In the above routine, taken from his 1990 HBO special Doin' It Again, Carlin takes on one of his favourite targets: the social control of language. I agree with him in principle -- "boogieperson" cracks me up every time I hear it -- and yet think him woefully off target in example. Although the essence of comedy is exaggeration, Carlin was attacking a strawman. (Or should I say strawperson?)

Political correctness is used as a blanket term for (supposedly) inoffensive language and its use. In a broader sense, it often gets used to describe adherence to "progressive orthodoxy" on issues of race, sex, environment, and, well, politics. Although it gained popular prominence in the 1990s, it has roots that stretch much farther back. It is difficult to say exactly when it gained prominence, but it is clear that left-leaning thinkers have used it to both encourage adherence to the ‘party line' and to humorously criticize such dogmatic attitudes of their peers.

Sally Satel is a psychiatrist known for her controversial opinions. Her 2000 book PC, M.D. claims to detail how political correctness has infiltrated medical teaching and practice in ways adverse to our health. However, much of her evidence is simply anecdotal. Where she does show quantitative data, it tends to be underwhelming: for example, the allocation of $200 000 (out of a budget of hundreds of billions) to research and teaching grants for therapeutic touch. To me, giving money to therapeutic touch practitioners says more about the sway of pseudoscience than it does about political correctness. Satel claims that this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, but apparently the water is too cold and foreboding for her to delve any deeper and resurface with hard evidence.

Similarly, a volume edited by Wright and Cummings (2005) purports to show the "ultraliberal agenda ... and its damaging effect" (p. xiii) in psychology, psychiatry, and social work, with particular venom reserved for the American Psychological Association and its policy statements. (They and their coauthors recognize extremism on the right, but believe it to be irrelevant.) I actually found a lot of interesting and valuable information in this book, and have been told that it is popular among psychiatrists. Yet I was shocked by a fundamental problem... Political correctness is never actually defined by anyone. This means that it served as a grab-bag term for many issues, including (but not limited to): attempts to eliminate biased language; issues of meritocracy in university admissions and hiring policies; opposition to dual relationships in psychotherapy; discrimination in research funding; overdiagnosis of mental disorder; controversial intelligence research; and pseudoscientific psychiatric practice. In essence, whatever the authors don't like about their discipline is called politically correct. The conspiracy mentality and persecution complexes of many of the authors were only thinly disguised, with diversity officers and radical feminists commonly blamed as saboteurs of scientific progress.

But how many radical feminists actually exist, and how many hold key positions in our universities, government, major corporations, and other power structures? PC critics, some blogging on this very site, would seemingly have you believe that they are everywhere. But just like the phantom targets of Carlin's ire, they exaggerate. As near as I can tell, and I've looked into it for a while now, there are no hard data on the issue. (If you know of any, please send it my way.) Instead, we hear scattered anecdotes. But if there were such data, and if it didn't support the PC critics' assertions, I imagine that we'd hear it explained away with claims - echoes of Joe McCarthy -- that radical feminists have silently "infiltrated" these places and suppressed knowledge of the true extent of the "menace".

So they're simultaneously thuggish loudmouths and ideological ninjas? Good trick, that.

I get the sense from reading PC critics that just because they don't see any good reason to take offense to certain words and practices means that nobody else should, either. It tends to lead to peevish non-apologies: "I'm sorry IF I offended someone by saying/doing such-and-such."

This sort of platitude will come even after it has been made patently clear that they HAVE offended someone. (Why else would they be apologizing?) And yet the conditional phrasing places the burden of offense on the aggrieved rather than the aggriever. Should we conclude if they HAVEN'T offended anyone then the apologizers are NOT sorry for their words/actions?*

This is an oddly egocentric perspective, and I dare say a very childish one. If you have teenagers, or if you work with them, you probably hear such sighing, exasperated non-apologies on a regular basis. The implication is always that there wouldn't be any problem if you would just lighten up a little bit.  (And if you think such apologies are wholly legitimate, then go ahead and try a little experiment: cheat on your partner without permission and then apologize with the conditional form. Pack a suitcase first.)

The desire for freedom from PC constraints appears often as desire for freedom from culpability. Many people want to claim a right to say what they wish, to ‘tell it like it is', others be damned. I'm actually quite willing to grant that right, as long as there is an understanding of the obvious flip side: offended people must also be granted the right to respond (verbally) as they wish, regardless of whether or not you think they have any reason to feel offended. They too are ‘telling it like it is', from their perspective.

If we are to find any intellectual substance and traction in the concept of political correctness, then it seems strange that we should be content with its focus on adherence to progressive ideals. (By way of analogy, imagine a concept of "religious correctness" that referred only to adherence to Catholicism. That would be clearly silly, unless we were discussing the theological mood of Europe in the Middle Ages.) With the immense variation of political ideologies that have existed across time, it is arguable that almost any idea can be "politically correct".

But let's get out of the realm of the hypothetical, and focus on some specifics. Consider that there are a number of (typically) conservative euphemisms that were specifically designed to evoke positive thoughts and feelings. For example:

• Collateral damage (destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure during war)
• Family values (opposition to homosexuality and other ‘non-traditional' relationships)
• Food processing plant (a place where food animals are systematically and mechanically killed)
• Tax relief (cutting taxes; implicitly defining taxes as a cause of suffering)
• Faith-based (of religious origin)

When these euphemisms are replaced by more direct and accurate language (e.g., "civilian deaths", "slaughterhouse"), it is people who are otherwise vocal PC critics that tend to complain the loudest about the inflammatory rhetoric and its poisoning of reasonable conversation about the issues at hand.