Political Correctness Gone Wild

For a better read, view this email in your browser. Feb. 4, 2015 No. 157 By Jonathan V. Last COLD OPEN Jonathan Chait recently published an attack on political correctness in New York magazine. This would be unexceptional except that Chait is quite liberal. You might have thought this could be Nixon-to-China moment, where the left was finally able to digest criticism of its modus vivendi. It was not. Instead, the result was something like the 100-car pile up in Michigan last month. (You remember: The one with the exploding truck full of fireworks.) There were a great number of responses to Chait's piece, some of which were amazingly entertaining. For example, Chait contends that the modern left has largely lost the ability to engage in rational arguments and instead bases its entire worldview around the grievance hierarchy. So naturally, Gawker's Alex Pareene began his engagement with Chait by writing, "So, here is sad white man Jonathan Chait's essay..." Over at the Free Beacon Sonny Bunch has a handy round-up of some of the insanity. You may not be surprised at how often Chait's race comes up. My favorite response, however, came in a subsequent argument between Fredrik deBoer and Angus Johnston, two men of the left who live in the academy today. (DeBoer is a grad student, Johnston is a "historian" and "advocate" of "American student organizing.") In a blog post titled "I don't know what to do, you guys," deBoer began by denouncing Chait: So, to state the obvious: Jon Chait is a jerk who somehow manages to be both condescending and wounded in his piece on political correctness. He gets the basic nature of language policing wrong, and his solutions are wrong, and he's a centrist Democrat scold who is just as eager to shut people out of the debate as the people he criticizes. That's true. But deBoer then went on to list examples of PC outrage that he has witnessed on campus and argue that political correctness is a huge problem for the left, because it results in erstwhile liberals being driven out of the movement by the movement's more radical scolds. He concluded with this: Jon Chait is an a**hole. He's wrong. I don't want these kids to be more like Jon Chait. I sure as hell don't want them to be less left-wing. I want them to be more left-wing. I want a left that can win, and there's no way I can have that when the actually-existing left sheds potential allies at an impossible rate. But the prohibition against ever telling anyone to be friendlier and more forgiving is so powerful and calcified it's a permanent feature of today's progressivism. In other words, deBoer hates Chait as much as everyone else on the left, but wishes that his fellow travelers would admit that they have a problem and be nicer to the larger culture. And here, then, is how Angus Johnston replied while attacking deBoer's criticism of political correctness: "You knew, or should have known, that using 'you guys' in your post title was going to piss people off." You can't make this stuff up. Yet the most depressing response to Chait came not from the left, but from Ross Douthat, who wonders if the lesson the left has learned about relentlessly and angrily prosecuting PC deviationism hasn't been right after all: The late-Obama left is shaped by the success of the same-sex marriage movement, a rare example of a progressive cause that seems to be carrying all before it. To activists, its progress offers a model for winning even when electoral obstacles loom large: It shows that the left can gain ground at the elite level and then watch the results trickle down, that victories on college campuses can presage wider cultural success and that pathologizing critics as bigoted and phobic can be an effective way to finish up debates. I suspect that a lot of the ambition (or aggression, depending on your point of view) from the campus left right now reflects the experience of watching the same-sex marriage debate play out. Whether on issues, like transgender rights, that extend from gay rights, or on older debates over rape and chauvinism, there's a renewed sense that what happens in relatively cloistered environments can have wide ripples, and that taking firm control of a cultural narrative can matter much more than anything that goes on in Washington. I'm not convinced that Douthat is wrong about this, and I'm not convinced that-from a utilitarian point of view-the left is, either. LOOKING BACK "Jesse Jackson is back. Some may not have known he was away, as one man's exile is another's long weekend. But after the recent National Enquirer bombshell that the married Jackson had fathered a daughter (now 20 months old) out of wedlock with Rainbow/PUSH Coalition staffer Karin Stanford, Jackson vowed to take time off to 'revive my spirit and reconnect with my family' before returning to his 'public ministry.' 'Ministry' here is a term of art the churchless reverend uses to describe his race-baiting, demonization of Republicans, and shaking down of corporations for large sums of money." -Matt Labash, "Jesse Jackson Returns!" from our February 4, 2001, issue. Remember you get full access to THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive when you subscribe.   Insurers and Ocare Political corruption.   Non-Candidate Meet Mike Lee.   THE READING LIST Rod Dreher on the left's crush on Islamism. * * * Liberal grievance culture showdown over black teenagers setting a white "agender" on fire. * * * The decline and fall of Abercrombie & Fitch. INSTANT CLASSIC "When the Berlin Wall still stood, and Germany was divided, I had trouble remembering which Germany was which. Was the 'Federal Republic of Germany' the Communist part, or was that the 'German Democratic Republic'? At last I realized the answer: the place that has to call itself democratic isn't. Now consider: we have one discipline called physics and another called 'political science.' Which is the science?" -Gary Saul Morson on the misguided social "sciences," February 2015. THE LAST WORD Before we move on, one final note about the left and political correctness: This isn't the first time a liberal has tried to have an honest conversation about it. In the Nation last year, Michelle Goldberg wrote a piece about "Feminism's Toxic Twitter Wars." You have to read it to believe some of the Olympic-level grievance-mongering that goes on in the Internet world. Finally, I want to wrap up my Patriots-Belichick lovefest from last week. My brother, who lives in Seattle and hates the Seahawks, took issue with me lionizing the Patriots' success. He writes: I think people forget a very important fact when talking about the Patriots dominance: the rest of the AFC East is terrible. The Bills, Jets, and Dolphins have been horribly run for the past two decades. Just being a competent organization pretty much guarantees the Patriots a division title and a home playoff game every year. The Bills, Jets, and Dolphins have nine combined playoff appearances since 2000, which is tied for the lowest for a combination of three teams in the same division. (That is, tied with the Jags, Titans, and Texans.) So, the Patriots are tied with the Colts for the easiest division for the past decade and a half. Having a division victory as the floor for your season makes it really easy to look good. That's a fair point. Also worth noting is that the Patriots got a twice-in-a-generation quarterback basically for free. But even that doesn't fully explain how lucky the Patriots got with Tom Brady. Here's my brother again: Unlike most other elite-level quarterbacks, who were drafted in the first, second, or third rounds, Brady cost the Patriots nothing: He was a 7th round pick. But it gets better. Because the Patriots already had an established starter at the time, in Drew Bledsoe, they hadn't been spending other high-round picks on the QB position in the years leading up to Brady. This means that (a) they were stocked at other positions and that (b) when Brady got the call, he wasn't stuck behind another QB who'd been drafted ahead of him. When Bledsoe went down with that terrible injury, he (c) opened up room for Brady at the perfect moment in Brady' career and (d) he was hurt badly enough, for long enough, that the Patriots got to find out exactly what they had in Brady, so that there was no QB controversy after the face. His point is that, as good as Belichick is, he has also benefited from a perfect storm of circumstances. That said, fortune, as always, favors the bold. And Belichick has Ernie Adams, too. Because I was under the weather on Sunday, I went to bed shortly after Super-Mecha Katy Perry and her dancing sharks took the stage. I didn't realize that I'd be missing the best quarter in Super Bowl history. Having now gone back and watched the tape, though, I'm not convinced that Pete Carroll was as dunderheaded as most people seemed to assume. This piece by Jim Souhan makes a pretty good case that on the fated interception, Carroll's hand was actually forced by Belichick's refusal to call a timeout: Seattle took over at the Patriots' five with 1:06 remaining. After Jermaine Kearse's amazing catch, Seattle had wasted a timeout after getting the play in late. So Seattle had first-and-goal with one timeout remaining. Marshawn Lynch bulled to the one. Most everyone in the stadium expected Beilchick to use one of his two timeouts, to preserve time for a possible last-second drive. Belichick just stood there, watching the clock run. What was he thinking? Maybe this: If he calls timeout, then Seattle has the possibility of running three plays from inside the one, with their whole playbook available to them. They could run it, and if they didn't score, run it again, knowing they could call timeout to set up a fourth down call if they didn't score on third down. By letting the clock run, Belichick prompted Carroll to worry about the clock. After the game, Carroll said he wanted to ``waste a play'' on second down. What he seemed to be saying was, his intent was to run the ball, but he wanted his second-down play, with time running down, to be a pass play, so if the Seahawks didn't score, an incompletion would stop the clock and leave him with two plays and one timeout remaining. Carroll also knew that if he ran on second down, the Patriots would know he would have to throw on third down, and Carroll probably wanted to avoid being that predictable. Belichick, thinking a few moves ahead, probably anticipated Carroll wanting to pass on second down once the clock ran down, and sent a third cornerback onto the field. As Souhan notes, "Belichick feinted Carroll into choosing a pass play, and Carroll and Bevell called the wrong one, and that set up Butler to make a remarkable play. Yes, Belichick really is that smart." Just one more reason to love him. Best, Jonathan V. Last P.S. To unsubscribe, click here. I won't take it personally. MORE FROM THE WEEKLY STANDARD The Flag-Waving Greek Left A collision between national sovereignty and the EU. Read more...   Obama's Secret Iran Strategy How to understand the president. Read more...   Crime of Punishment A grim, epic allegory of Putin's Russia. 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