If you're below a certain age, odds are high you've recently become aware of a character named PC Principal. Debuting in the premiere of the latest season of South Park, he's a stereotypical bull-necked, polo-wearing, frat house bro with a hair-trigger temper — only in his case, what sets him off are crimes against political correctness. In the premiere he beats Cartman to a pulp for saying "spokesman" instead of "spokesperson," for instance.
The character is a brilliant piece of satire that wonderfully personifies the paradoxical agenda animating the modern PC movement: a more sensitive tomorrow through vicious intolerance today.
Social media has made it easier than ever for PC bros to compile their enemies' slights of language into viral shame campaigns complete with offended hashtags and outraged retweets. Decrepit media outlets desperate to appear "with-it" respond by dutifully reporting on these passing fads with levels of hysteria previously reserved for wars in Europe, while liberal politicians egg everyone further knowing outrage culture gets their voters nice and feisty. The end result is the 2015 Canadian Federal Election, a game of high-octane PC offense-taking to microaggressions so faint you can miss them by squinting.
Each week brings a fresh horror.
First we were told to reach for the smelling salts because old man Harper referred to "Old Stock Canadians" in a barely audible moment of the September 17 shout-fest that was the Globe and Mail debate. Though the phrase was contained within what was basically a statement of national unity — his exact line, referring to one of his policies, was "I think that's something that both new and existing and old-stock Canadians can agree with" — such context was ignored for a more interesting conspiracy theory, and the term immediately became left-wing shorthand for the supposed bone-deep white supremacy of the Harper regime. "Mr. Harper will have to explain what he means by "old stock Canadians," thundered Justin Trudeau on Twitter, and sneering references have become a staple of his speeches. "Am I #OldStock or #NewStock, Mr. Harper?" wondered Olivia Chow with great affectation.
In the subsequent English-Language debate, Harper praised his environment minister, Leona Aglukkaq, the first female Inuit cabinet minister in Canadian history. "That is a real step forward in this country and a real sign that those people, that the Inuit, and the North has really arrived in our country." If you listen to the audio, Harper splutters and corrects himself immediately after saying "those people," presumably sensing what was to come. And indeed, Chief Isadore Day, head of the Ontario delegation at the Assembly of First Nations and a furious left-wing partisan, promptly declared the remark "fascist" and "colonialist."
Was it a slip of the tongue? Who cares! "Often times those are things that speak louder than the policy rhetoric that some put out there," the Chief concluded.
A few days later, Minister Kenney repeated his boss' high crime of referring to people with collective nouns when he quipped, in response to criticism from Calgary's leftist mayor Naheed Nenshi that his party was "politicizing" burkas by opposing their wear during citizenship ceremonies, "it seems to me that it's the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it." Nenshi immediately tweeted faux outraged confusion over who the Minister could possibly mean by "people like him" (the glaringly obvious answer is "liberals" but where's the fun in that?) and the internet obediently created hashtags to pillory Kenney for his stealth racism or whatever.
A few days later, Kenney wandered into it once again when he tweeted praise for a young Iraqi refugee whom he discovered had learned to speak "perfect, unaccented English." Complimenting an immigrant child for gaining fluency in the language of his new country is the sort of thing good people aren't supposed to do these days, for those keeping track.
In the late 1990s, it was the received wisdom of the Canadian pundit class that the conservative parties of this country were chronically losing elections because they were too viciously intolerant on social issues — abortion, gay rights, multiculturalism, and the like. Few bothered to warn the left-wing parties that it's equally possible to be too vicious in the other direction, and that rushing to tar your opponents with the worst accusations and aspersions imaginable for the mildest verbal sins is no less attractive.
If the Liberals and NDP manage to blow this election, their devolution into knuckle-dragging PC bros seems like fair cause as any to blame.
Written by J.J McCullough
