It was one of those comfortable parties that only seem to take place in downtown lofts. Everybody held easily shared, heartfelt opinions and large drinks.
"So, I told him, 'You've been permanently placed on the temporarily downsized shift,'" Arnold, approximately blasé, told Maggie, whose attention was only potentially on what he was saying. "'You mean, I'm fired,' he said. Well, I wasn't going to take that from a subordinate..."
"What did you?" Maggie, distant and concerned, asked.
"I shouted, 'Don't use that politically correct language with me!' and threw him out of my office.
I wasn't especially interested in Arnold's display of workplace machismo, so as they laughed almost gaily, I drifted over to a corner of the room where a lively discussion seemed to be taking place.
"The miniskirt is not politically correct," Lara, to all intents and purposes emotionally, insisted. "It's just another way of objectifying women's bodies!"
"Well, I don't like pants suits," Emily politely, if boldly, argued. "They give me a rash. So, I'm not going to wear them no matter how politically correct they are."
"But," I objected, "surely taste in fashion is not a question of political correctness."
"Have you ever seen Madonna's bustiers?" Lara responded.
There didn't seem to be any appropriate response to that, so I moved on. Doug and Kirsten were discussing the possibility that mining stocks were not a politically correct investment. Patrick was virtually vehemently defending the political correctness of fibreglass insulation. Angela pronounced the Girl Guides politically incorrect since 1963.
Dizzy from the rhetoric, I sat next to Darlene on the sofa. It seemed safe: she was talking to Frank about her vegetable garden. "I don't know if I'm going to plant tomatoes this year," she stated. "I recently read in Better Homes and Politics that tomatoes are too politically correct this summer..."
That was when I lost it.
"Cut it out!" I shouted, almost calmly, as I rose from the sofa. "Stop abusing the term politically correct!"
All the conversationlets and pseudo-discussions quickly petered out. Arnold, not used to thinly veiled expressions of real emotion, looked at me with ersatz concern.
"Are you feeling alright?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I replied. "I've just heard the phrase politically correct once too often this evening. So...stop it!"
"Are you telling us how to speak?" Kirsten asked.
"Isn't that so politically corr -"
"Don't you dare!" I hissed at him. The phrase died in the back of his throat. There was a moment of (honestly) embarrassed silence.
"Look," I tried to explain, "you've used the phrase too often, in too many different contexts. It's lost any meaning that it may once have had."
"That argument is politically correct," Doug commented.
I turned on him and challenged: "What exactly do you mean by that?"
"Oh, well, I, uhh..." he blustered with complete sincerity.
"There you go," I continued. "When a term is used so often it loses its specific meaning - you can use it to describe anything. Shampoo...lawn furniture...sexually transmitted diseases - anything can be described as being politically correct.
"Using the term in a pejorative sense effectively cuts off debate - after all, nobody wants to be politically correct - without forcing you into the uncomfortable position of having to rationally argue a clear point of view."
"So..." Angela hesitantly suggested, "are you saying that it's politically correct not to worry about political correctness?"
"Oh, Angela," Patrick chided her, "don't be so politically correct!"
"I wasn't!"
"You were!"
"Well...he started it!" she cried, pointing at me. The childish recriminations soon escalated; in the verbal confusion which followed, I managed to slip away.
This, I thought to myself, is why I don't get invited to many parties.
