Jonah Goldberg is on his anti-PC hobby horse again in the LA Times:
And yet, I've met innumerable writers and editors who are scared, even terrified, of one or more of these groups: gays, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews, feminists, evangelical Christians and the handicapped. You can write 100 columns calling the president a mass-murdering, sexually depraved sociopath, or demanding that we nationalize the oil companies, but don't you dare invite the wrath of Mothers Against Drunk Driving or the parents of autistic kids or (shudder) cat lovers. [...]
And it's not just journalists. Politicians are petrified of seeming hostile toward members of the "coalition of the oppressed." Our legislators cower in fear of earning the wrath of gays, but will brag in their direct mail that they are at war with the White House or that they've stood up to the military-industrial complex.
Legislators "cower in fear" of gays? I would never have been able to tell, what with the fact that the only federal legislation that deals with us was created to further marginalize us.
I especially love the implication that there's a coalition out there that includes both gays and evangelical Christians. We sure do a good job of hiding it!
All joking aside, there's no point in reading any of Jonah Goldberg's columns as if he were another intelligent human being who honestly wants to take part in a grand conversation about our culture's values. He simply isn't - he's a far-right know-nothing polemicist who's more worried about spitting his shit to get another paycheck than he is in discussing his truth.
"Tired" isn't strong enough of a word for Goldberg. He's a sycophant who'll push the dominant class's line on pretty much any issue because it's the laziest way to get paid to be a writer in America. Making fun of gays, Blacks, or, really, anyone who wants to participate in politics at all, ever, isn't all that original or courageous, but it sure does please a powerful sector of the population and it's duly noted and rewarded.
(For example, Jonah Goldberg is a mediocre writer with little insight on anything, yet he's got a syndicated column and book deals and makes a lot of money. Ta-da.)
What does get my goat here is how he's pretty much pushing the same anti-PC nonsense that we hear too many people repeating nowadays. It's, of course, one of the most clever far-right distraction tactics ever: make it seem like whatever oppressed group out there that wants something is actually the group with power if they're on the morally right side of an argument, and suddenly you're the one who's courageously fighting the machine.
It works even better if the only reason the oppressed group wins stuff is specifically because they're on the morally right side of an issue. Then the curmudgeonly anti-PC meme has then succeeded in turning the only way for an oppressed group to get any help from the dominant society at all into a liability.
It's pretty brilliant, if you think about it. What's even better is how it's infiltrated the language of people who aren't all that political since it isn't all that hard to understand and it has an anti-establishment edge to it. The fact that being "anti-PC" is about as anti-establishment as Bill O'Reilly isn't important; jeez, we're fighting that coalition of gays, evangelicals, blacks, and parents of autistic kids! Sometimes a good ribbing is what they need to build character.
Yeah, I know, Goldberg himself never uses the expression "PC," but the idea has been reprocessed so many times that it dog-whistles out to people who function on the lizard-brain level, sending them the message to get soooo mad that the feminazis out there won't let them slap a good ass when they see it or that they have to keep on hearing from those filthy butt-fuckers. No matter what sort of pseudo-intellectualism Goldberg cloaks his argument in, that's pretty much what he's saying.
But it's really funny that this fake freedom of speech argument is coming from Goldberg, who's last book cover looked like this:
The very, very serious book is about how everyone Jonah Goldberg disagrees with is a fascist like Adolph Hitler.
Seriously.
If that isn't everything that people complain about the PC crowd for all wrapped up into one book? Well, yes, in a sensible universe.
But remember, anyone who Jonah Goldberg disagrees with is just trying silence his brave voice. His writing a book comparing everyone he doesn't like to Hitler is just him speaking truth to power.