Political correctness, long a term that served as a right-wing bludgeon, has gone cartoon.
In a situation that is truly comic, political correctness has come to the kettle as well as the pot. This piece posted on Yahoo News highlights the wringing of Tea Bag hands over a demonstration illustrated in Marvel's Captain America #602. Although the illustration seems to ring true with what we witnessed over the summer, its association in the story with a fictional right-wing militia group, the Watchdogs, that Captain America and The Falcon are investigating drew the ire of conservatives. In his post, Warner Todd Huston explains why they're ticked:
"There you have it America. Tea Party protesters just "hate the government," they are racists, they are all white folks, they are angry, and they associate with secretive white supremacist groups that want to over throw the U.S. government."
Funny, but those are exactly the conclusions that this Rabbit has drawn from reading the tea leaves. And I'm not alone believing this kind of thinking motivates at least some of the Tea Party movement.
The term "political correctness" has been used almost exclusively by the right as a negative connotation to smear call-outs of ethnic and political slurs. The right's defense of such slurs is that they often have a ring of truth (consider Limbaugh's recent use of the word "retarded") and that in the name of political correctness, they charge, that truth must be ignored less someone's feeling be hurt. The right-wing media has trumpeted the apology Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada made for linking the Tea Party to the fictional anti-government group in #602. Fox News, of course, has jumpedon the case. Quesada has promised later editions of the comic won't use the signs. He says in an interview with the comics blog Cup O' Joe that Captain America and his sidekick turn up at the demonstration to see what the anti-tax movement might be about. He suggests that if those complaining gave a cursory read of the story they'd realize "...the Watchdogs and the protesters aren’t connected, they just happen to be in the same story." So what' the beef?
The whole brouhaha is another example of the right denying their own motivations, as in the current Medicare debate. Comics have cast political groups in strong terms, often dealing in allegories regarding government control and vigilantism. Comics themselves have been something of a political football as outlined in David Hadju's excellent book The Ten-Cent Plague. But does the Tea Bag movement really feel threatened by Captain America? The question here is what are the Tea Baggers denying by attacking Captain America? We doubt that the broadcast voices of the right will see political correctness in their demand to disassociate from what's pictured in #602. After all, those signs aren't nearly as bad as many of the actual Tea Party signs we saw carried last year.--Cabbage Rabbit