Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Pál Csontos: Is Political Correctness Politically Correct? A Tour along the Alleyways of the Shambles Called Political Correctness

In his essay Bush contends that "political correctness has emerged as a source of strong emotional feelings and serious public debate in 1990's America, one that does not appear to be dissipating." His observation is based partly on the fact that, by the fall of 1994, it had been included in three "prominent cultural creations" (1/ a "Beavis and Butthead" episode called "Politically Correct," mocking leftliberal educational reform; 2/ Don Henley's sarcastic critique of PC social values made during the MTV broadcast of the reunion tour of the legendary rock group The Eagles; and 3/ the publication of the bestseller Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner (42). Bush believes that "PC as a phrase seems to have originated from the Left as a term of disparagement towards radicals and extremists," and "as an indication of the Left's sense that it must regularly criticize its own excessive political stances" (42-43). However, in the Reagan years, PC was slowly but steadily taken over by the Right as a rhetorical tool, with the meaning that "one was 'out of the mainstream of not only American life but also of university life'" (43). The term emerged simultaneously with a "sustained critical examination by a number of critics, both academic and popular, of American educational institutions, including higher education" (43). The representative titles listed by the author in chronological order include A Nation at Risk (the 1983 doomsday govt, report on American education), Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (the surprise bestseller of 1987), and Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education

, at which I am going to take a closer look further down. Thus it seems that the so-called PC-wars were restricted to the critique of ideas about education, yet Bush argues that they should be seen as "a manifestation of a much broader cultural struggle as well" (44). The desired effect of this much broader cultural struggle has been "to re-define through public negotiation the central ideas of American myth and ideology" (44). The primary battlefield still appears to be higher education in America, viewed by the public as an expensive failure given over to much of radicalism. As James Davison Hunter put it in the title of his 1991 book, these conflicts fought out 28