NSR: The other adjunct to your observation, and the more ominous one in my opinion, is this: It suppresses dissent. One of the unspoken aspects of the PC movement is that it attempts to force a dialectic upon people. You cannot refer to someone as “handicapped”, rather, they are “physically challenged”. Someone is not “black”, rather, they are “African-American”.

Any deviation from this is immediately castigated, and called racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. This has the effect of suppressing free speech and expression out of fear of giving offense or being perceived as a racist, or worse.

Was the comment in question meant to suggest a return to the 1920s South and lynch mobs? Absolutely not. It was a poor choice of phrases, granted, but nothing worse than that. The immediate firestorm following shows the level of insane sensitivity now attached to any word that might possibly give offense.

It’s pathetic really. Orwell was absolutely right in his observation that controlling the language meant controlling the culture. There are certain posters here that would do well with a reading of “1984”. Big Brother loves you.