>>[snip]
>>>Sadly, political correctness has been widely adopted. So we have a situation where anyone can brand someone a "racist" and people are more apt to blindly accept the assessment rather than make their minds up for themselves. As bad, there is no penalty for such branding, even if untrue.
>>
>>I agree with your words, also with the paragraphs that have been 'snipped'. I don't know whether PC is still the current main attitude in the States. In Holland PC is heavily criticized these days and most politicians these days do their best to no longer avoid the 'problematic' words. We have been so overly PC in the last decades, it led to a situation where certain real problems were not adequately tackled simply because we couldn't get grip on them due to inferior, frustrating discussions. We simply didn't call things by their real name, often leading to wrong decisions. Perhaps that's why I defend Bennett. I recognize and appreciate his attempt to discuss a real issue, avoiding politically correct wordings. At least, that's what I make of his words.
>
>I think you can see for yourself, by the very existence of this thread, that PC remains alive and well in the U.S. and North America generally.
>
>The politicians themselves can do little to stop it, no matter how hard they try. This is because the media starts the ball by quoting a statement by some public figure to see how it 'plays' with the people. If the people make an issue of it we then have a "racist" on our hands. And the media can generally count on certain people to show disgust when the words are quoted to them in an interview, so they arrange such interviews to help the process along.
>The side-benefit of this is that IMPORTANT news gets relegated to later positions in the news, or dropped altogether. I say "benefit" because there are countless instances where politicians and/or big business (which includes the media) WANT to deflect the current major topic to something else, and naming some public figure as "RACIST" is virtually guaranteed to do it every time.

Good points. The newsmedia in Holland are quite diverse and when some politician gets accused of being racist or otherwise incorrect, there are always some journalists who are eager enough to research it. Occasionally they come to the conclusion that the accusation is in the advantage of a political opponent and that the accusation was really merely an unethical, tactical move. Then it's up to the people to believe either one side or the other. I'll try to be even more critical in the future. I guess we have to develop really sensitive sensors for this kind of tactics.