Paul Thomas: PC brigade becoming crashing bores

Marc Ellis. Photo / Supplied

Zealots are people who, among other things, won't take "yes" for an answer. It's not enough to win the argument - as long as there are pockets of resistance out there, the war must go on.

Political correctness began with a generation's determination to confront and change uncivilised attitudes. Significant gains have been made. Who would deny that our society is freer of overt racism, sexism and intolerance than it was a few decades ago?

Take Andy Haden's "darkies" remark. The public was aware that Haden is a stirrer with a loose tongue and had a pretty strong instinct that he's not a racist, but the consensus was that it's just not on to throw around epithets from the vocabulary of the casual and not-so-casual bigot.

But as with any attempt to modify or regulate human behaviour, political correctness sometimes doesn't know where to draw the line. As a result it can fail to differentiate between issues that need to be addressed and those that can be safely ignored because they're not worth getting in a flap about.

Hence the reaction to Marc Ellis' new book. According to the Sunday Star-Times, "critics say aspects of Ellis' Good Fullas: A Guide to New Zealand Blokes are racist and offensive."

I dare say they do, but the question is should we be taking any notice? What we're talking about here is a well-known prankster rolling out some fairly tame caricatures.

It's Marc Ellis, for crying out loud. What did they expect - A Contemplative Life: The Marc Ellis Story?

A couple of years ago the Herald attempted to analyse Ellis' appeal. Assuming I've deciphered the marketing jargon correctly, it's to do with his ability to straddle the traditional and contemporary perceptions of a Kiwi bloke.

Personally I think the chap who put it down to the fact that he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously was pretty close to the mark. Ellis is out to make a lot of money in a hurry and have a good time doing so and if he makes a fool of himself and others on the way, so be it.

He certainly won't be complaining that this non-story made the front page. The rest of us can appreciate the irony that, in its zeal to find racism where none exists, the PC brigade is helping to promote a book and an individual of which it heartily disapproves.

The media like political correctness because it generates discord and conflict. Whenever anyone dips a toe in murky water, they simply do a ring-around of ideological rent-a-quotes. Have you noticed how many news stories are predicated on the dubious assertion that something somebody has said or done has "caused outrage"?

Sometimes you can cause outrage by not saying anything. Earlier this month, Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully let it be known that Haden's clumsy foray into the Robin Brooke affair rendered his position as Cup ambassador untenable. The minister then went to ground giving Haden time and space to digest the message and fall on his sword, which he duly did.

Some might have thought this was a fair, measured and appropriate way of dealing with the matter. Not the director of Rape Prevention Education who labelled McCully's response - ie his failure to publicly denounce Haden - "disappointing. Survivors of sexual violence and the women of this country are looking for a stronger lead from the minister."

Presuming to speak for a chunk of humanity whose views can't possibly have been canvassed in a meaningful way is a favourite tactic of the PC brigade. Such statements should always be met with impolite scepticism. I'm sure the minister provokes a wide range of emotions among New Zealand women.

Zealots of all political stripes have more in common than they care to admit, beginning with the urge to boss the rest of us around. The English philosopher John Gray argues convincingly that the religious atavists of al Qaeda have much in common with the atheistic class warfare of Stalinism and Nazi hyper-nationalism with its fantasy of an empire founded on racial purity. On a much less sinister level, contemporary political correctness reminds me of the purse-lipped conservatism that pervaded the New Zealand I grew up in. This was based on notions of what was and wasn't "proper".

Proper was not having airs and graces or drawing attention to yourself. Proper was not being talked about; proper was not having more fun than was seemly.

Zealots seek to impose conformity; their disagreement is over what the conformist society should look like. The irony is that the idealism of the 70s generation, who put the forces of properness to flight, gave rise to political correctness which sometimes seems intent on being just as stifling.