Trump brings bad name to people who want to lambast ‘politically correct’

I have always had my problems with people who want to complain that our society is too politically correct, or that politically correct is an abhorrent concept.

TRUMP: Won't listen to Mark Twain!

They try to make it seem like their viewpoints are somehow being censored; their attitudes are being silenced as part of some agenda that singles out people like themselves for abuse.

WHICH IS NONSENSE! As ought to be evidenced by the recent days of activity involving New York real estate developer Donald Trump’s fantasies about becoming U.S. president in next year’s election cycle.

If anything, Trump is giving us the classic example of what is wrong with people who want to complain about “political correctness” run amok. And I’ll be the first to admit I can be the most blunt of speakers at times.

Because Trump has tried claiming that the concept of political correctness is what is behind the people who want to criticize his attitudes toward women and the fact that Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly (whom I’ve had my own objections to at times) used the recent Republican presidential debate to call him out on it.

Trump wants us (the electorate) to think that he’s the victim. Because the fact that someone would criticize his demeaning thoughts about women (and they are truly demeaning). When he followed up with the comments that many interpreted to be about Kelly’s menstruation cycle (he now says he meant it was blood from her nose), he responded by claiming offense that anyone would think he was a “deviant” capable of being so crude and boorish.

THAT MAY BE the biggest laugh of this whole situation – that Trump would be amazed to learn that people don’t associate class and sophistication when they hear his name. As if all those gaudy structures he built throughout the years wasn’t enough evidence.

Scouring the used book stores for original PC

Now, Trump would like to turn this talk into a political correctness debate – claiming that his attitudes are being censored by that segment of the Republican Party that sees his campaigning as an embarrassment and a distraction to the remainder of the GOPers who have desires to run for president.

Except that he comes across the way too many people come off when they use the phrase “politically correct” as an epithet – it always seems like what bothers them is they can’t use words like “n----r” or “f----t” (as in the racial and homosexually-oriented slurs) without having other people around them crack down upon them for expressing their ignorance so clearly.

Proving the truth behind the old adage from author Mark Twain, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

EXCEPT THAT TRUMP seems determined every day to prove how much more foolish he can be – and how absurd it is that anybody takes his presidential talk seriously.

Is this really the face of a threat to our society?

It all reminds me of when I originally heard the “political correctness” phrase – some three decades ago when I was in college and the latest trend was to eliminate disparaging talk by replacing them with phrases that no person would use in natural speech.

People aren’t short, they’re height-challenged. They’re not bald, they’re follicle-challenged. Those phrases come across as nonsense-talk; they’re not a linguistic change I’m about to fight for. It was a fad that withered away quickly enough.

But that phrase has become the epithet that too many people use when they want to cut off opposition debate – the tyrants who think the whole world is supposed to shut up and do what they tell them to do.

BECAUSE THAT NOTION (which is one that I find to be as un-American as possible) better fits the Trump campaign mentality than any idea that he’s being picked on by women.

Which makes me think we’d all be better off if the Trump campaign were to go the way of other fads such as the pet rock, beanie babies or those people who used to dance the Macarena.

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