Probably we're all tired of the PC business.  Part of the problem is
that the fanatical right uses the term as a catchall for anything
they don't like.  In the spirit of ordinary language studies,
consider these issues that have been blended together:
trying to behave so you appear to agree with those groups of people
you think it's better to agree with (which, I think, is where "PC"
got its start); the efforts of groups (usually small and vocal) to
insist on the same level of political sensitivity for everybody (a
kind of political vanguard-ism which leftists and progressives have
known forever) that we might want to call "PV"; the disputes about
tenure and promotion that are supposed to be about scholarly
"productivity," but are often about which "technical vocabulary" you
use, producing higher or lower scores for buzz words, call that
"PTP"; campus conduct codes that invoke strictures against the use of
historically abusive terms, which goes to one of the most vexed
aspects of the problem, the problem of the kind of climate we promote
and try to maintain on campus, avoiding the hostile climate
produced by personal attack in favor of open-minded discussion, call
that "PCC" for political climate control; and so on.
 
I offer this somewhat in jest, but I am concerned that the right wing
has packaged this issue and sold it as some monolithic conspiracy to
abuse free-thinkers and defraud students.  That is absurd, and to
compare it to McCarthyism is shameful.  My intuitive response is to
try to draw some distinctions.
 
Yours in struggle,
Paul Younghouse
Indiana State University