Article on PC
October 30th, 2005 at 7:37 pm by David FarrarClaire Trevett in the NZ Herald has an article on the pros and cons of political correctness.
Supporters claim that PC has changed attitudes in good ways, so that “nigger” and “cripple” are no longer acceptable words to use. This is a fair point, and perhaps the debate should be about when this is taken to extremes (such as renaming maiden speeches) rather than all examples. The debate is not black and white but about shades of grey.
Some examples of PC, including from this blog, are given.
October 30th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Did you hear the one about the differently abled person who went to Lourdes and came back with two new tyres on his (her?) wheelchair?
Vote:Are catholics still good for a laugh?
October 30th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
David,
How were people 20, 50, 100 years ago supposed to know it was bad form to use the word cripple? Surely its not just the word itself, but the intention/connotation behind it that actually matters. What I mean is, how are we to know now whether or not maiden speech will be acceptable or not in the distant future when the language and culture has evolved further? If you go back far enough it was absolutely fine in some cultures to say nigger and cripple and it was completely mainstream… I would argue there are aspects of mainstream society today that are still entrenched with the idea that men dominate and that world poverty is something we can all happily live with as long as it doesn’t affect us. Whether or not these things (and others) will remain so in the future, no-one can tell. At some point we may evolve into a matriarchal society (especially given the number of leadning women we currently have in NZ
). Perhaps then maiden speeches will be called man-virgin speeches. How are we to know? And who gives a damn anyway? The language will evolve whether or not politicians try to meddle with it. In the mean time say what you like as long as you are prepared to defend yourself in polite company.
The National party should get a grip and focus on something important. A PC eradicator is a ridiculous concept fit for a party that plans never to get back into power. To suggest that the Labour government has any significant power to govern the way individuals think and what they say is condescending to the individuals of this nation and suggests far more power than the government has or wields. NZ is certainly not in the grips of an Orwellian dystopia! If anything the media has much greater power over what individuals in this country think and talk about.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
Interesting comment from
Auckland University law professor Paul Rishworth” “… a lot of what was labelled political correctness was plain old good manners so others were not offended.”
Of course, one might like to consider this notion: When you run around getting pre-emptively “offended” on behalf of me and my fellow Papist nig-nog mongrel faggots, I consider that exremely rude and highly offensive paternalism. Don’t make assumptions on my behalf, and I will repay the courtesy. Oh, and please don’t assume to speak for me because we happen to share an ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
And that’s what so much of PC is about, IMO – the precious sensibilities of the social, political and media elites not the minorities they’re so busy condescending to.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 8:34 pm
Political correctness was meant to be National’s populist issue that it could ride and turn into maintained poll results.
Vote:Looking through the comments it seems that at the very least it is polarising and at worst (…well for National) there seems to be a backlash against being “anti-PC”…
October 30th, 2005 at 8:38 pm
Fair point Craig, but do you really need Wayne Mapp to defend you from the Government? How many words have they actually made illegal in the last 6 years? I still use the word disabled because it is an accurate and functional word. If government officials use some other word in their official capacity it won’t change my behavior unless I think the word is better or someone I talk to actually tells me they are offended and they have a good reason for it.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
Interesting take on It. Claire used to be Mapp’s Parliamentary EA>
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
can we start calling them jiggers again then?
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
When you run around getting pre-emptively “offended” on behalf of me and my fellow Papist nig-nog mongrel faggots, I consider that exremely rude and highly offensive paternalism.
But isn’t that EXACTLY what Wayne Mapp is doing?
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
New Zealand….so many idiots, so little time.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 10:21 pm
Brash must be stunned at the amount of publicity this has got. He has this amazing knack of finding some issue and setting off things. Now the Labour Gopvernment is too scared to introduce some legislation on transgender discrimination. Now if National has some guts it should introduce the bill and see where the Labour Party really stands.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Being a laughing stock is not an amazing knack. It’s just unbecoming in someone who previously held high office.
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 10:52 pm
i see that one of the first areas of attack for the anti-pc brigade is the repeal of the anti-smoking legislation. i guess that’s the safest one cos it has no minority overtones, except to support the minority who smoke (so what happened to defending “mainstream” values???).
i find it bizarre that the “anti-pc” argument is being used to support the repeal of this legislation. sure you should be free to kill yourself slowly by smoking, but then you should also take responsibility to pay for the health costs of that choice. but no, the anti-pc brigade want smokers to be free to smoke anywhere and also want “nanny state” to pick up the bill for the resulting cancers, tumours, heart problems, damage to babies born to pregnant smoking mothers…. nanny state is also supposed to pick up the cost of all health problems faced by partners, children, co-workers, bar & restaurant employees etc who inhale second hand smoke. and don’t make me laugh by suggesting that the taxes on ciggies cover these costs – they certainly don’t and they don’t cover the cost (if it can be quantified) of the suffering and distress these health problems cause. if you say that smokers’ health insurance covers the cost, there are two issues:
1. the private sector rarely deals with severe & serious health problems, they generally deal with the run-of-mill stuff. when you’re close to dying, you get sent back to the public system.
2. premiums go up for everyone because the insurers have to pay the high health costs for smokers. yes, i know smokers pay a higher premium. but again, i doubt it covers the full costs, and i bet that the higher premium doesn’t build in the costs of those who suffer from secondary smoke by being in contact with the smoker.
in the end “nanny state”, ie you and me taxpayer, pay the cost of the smoker’s right to smoke. and if we’re paying, then we should at least get the chance to limit the effects of second hand smoke, and to make it as uncomfortable as possible for those who take up smoking.
if the only argument you have against all of the above is that it’s too pc to restrict smokers, then you show a serious deficiency of intelligence. but then, that’s what the whole “pc-eradication” reeks of. it also reeks of desperation.
are the national party doing this because they can’t think of any real policies?
Vote:October 30th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
I would have thought Mapp would have been all about getting fags out of mainstream faces.
Heh, sorry, my little non-PC pun. But I guess it’s not really funny….
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 12:45 am
The ideologically sound PC Left infects both major parties. Kiwis expect it.
Vote:The dripping wet Nationals differ with Hulun only on who should be subsidised and favoured…. not on whether it should happen.
The fix is to become 8th state of Australia.
Then reality washes it all away.
October 31st, 2005 at 6:31 am
” sure you should be free to kill yourself slowly by smoking, but then you should also take responsibility to pay for the health costs of that choice.”
Vote:Smokers do–via the enormous tax on tobacco.
October 31st, 2005 at 6:38 am
And–as a smoker without children–I also subsidise other’s childcare costs, jogger’s stress fractures and rugby player’s rotator cuff and knee injuries (via ACC), couch potato’s health costs, obese people’s health problems etc etc etc.
Vote:Why single out smokers? At least we die earlier and save taxpayers a fortune in superannuation.
Unemployed people, breeding like rabbits and without the means to support their crime-prone offspring are a far greater drain on the State than overtaxed and persecuted smokers.
October 31st, 2005 at 10:46 am
I’m a non smoker and someone who works in bars as a bouncer…frankly, if people don’t like bars where people smoke, the answer is simple, don’t go there…conversely, if people want to start their own bar and ban smoking because it is their bar…then fine…I’d certainly be more comfortable with people being able to make their own choices in respect of smoking etc rather than being dicated to…
Btw, whatever happened to people who had “cigar” bars prior to the passing of the anti-smoking law…Cuba in Parnell was pretty much legislated out of existence but not sure about others….good way to encourage business ay…
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 10:48 am
Yup, smoking is punishment in itself. A silly choice, but completely personal, and should be allowed. Inflicting it on others should not be, and now isn’t. I can’t see National repealing it, that’s a complete fantasy, trying to masquerade as humour.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 11:08 am
Antihippy makes the only useful point – if people don’t like bars where people smoke they shouldn’t go there. That doesn’t take the people working in there into account, though, but I’m guessing being a non-smoking bouncer is supposed to make us think the bar staff are just soft wusses.
As a bouncer, you’re mainly outside keeping out the riffraff and getting girl’s names off their IDs, dipping inside only to kinghit drunks and tagteam troublemakers? It’s a job where considerable personal danger is a strangely considered one of the perks, so I’m thinking we can’t really expect everyone to be as hard as you, and you really don’t get quite the same exposure to smoke as the bar staff.
Nothing personal, but I think the matter’s more complicated than simple consumer choice. Most workplaces have safety standards, bars should be no exception. And I can’t see that it’s really hit them in the bottom line much – bars seem just as full as they ever were, except for cigar bars. In that, you have a point. I think it should be *possible* to have a bar where people smoke, but it does need further consideration about staff rights. Good ventilation is an option, or open air bars…plenty of possibilities.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 2:13 pm
The PC brigade had a field day instigating their agenda when Nationals Bolger/Shipley were in power. Shipley was one who wanted to see more women in CEO roles within NZ. Labour of course didn’t change a thing.
Vote:Now Mapp is going to take a list of PC no no’s and bring them to everyones attention, thats fine, but “if” National get back in power will Mapp or his party bring in legislation to repeal these evil PC infingements.
You know the answer as well as I do………NO!
National should have put the brakes on nonsence PC in the 90′s but did nothing, which is typical!
Well I suppose as far as National is concerned, desperate times = desperate measures.
October 31st, 2005 at 3:42 pm
Even if there was not a single cent of tax on cigarettes, smokers save any state an incredible amount of money. Roughly speaking, they are cheap deaths.
1. A very large percentage of health care costs are spent on expensive procedures given to people in their 70′s and 80′s, i.e., i.e., in the last five years of life when they experience multi-systemic failures of various kinds. Most smokers never get to the point of requiring all that very expensive stuff.
2. Smokers pay into superannuation schemes but tend to die before they ever pick up a check.
I don’t have links for anyone establishing these basic points but they *were* established beyond a shadow of a doubt in the US in the eraly 90′s when states there were trying to figure out what to do with their settlements from Tobacco companies. (In fact many states chose to ignore their own economic advisors suggestion that the windfall from the Tobacco settlements needed to be reinvested immediately to cover all the *higher* health care biills and *higher* pension costs that would inevitably result from declines in smoking.)
So if there is to be a sound argument for banning smoking in bars etc. then it can *not* be a strictly economic one.
What else can it be? Well there is the question of wait-staff etc. and non-smoking punters…. On one level the answer surely is just for people who don’t want to go to or work at a club or a bar that allows smoking to *not* go there or *not* work there. (Working in a smoky bar would have a risk factor the way working on a fishing boat or in a coal mine does. So long as everyone’s aware of the facts…)
Well, what about someone who wants the dancing or the band or whatever that just happens to take place in a smoky bar? The right answer perhaps is just to take it up with the band etc. If your favorite activity plays in alcoholized zones and you’re under-age then you have a bone to pick with the band, the dance organizer. Bitch at them – they’re missing out on a market if you’re not alone, you should be able to win them over. In the meantime it sucks that they haven’t catered to you. Similarly perhaps then for the smoke-averse. You can’t always get what you want; c’est la vie.
Well, perhaps this is too hard a line to take. Perhaps a case can be made that when an area has an essentially mixed use, e.g.., it’s a music venue, or has a dancefloor (horrible regulation to try towrite, but hell that’s what ministry staffs are *paid* to do) then there’s a smoking ban: this would allow specifaclly smoking bars and perhaps restaurants to form bbut perhaps no more than that.
Evidently NZ’s ban like others around the world goes much further than banning smoking in mixed use places, so what’s going on? As far as I can see it’s flat-out paternalism: society legislating against self-destructive behaviors (that the relevantly self-destructive would otherwise club together and do). Smoking is both traditional around here and also is a kind of slow motion self-destructiveness that tends to have roughly the time scale of a productive human life (which involves a natural arc of aging and destruction in any case). For these reasons the paternalism is something we really squirm about in this case.
So, full public place smoking bans piss us off both because its sheer paternalism that we really *feel* for a change, and because of the deceptiveness of ban’s advocates. They hide behind spurious economic rationales, and most egregiously (e.g. H. Clark repeatedly during the recent campaign) behind the spurious claims that they’re being liberals ensuring the maximal indivdual freedom consistent with similar freedom for others. No, that would be either (i) letting people just not go into or work in smoky establishments or, less hard line, (ii) having a ban only in mixed use spaces.
I don’t know that National, or the New Zealand people more generally, are *capable* of having an intelligent debate about both the limits of and styles of paternalism. [Note, for example, that not all paternalism has to be strictly moral paternalism - some people would say that self-destructiveness is not itself a moral matter - I've tried to be neutral about that point above.]
So there’s a real issue lurking behind current debates, but the chances of it emerging into the light in any productive way are probably close to zero. No, the jerks, the sound-bite-artists, the band-wagon-jumpers, and the political opportunists on all sides will almost ceratinly fulminate unbearably, and simply run out the clock on the public’s interest in and patience for discussion of the area. Dee-pressing.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 4:26 pm
Stephen, such little faith! Possibly true – but I’m inclined to think most NZers, even politicians, capable of grasping most of what you’ve said here.
In one sense, the ban is paternalism, and we could let the market decide. But then smoking bars kind of have a telecom style monopoly, so I can’t see the free market ever making bars healthy places all by itself.
This is an experiment, and we might end up being surprised how little suffering it really causes, for all the suffering it stops. Is it really that much of an issue to step outside for a smoke?
It’s kind of like going to the urinal for a piss – you could just do it at the bar. But it is smelly, unpleasant and a health hazard to others (not just yourself), and we really haven’t lost that much by having dedicated rooms for it. In fact I’d argue we’ve gained quite a lot from that sort of meddling and paternalism.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Ben, you make an interesting point re “staff rights” however, I agree with Steven…If you don’t like the environment (particulalarly in respect of cigar bars), then you don’t have to work there…go work at a bar/restaurant where smoking has been banned by the owner of the business…Btw you may also have noticed that the rate of smoking amongst bar staff, along with hard core boozing and illicit drug use is generally quite high
On your separate question where you imply that I “Dip inside king hit drunks and tagteam troublemakers” I’d suggest that that is pretty much a misplaced sterotype. Generally speaking the job is all about communication rather than being staunch or “hard” and I can honestly say I’ve never “King hit” anyone or even had to throw a punch. On occasions where people have been required to leave then they generally leave when asked…
The job is good for picking up chicks tho
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 4:47 pm
’nuff said on the freedom of choice thing. We’ve tried a different tack, and time will tell whether it will stick. It doesn’t inspire me to go back to bar crawling either way, I’m a bit old for that sort of carry on.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 6:01 pm
I was recently an inmate at Auck.Hospital(not smoking related)and had the habit of shambling down to the carpark for a fag from time to time in my hospital gown. What good company I shared.I was the only person who spoke fluent English and who had any idea that we were saddos.But if I did not already know about poverty and addiction,I learned about it that week.There is little more levelling than illegally fagging outdoors at night in nightwear with total strangers.The difference between us though came when the Security people told us to
Vote:extinguish our ciggs.I told them to arrest me or fuck off.They did disappear,but so did my new “mates”.There is a lesson here;I’m just too buggered to work out what it is.
October 31st, 2005 at 8:09 pm
Rent-a-cops are wusses? You’re scary? Poor people are scared of authority?
Amusing, though. I used to walk past the Royal Melbourne Hospital every morning – it was their version of National Women’s. There was without fail a gaggle of heavily pregnant women smoking like chimneys with their tongues at the ready for anyone who batted an eyelid. The lesson, I think, is that a strong addiction overrides reason, dignity, the health of others, particularly children, and any mild social disapproval. Which explains why everyone wanted it out of bars, but no-one wanted it strongly enough to argue with the addicts – that took law changes and a mock-resigned ‘blame it on nanny’.
Vote: