Interesting Quote

Mmm also from me. Good one.

Does that mean that she thinks anyone should be able to say anything they want about anything and not be challenged?

A shop near us has some lovely gollies in. And I, of course, was the one to say "look at the golliwogs" to the small child in our party.

Nobody batted an eyelid.

Perhaps if someone, when quoting a very old children's rhyme, lets slip a word that really shouldn't be used today, they should be allowed a little leeway?

Should Nigel Farage be allowed to say what he wants without being challenged?

By the way, jingl, Clarkson has said it's time he went, so you do not need to stick up for him any more.

PC-ness isn't soley about racist issues!

solely

Did anyone say it was?

Did I say that anyone had said that it was?

Racist language is the only subject that has been mentioned so far on this thread.

Not in my first comment, Ana. I said anything about anything.

Totally agree jingl

My auntie asking a shop assistant for a n- brown skirt was in no way making a racist comment, in all her eighty odd years that was what she had always called a shade of brown.

Is that what P.D. James means though, or am I misunderstanding it?

They didn't go to war against linguistic fascism, or political correctness. They went to war to protect freedom, and it took some a long time to realise that freedom was being attacked.

Linguistic fascism.

https://gratiaetnatura.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/linguistic-fascists/

I think that it is dawning on some of them that they have gone too far. They appear to have thought that if they could stop people saying certain things, that they would end up stopping people thinking them too!

this is the interview during which she first said it about two thirds of the way down. The paragraph that starts, "I went to Somerville..."

jen you could read the whole thing.

I have. She wasn't talking about golliwogs, was she, jingl?
Maybe people think that, if you criticise others for saying certain things, they will actually realise that they should change their way of thinking, soontobe, rather than stop people thinking what they do. I much prefer to ask people why they think the way they do instead of telling them to stop.
It took a war and millions of lives to stop Hitler and Mussolini, not just a few words.

Actually, I prefer George Eliot to Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Gaskell to either of them. Haven't read any PD James.

Of course, it also depends on whether you have anyone to say these politically incorrect things to, before breakfast. The only ones I see at that time in the morning are two of my grandchildren and I'd much rather not say politically incorrect things to them before they go to school.

You could just say them to yourself in the bathroom mirror. There doesn't have to be anyone to actually hear you.

Sorry, Ana, I'd have to disagree with myself then. It'd do my head in.

Having briefly looked at the interview with P D James that jingle posted and, in particular, the paragraph starting "I went to Somerville", I really don't understand what political correctness has got to do with the advertising of date rape help lines in university toilets.

What exactly do those that object to "political correctness" think the term means and why do they object to it?

PDJ thinks pc can be a form of linguistic fascism.

I think it can be a form of social control and bullying of those who want to challenge the status quo.