Tact v. dishonesty.

Mr. Shea makes a useful distinction regarding the perversion of language that is PC-speak:

Statements which might offend me are few and far between... irreverence to God and base sexual humor are pretty much the entire extent of that to which I express delicate sensibilities.

Now, that being said, I am not indifferent to others being more sensitive than myself. Where possible I excercise tact (admittedly not nearly as much on this blog as in real life) and generally try to dressup the hard truths in lots of fancy diplomatic verbiage.

However, I find that more and more frequently I am inclined to go out of my way to make statements that are "non-PC." Perchance that is the just the rebellious spirit of youth. But I think there's more to it than that. Why does PC-ness grate agains me when so little else does? And why should I be eager to offend on that account, when I otherwise would take great pains to avoid maligning the personal feelings of others?

I believe it is because that PC-speak has too much the feeling of Orwell's Newspeak. Like Newspeak, it is a limitation on language designed to restrict what you're capable of expressing. It's nothing remotely comparable to tact, which involves presenting the same ideas with some elegance and/or fluff on the side to smooth them over. PC-speak yoinks ideas and replaces them with different ones, stripping connotation so that the terminology means less than it meant before. It's about as close as you can get to censorship without pulling out the big black marker.

"Political Correctness." By Ryan Shea, Mish Mash, 11/30/05 (emphasis added, ellipsis in original .