not even nominally Christians, I don’t see a thing wrong with generally wishing people a Merry Christmas. I do, indeed, think banning the phrase from public discourse because it might offend someone is sensitivity run amok, the definition of political correctness.
As far as I’m concerned anyone can wish me happiness or merriment in any way, shape, or form they would like to. I need all the happiness and merriment I can get. I am not offended by good wishes, however put, and I think that anyone who is offended by those good wishes not phrased to their satisfaction should see a doctor about having a chipectomy on their shoulder. I often disagree with John Gibson (although he’s Edward R. Murrow compared with Bill O’Reilly, who gets me reaching for the clicker at warp speed), but not on this issue.
March 31, 2006
Daylight Savings Time Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:00 PM EST Newscasts will be filled tomorrow with reminders to set clocks ahead by an hour for the start of Daylight Saving Time. Most countries, at least those in temperate zones, observe it nowadays, although they vary widely on what dates it begins and ends on. In the United States, since 1986, it has begun on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October for those states that observe it. Hawaii, for one, does not, as daylight in the tropics doesn’t vary all that much from summer to winter. Neither does Arizona observe it (except for the Navajo Nation Indian reservation, which does). Indiana, which straddles the line between the central and eastern time zones, is a hopeless muddle right now. Some parts used to observe it, some did not, but all are supposed to observe it this year. However, the line between the two zones may change to put all of Indiana in the same zone (one wonders why they didn’t do that to start with). Stand by.
Next year Daylight Saving Time is supposed to start on the second Sunday in March and last until the first Sunday in November. There is a problem with that, however, because most computers are programmed to automatically adjust their clocks according to algorithms that are built in and won’t change just because Congress—reminiscent of King Canute and the tide—has commanded them to. Again, stand by.
DST started as a means of conserving fuel in World War I by shifting the daylight from summer mornings, when most people were still asleep, to the evenings, when they were awake. But the germ of the idea arose much earlier, in 1784, when Benjamin Franklin, in Paris, claimed to have been accidentally awaked early one morning in the summer and, his servant having forgotten to close the shutters the night before, been astonished to discover that the sun was already up when he didn’t need it, as he slept till noon. He promptly calculated how many candles Parisians could save if only they would haul themselves out of bed earlier in the day and thus go to sleep earlier as well.
The letter is the great Franklin at his facetious best.
March 31, 2006
Political Correctness Again Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 10:15 AM EST A few weeks ago, I entered into an exchange on this page with my colleague John Steele Gordon over the idea of “political correctness.” I suggested that “what conservative critics often dismiss as ‘politically correct’ is little more that polite. . . . In short, what many critics dismiss as ‘political correctness’ is no more than a belated attempt to recognize that we live in a more democratic, pluralistic and inclusive culture than 100 or even 25 years ago.” In response, John Steele Gordon wrote: “I think that Joshua Zeitz is setting up a bit of a straw man with regard to political correctness. . . . Those opposed to ‘popular democracy’ (what other kind is there, come to think of it?) and ‘pluralism’ are only a subset of the population, and a very small one. They are not to be confused in any way, shape, or form with ‘conservatives,’ most of whom are every bit as fair-minded and respectful of others as liberals.” First, my apologies to Mr. Gordon for the long delay in my response. This morning I searched for a few examples, drawn from three mainstream conservative news outlets—The National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Fox News—of the tendency to equate pluralism and inclusion with “political correctness.” The task proved a simple one. It took me only ten minutes. Here are a few examples: In an article on Hilary Clinton’s prospective run at the presidency, Douglas MacKinnon mocked the “smoke-free, racially diverse, politically correct back rooms from which” the Democratic party’s high officials operate. (The Weekly Standard, February 20, 2006.) Is MacKinnon advocating a world populated only by white smokers? Probably not. But in lambasting the Democratic party’s self-conscious embrace of racial diversity as “politically correct,” he clearly makes the connection between pluralism and “political correctness.” During Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s Senate confirmation hearings, liberal Democrats raised concerns over the nominee’s prior affiliation with Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group that bitterly opposed opening the university’s doors to women and minorities. A typical editorial in Concerned Alumni’s newsletter read: “People nowadays just don’t seem to know their place. Everywhere one turns, blacks and Hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they’re black and Hispanic, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children.” Referring explicitly to this article, Henry Payne wrote in National Review Online: “It does sound just like the strained satire Prospect’s student writers often engaged in. And it would be just like politically-correct, feverishly anti-Alito Democrat staffers to take it out of context.” Yes, Payne distances himself from the thrust of the editorial, which he finds clumsy and in poor taste. But he also writes off as “politically correct” anyone who finds serious fault with bigoted rantings and ravings against African-Americans, Latinos, and gays and lesbians. (National Review Online, January 13, 2006.) Writing in The Weekly Standard, Mary Eberstadt hailed a New York Times article that found many college women contemplating marriage and family instead of (rather than in conjunction with) careers. “A funny thing happened to the kids raised on Sesame Street and all the other fare touting politically correct notions of the family,” wrote Eberstadt. “They grew up—and as they did, a significant number looked at their own lives and found progressive happy-talk about the family coming up short.” So, in short, Sesame Street, with its emphasis on diversity—as well as reading, writing, and rubber duckies—is also a “politically correct” media invention. Does this one need further explication? (The Weekly Standard, October 10, 2005.) In an article in The National Review, Andrew Stuttaford took on J. K. Rowling for characterizing her Harry Potter books as “moral.” “Moral?” Stuttaford begins. “In the sanctimonious world of contemporary children’s literature, that’s a frightening word, all too often a synonym for ‘politically correct.’ Rowling does her best to oblige. Minority characters are carefully included in a saga that is otherwise inescapably Anglo-Saxon. Unusually for an English boarding school, Hogwarts is coeducational.” I have some bad news for Mr. Stuttaford. I teach at Cambridge University in England. Your England, Mr. Stuttaford, is dead. The new England is racially and ethnically diverse (just take a ride on the London tube and you’ll see what I mean), and many of the old boarding schools and sixth-form colleges are coeducational, as are all but a handful of women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. But I digress. Like so many other conservatives, Stuttaford equates gender diversity and racial or ethnic pluralism with political correctness. (The National Review, October 11, 1999.) On Fox News, the host Neil Cavuto wondered whether “we [are] getting too politically correct here” in scoring California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for calling opponents of his policies “girlie-men.” Maybe this is a question of humor and taste. Liberals presumably have none, while conservatives have lots. But is it “politically correct” to take exception to comments that equate weakness with femininity? Guess so. (Fox News transcript, July 19, 2004). Finally, there is the example of conservative conniption fits over the Liberal War on Christmas. Typical of the conservative rhetorical strategy, Fox News’s John Gibson wondered whether “Wal-Mart’s politically correct Christmas policy [will] hurt their bottom line,” (November 11, 2005). In effect, uttering “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” in a polyglot nation that prides itself on accepting immigrants from different traditions and faiths, amounts to the high crime (or misdemeanor?) of “political correctness.” On behalf of all the congregates at my synagogue, I apologize for the inconvenience we’ve imposed on Mr. Gibson. What I found, above all, is that “political correctness” is a sloppy, over-exposed term that conservatives use to lambaste everything they hate. It means everything, and it means nothing. But when it means something, it often means diversity, pluralism and inclusion.
March 30, 2006
Invention & Technology Is Here Posted by Frederick E. Allen at 12:25 PM EST For 21 years our sister publication American Heritage of Invention & Technology has told the stories of the making of the world we live in—how everything from dental floss to the supersonic transport, from the mattress you sleep on to whole seas built by the hand of man, got that way, and the remarkable people who made them happen. The magazine has told many hundreds of entertaining and illuminating stories. In fact, those four I just mentioned are all from the very latest issue alone. Now we’ve made Invention & Technology a part of AmericanHeritage.com. Simply click on the “Invention & Technology” tab above the search window on the home page or this page or any other page to get to it, or go to www.americanheritage.com/inventionandtechnology. In addition to those articles from the current issue, you'll find nearly every issue of the magazine, from 1985 to now, on our archives page. Check it out. I think it adds mightily to the wealth of resources (and plain good reads) we’re offering at AmericanHeritage.com.
March 27, 2006
Camels of Mass Destruction Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 07:55 PM EST The latest revelation to come out of the declassified papers captured in Iraq is that Saddam Hussein, in his fight against the invaders, planned to use camels to deliver explosives. These suicide bombers would presumably have been given no inkling of their mission, since camels are notorious for doing whatever they please and would not likely have been motivated by religious fervor. While this particular application would have been a novelty, camels have often been employed by military forces in their traditional capacities as a means of transportation and as beasts of burden. Even the United States Army experimented with camels in the deserts of the Southwest during the 1850s. For more on the less-than-encouraging results, see the following two articles in our archives from 1961 and 2005.
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