Monday, January 28, 2008
Tiger Woods and PC
Political Correctness piece by
Bernard Chapin
When will the tsunami of PC so oppressing our nation dissipate? With the probable election of Hillary Clinton in November it is highly likely that the situation will get substantially worse before it gets any better. Our right to speak freely erodes more and more with each passing day. The amount of forbidden words is far greater in 2008 than it was in 2006. Depending on the context, saying any of them can result in one becoming an outcast, getting fired from work or even going to the slammer.
The problem is that many of us don’t know we’ve “crossed the line” until after we’ve finished talking. We all know the “n-word” is a term horribilis, but a recent incident with Rush Limbaugh illuminates that yet another n-word is off-limits [you know, the one that rhymes with “Cheryl Tiegsgro”].
The new year brought in another set of syllables to be added to the lexicon of hate. Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman made a joke, seconding something Nick Faldo said, about how young players should “lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley.” Why did she say that? I assume it was attributed to the golfers’ jealousy over the way he dominates their sport. Her odd interjection resulted in a two week suspension from work and the issuing of an apology.
The media blew up the quip to Don Imus-like proportions. They used it as yet another opportunity to look down on the rest of us. The plotline gelled with their cherished belief that all Americans are closet racists—despite racial obsession being a pathological characteristic largely present within members of the political left. Via Tilghman, our talking heads once again self-righteously condemned those Americans who have not yet internalized the edicts of cultural Marxism.
Golfweek even put a picture of a noose on its cover, but all of this indignation was completely insincere. The reaction of our elites was manufactured as the comment she uttered was not even offensive. Before she said what she did who among us knew “lynch” was a word verboten? I did not and I would not be surprised if Kelly Tilghman did not know either. Sadly, this is an all-too common occurrence. Normal people don’t fathom the ubiquitous evil of political correctness until their own tongues get sliced off by the teeth of its adversarial chainsaw.
This is simply a story with no there there. Has the term lynch been used exclusively in regards to black Americans over the decades? Nope. Some blacks were lynched in the south but the term was never one uniquely applied to them. Thomas Sowell clarifies the matter for us: “The violence for which white Southerners became lastingly notorious was lynching. Like other aspects of the redneck and cracker culture, it has often been attributed to race or slavery. In fact, however, most lynching victims in the antebellum South were white.”(1)
Both leftists and the mainstream media—although there is considerable overlap between the two groups obviously—have little use for history. They only prize it when it can be manipulated for the purposes of denigrating America along with the legacy of western civilization. This accounts for the popularity of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on college reading lists; whereas, the more sober and balanced words of Robert Conquest are far less appreciated. Out of a desire to foment racial hatred, PC authorizes the left to alter the past in a way in which they can perpetually ban speech while creating new, and spurious, indicators of racism existing within the general public.
Yet even the definition of lynch is not singularly racist. Indeed, dictionaries support such a conclusion. Here’s how the Free Dictionary defined it: “To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob.” It is a vile act. That racists once practiced it is in keeping with the nature of their pathology, but it was never one perpetuated against black Americans alone.
On a somewhat lighter note, Lynch also happens to be the last name of my best friend, Robert Lynch. This particular PC mattanza brought to mind a story he told me concerning his pledging for a fraternity. Rob, a Caucasian in the midst of hell week, was surrounded by several upperclassmen when one suddenly informed him that he was about to be lynched. When the others caught on to the pun they began cackling hysterically, but then got back to the goofy task of covering him in shaving cream. Here we see a clear-cut instance in which “lynch” had nothing to do with race, but I am sure the viewer can think of a few from his or her own life.
Integral to the affair was Mr. Woods’ ethnicity; an ethnicity which the media has intentionally reconfigured for him. This is what I found most disconcerting and appalling about the uproar is that Tiger is not even black. He has come right out and said as much. Woods’ makeup is “one-quarter Chinese, one quarter Thai, one quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch.” He calls himself a “Cablinasian” which means that this crusade against the announcer was misconstrued from its inception.
In light of what we know about Tiger’s diverse extraction that the media would continue to describe him as “black” tells us much about the racialism which poisons their worldview. As many of us already know, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party are the most race obsessed assembly of people to walk the earth since the time when real live segregationists swelled the ranks of the party of the jacka**.
Tiger was even made to suffer the indignity of Al Sharpton taking his back. The race shyster equated Ms. Tilghman’s utterance with asking for a woman to be raped or for a Jew to be exterminated. So, we see that Sharpton lied about her comment which is to be expected. Were he to make a habit of simply speaking the truth he would soon be out of business. After all, without gasoline there can be no conflagrations. Racialism may be too kind of a description for the media’s worldview, however. They seem to possess a one drop rule when it comes to blackness. Wasn’t that the same nefarious ideology once used to legitimize slavery and Jim Crow laws? Why anyone would use it to describe a contemporary is astounding.
The war against PC is not a war at all. It’s a Battle of Cannae in which we play the Romans while the other side plays the role of the conquering Carthaginians. Our rights are being crushed due to our collective refusal to stand up against these smug oppressors and totalitarians. People of reason must band together—regardless of ethnicity or sex—and fight for free speech and the right for humans to act like humans (which means occasionally saying things that are awkward or ambiguous). We must defend ourselves. If we don’t there will be nothing left to defend.
Bernard Chapin
1. Sowell, Thomas. Black Rednecks and White Liberals. (New York: Encounter Press, 2005) p.13
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