#onPC: A Twitter essay on political correctness

Another Twitter experiment — an essay on political correctness and its variations,

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#twowrongs — a Twitter essay of sorts on ‘The Donald’

I’ve been seeing a lot of this kind of reasoning on Facebook the last couple of days (I removed the name of the poster):

The point of this link and others is to call liberals out as hypocrites. “Carter did it,” this argument goes, so what do have to say about that?

My response is simple: so what? Carter was wrong. I have no problem saying that and many of my liberal friends feel as I do.

But the reality is this is part of a larger pattern used to deflect focus from what is on the table today.

Called out by a friend on this specific point on Facebook, so I offer this clarification (from my Facebook response):

Hyperbole on my part. Yes. It isn’t ethnic or religious cleansing, but the specific targeting of a religious or ethnic group with the intention of separating them in some way (physically, symbolically) from the general population would seem a first step in its direction — hence my calling it a continuum. You start by painting a group as a threat, then you use legal measures to control them in some way (which, at the very least, confers legal status on their separateness), then you expand those measures beyond control, and so on. I think Trump’s rhetoric falls at the beginning of that continuum.

To elaborate further: Banning entry of an individual religious or ethnic group by force of law or executive order is creating a separate legal class for that group, which then opens the doors for other things. Does this mean that a more explicit form of agitation and separate will waltz in through that door? No. A lot of other things would need to occur before something like that might follow. But opening the door does seem a dangerous first step.

This line of argument has been building up for a few days as I attempted to respond on Facebook to some of the memes and links that have been circulating, but the response to my posting of today’s Daily News cover ultimately led me to put it in writing (or tweets):

The Daily News in full crusader mode.

Posted by Hank Kalet on Tuesday, December 8, 2015

So, jump into the fray. What do you think. Answer in the comments, or feel free to join in the fun on Twitter or my Facebook page.

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No fly on the no-fly

There was a time when liberals were skeptical of the no-fly list. Back during the Bush administration, the Democrats were rightly critical. The list, as In These Times pointed out in 2002, shortly after its inception, is a dangerous tool that can be turned against political opponents as easily as it could be used to keep flyers safe.

And yet, Democrats have opted to make the no-fly list a focus of their current gun-control efforts.
Here’s what President Obama said during his Oval Office speech last night:

To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon? This is a matter of national security.

Democrats have been pushing this line for the past few weeks, including a failed effort in the Senate — and a level of hyperbole that ties a real need for regulation of firearms to an unaccountable leftover from the Bush administration. Here’s Nancy Pelosi:

“It is unconscionable that a suspected terrorist can enter a store and leave with the gun of his choice. We must close this terrorist gun loophole and act to strengthen our system of background checks.”

It sounds reasonable, right? After all, we know that everyone on the no-fly list is a threat. Or acknowledged threat. Or might be a threat. Except that’s not the case. Despite reforms, as the ACLU points out,

the standards for inclusion on the No Fly List are unconstitutionally vague, and innocent people are blacklisted without a fair process to correct government error. Our lawsuit seeks a meaningful opportunity for our clients to challenge their placement on the No Fly List because it is so error-prone and the consequences for their lives have been devastating.

The no-fly list is problematic on a lot of levels — there is a lack of transparency and due process, potential political interference, ethnic bias, etc. We should be having a discussion about whether it is even a useful tool, rather than expanding its use into other areas.
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Journalism quote of the day

This is a quotation from the summer that, in a shortened form, reappears in a more recent blog post from Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU. (I saw this today, posted to Facebook by journalist Marc Cooper.) I post this for my students:

(P)ower-seeking and truth-seeking are different behaviors, and this is what creates the distinction between politics and journalism. The work of the journalist cannot be done without a commitment to the act of reporting, which means gathering information, talking to people who know, trying to verify and clarify what actually happened and to portray the range of views as they emerge from events.

A primary commitment to reporting therefore distinguishes the work of the journalist. Declining to express a view does not. Refusing to vote does not. Pretending to be ideology-free or “objective” on everything does not. Getting attacked from both sides? Nope. But a commitment to reporting does.

As I constantly tell my students: It is about the reporting. It is only about the reporting. The reporting is what distinguishes the ideologue from the journalist.

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