I never realized that “trigger warnings” and “safe rooms” on a handful of college campuses were destroying this country. But Donald Trump and Ben Carson (remember Ben Carson?) have said exactly that and made political hay out of it.
Well, in truth, Trump has gone a lot farther. He has defined criticism of his remarks about Mexican immigrants being mostly rapists and murderers, about women being “fat pigs,” and about his mocking of the disabled as all just being “political correctness,” which he “doesn’t have time for.” A lot of people would actually define those things as just being rude, ignorant and unworthy of any decent person, much less a man who wants to be president of the United States.
Now comes the blow-up of Dodgeville-based Lands’ End’s attempt to enlist Gloria Steinem in the cause of marketing chinos and cotton cable V-neck sweaters. I have to admit that it seems a curious choice to include an interview with a lightning rod like Steinem in the company’s catalog. Imagine how liberals would feel if they had interviewed Phyllis Schlafly. (My guess is that the same folks under 40 who have a hard time understanding why Steinem is controversial wouldn’t even know who Schlafly is. Look her up on Wikipedia, kids.)
In any event, the right was so offended that Lands’ End would include a conversation with a noted reproductive rights activist (never mind that that wasn’t the focus of the interview) that they threatened to boycott the company’s products. Presumably conservatives would just wind up paying more for the same basic stuff from Eddie Bauer. Lands’ End quickly apologized, which probably only served to offend their liberal customers, who will be forced into the arms of J. Crew.
But isn’t this just a conservative example of political correctness, that horrible corrosive thing that right-wingers said was destroying free speech and our country in general? I mean, if you can’t say what you’re thinking about Mexicans or Rosie O’Donnell, won’t that just fuel the rapid decline of our nation? To make America great again, don’t we need first to feel comfortable giving voice to our darkest, meanest and smallest selves?
Before you get too indignant about conservative hypocrisy, let me take the unfortunate step of reminding you of identical liberal intolerance. The Steinem incident is the mirror image of something that happened in Madison a couple years ago. And it involves bratwurst.
The Brat Master, Tim Metcalfe, who has done an incredible amount of good for this community, has also found religion. In 2014 he decided that on the Sunday morning of his annual Memorial Day weekend Brat Fest blowout he would have a religious service on the grounds featuring a preacher he admired. But it turned out that the preacher, a man named Bob Lenz, was also very much against abortion and was the force behind something called the “stork bus,” which would be parked near clinics and was used to try to entice women into thinking twice before having an abortion.
Politically correct liberal Madison reacted in horror and Metcalfe quickly — and unfortunately in my view — withdrew the invitation. Madison was saved from being exposed to ideas its liberal majority didn’t like. Never mind that Metcalfe owned the event, that nobody was being forced to attend the service or that the preacher wasn’t planning to even talk about abortion. His very presence among brats was an affront to every right-thinking (well, left-thinking, I guess) Madisonian.
Some of this stuff is tricky. People have different triggers for being offended. My own trigger tends to be pretty slow. I don’t agree with the anti-abortion preacher, but what’s the problem with letting him talk? I think including Steinem in a mid-market clothes catalog was an odd marketing ploy, but what’s the harm it in, exactly?
We’re living in a country right now where a man can say the most false and vile things about women, Mexicans, Islam, the disabled and even POWs and still quite possibly be nominated for president by one of its two major parties. And in that very same nation, too many of us won’t even tolerate hearing from an iconic feminist on the one hand or a conservative preacher on the other. Go figure.
