That “political correctness” is oppressive is self-evident. It is the tool that the liberal left have been using – with some success – to shut down opposing views by stifling them. Political correctness is nothing more than trying to control other people’s behaviour (and sometimes even their thoughts). More often than not, for the mob applying pc to shut others up, it is a sign of their abdication of thought. It is a shame that so many young people on college campuses just follow the herd rather than thinking for themselves. But nearly always, the instigator of a pc campaign will be a left leaning activist who would deny others the freedom of thinking.
Now even John Cleese has been moved to attack the political correctness that so dominates university campuses.
Entertainment: British actor John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, says the enforcement of political correctness has come at the expense of comedy.
In a video for Big Think, Cleese speaks specifically about college campuses, where he says he’s been warned not to perform because “any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labeled cruel.”
Cleese also recalled something said to him about the issue by London psychiatrist Robin Skynner, with whom he’s worked on two books about psychology and psychiatry.
“[Skynner] said, ‘If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.’ And when you’re around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what’s going to upset them next,” says Cleese.
He adds, “The whole point about humor, the whole point about comedy, and believe you me I”ve thought about this, is that all comedy is critical … All humor is critical. If you start to say, ‘We mustn’t; we mustn’t criticize or offend them,” then humor is gone. With humor goes a sense of proportion. And then as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in 1984.”
Jerry Seinfeld made the same point last year:
…. “I hear that all the time,” Seinfeld said on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’”
Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Tags: comedy, John Cleese, political correctness
The k2p blog 