Political Correctness

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As I understand it there was a lawsuit filed against the military alleging political correctness played role, but last I saw that lawsuit had not yet been ruled upon (I could be behind on this). If you have an update on this I’d appreciate it.

The army may have made any number of changes in response to the shooting, but we need to know precisely which ones you’re talking about in order to parse your claims here that they were changed regarding speech. ( it’s also important to note that the Army has its own system of justice independent of that of United States and that complicates the discussion)
 
blackforest said:
Because it’s all subjective, as you acknowledge, we should all have access to expressing that subjectivity.
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Great! I’m glad we agree what people are allowed to have reactions to the Simpsons based on their subjective experience with its faulty use of satire!

So, do you consider it valid that some South Asian people view Abu as disparaging?
 
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I am all for being polite, but some people take offense at the most minor of things. A small town near me has had a festival for years commemorating a battle that took place there during the Civil War. They had reenactors, food, music and the town all loved and appreciated it. Well, a new kid in the mayor’s office has shut it down. The Civil War is not politically correct. Never mind that it’s history.
 
Exactly. Political correctness has become: I don’t like something, therefore NOBODY gets to enjoy it. It’s tyranny of the minority.
 
mrsdizzyd said:
Great! I’m glad we agree what people are allowed to have reactions to the Simpsons based on their subjective experience with its faulty use of satire!
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Nice try. 🙂 We actually agree that the people are allowed to debate whether or not The Simpsons used satire in an effective or faulty manner.
mrsdizzyd said:
So, do you consider it valid that some South Asian people view Abu as disparaging?
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Everybody’s feeling are valid, even if those feelings are based on misinterpretation. Are Indians who defend The Simpsons coming from a valid place?
 
The thing is you shouldn’t cave to the feelings of every person’s particular whims, especially if you disagree with them. Constructive debate requires disagreeing with other on all sorts of views and feelings will inevitably be hurt. For example, it’s not PC for me to oppose gay marriage and I’ll likely offend a lot of people for saying so. Should I check my personal and religious beliefs at the door?
My cousin is a school teacher and considers herself an intersectional feminist. On several occasions we’ve had disagreements and more often than not she’ll remark, “that’s offensive on so many levels”, as if it’s a valid argument against my position.
This is where it’s clear that a lot of folks pull the political correctness card in an attempt to control a conversation, or shut down opposing views. Antifa is a movement that’s based on this tactic.
And ultimately political correctness will result in laws that prevent free speech. The Count Dankula case makes that perfectly clear. Europeans get arrested for “hate speech” laws all the time.
 
It sounds like we agree, for the most part.

But the university is fundamentally not a safe space. If you’re approaching it correctly, being exposed to new ideas that challenge your faith, beliefs, and values and can (and should) be a very unnerving, uncomfortable process. The most I could support in a “safe space” is an extracurricular group. Apart from that, the concept of “safe spaces” is problematic on multiple levels. Opinion | In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas - The New York Times
 
In that case, I’m waiting for you to explain how it is that one is only supposed to react objectively to a subjective literary device.

Yes, South Asians who defend Abu are expressing valid positions. My entire point is that by design satire illicits subjective reactions.
 
I’m Active Duty USAF. The “system” you reference is the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a legal code and not a system of service-specific regulations. The UCMJ covers the legal activities of all the services, but each service has its own set of regulations. A decent comparison is Federal and State law.

CID was notified multiple times of the possibility of this guy going off the rails, as was leadership - and they did nothing.

It wasn’t treason, either. Many tried to say it was, but it didn’t hit that point. What really got the Army into hot water were the multiple reports that this guy was a problem, he was dangerous, and he was ignored. He was also a field grade officer, which also likely played into it - but the fact that he was Muslim has been cited as why the Army did not want to be seen as profiling.

I can’t quote you reg numbers because I have no familiarity with Army instructions. I was at an Army hospital at the time, and we were sent a memo outlining the response and how the Army was dealing with it, but as I’m no longer at an Army facility (and this was several years ago) I couldn’t tell you what the number was.

What I will say is not every policy change we make is released to the public - the news would be inundated with stuff if that happened. We change policies every day. I wasn’t even aware there was a lawsuit because I tend to not pay much attention to what the media has to say about the military as most of it is sensationalized.

I will say that things get handled outside of the purview of the press. I don’t know that that was, but it does happen.

The USAF has marks on its record for this sort of thing as well. All the services do.
 
blackforest said:
It sounds like we agree, for the most part.

But the university is fundamentally not a safe space. If you’re approaching it correctly, being exposed to new ideas that challenge your faith, beliefs, and values and can (and should) be a very unnerving, uncomfortable process. The most I could support in a “safe space” is an extracurricular group. Apart from that, the concept of “safe spaces” is problematic on multiple levels. Opinion | In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas - The New York Times
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Universities used to foster free thought and open ideas. Now you can’t say much of anything.

I agree.
 
Objectively, The Simpsons employed satire as a rhetorical tool. Whether or not it offends people is subjective.

You had mentioned above that the satire had consequences. What are those consequences?
 
Are you Indian? Do you feel disparaged? Indian-Americans are not a monolith. There have been many different reactions from them. I’ve read them.
 
When the target does not feel ridiculed or critiqued. This is an obvious danger when your target is the monolithic “people who stereotype”. You have to realize you’ve done something wrong in order to feel the harm associated ridicule.
 
I am not South Asian, and I’m not sure what that has to do with it.
 
I have already acknowledged that the feelings of South Asians who do not feel disparaged is just as valid as the feelings of those who do feel disparaged.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
When the target does not feel ridiculed or critiqued. This is an obvious danger when your target is the monolithic “people who stereotype”. You have to realize you’ve done something wrong in order to feel the harm associated ridicule.
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I respectfully disagree. Satire flies over a lot of people’s heads. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerful tool for social critique. Somebody not “getting” the message doesn’t make the message wrong, invalid, or even ineffective.

I honestly can’t follow the line of reasoning. 1. The Simpson’s was satire. 2. The targets of the satire don’t realize it’s satire. (No evidence was really cited to support this, but I’ll move on for the sake of argument). 3. Therefore it’s not satirizing the stereotypers but disparaging minorities.
 
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About a year or so ago Yahoo committed a MASSIVE typo in a tweet with the phrase (and this isn’t exact) “Trump wants a new, bigger Navy”.

It was PURELY an accident.

What was amazing was how so many in the black community took the error and ran with it - created a hash tag and made all sorts of jokes. Some of the tweets were hilarious.

Yahoo rightfully apologized for the error and it was removed and corrected before it had been out in the public for very long. But it was white people who were posting in forums about how offensive it was. Black people were seeing the humor in it. And yes, it was black people tweeting the responses. They were not offended and saw the error for what it was.

Was it someone else’s place to tell them they should be offended? That to me is also a part of political correctness.

There ARE Indians who are not offended by Apu - I too have read plenty of those types of responses. But you have to dig to find them because they don’t “agree” with the PC view. And we can’t say they’re the minority because we don’t know.
 
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Yes, this is where we disagree.

Satire uses humor as a weapon. If the target does not realize he or she is the target the problem lies with the author of the satire. He or she is responsible for properly deploying the literary device.

The reason the Simpsons miss their mark is because of how they define the target. “People who stereotype” is too broad. This is further complicated by the fact that we, as Americans, do not agree on what is or is not stereotyping. The person designing the satire must realize this and make the necessary adjustments. Otherwise all they are doing is using humor to disparage.

So, I argue that the Simpsons “satire” is not going over their heads. It is ineffectual and thus disparaging.
 
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