PC pisses me off. If a woman is attractive, what's wrong with telling her so? If a woman dresses in a sexy way, what wrong with responding in kind? If that black person is not as qualified as that white person, what's wrong with hiring the white person? If I don't support spending $16 million to protect the gay spotted owl out of my tax payer dollars, why can't I say so? If I don't care to paint a poor fat black womens' house (who has 7 children) on saturday, why should I get a poor job performance review from my employer?

Bring on the revolution. We must change the economic conditions in society that give rise to bad things. Political correctness is the reformism of weak liberals.

The balance between P.C. and common courtesy can be a fine one. Common courtesy is voluntary (and says a lot about your character, imho) while PC is more of a forced attempt to make people "say the correct thing."

I do not want any self-appointed speech enforcer, a school or the government telling anyone how they have to talk or that they cannot offend anyone. That said, I (like most people) have no interest being around boors or bullies.

George Cohan, the great Irish 20's entertainer (Yankee Doodle Dandy) went to a hotel to check in. When he wrote his name down, the hotel proprietor told him "we don't allow Jews in here."

Cohan looked at him and said "We both made a mistake - you thought I was Jewish and I thought you were a gentlemen."

Charlie Barnet, a wealthy big band leader in the 30's, was the first white band to use black musicians. He gave Lena Horne her start. He would never stay at a segregated place, even when his black musicians said they had no objection if he did so.

A city bus pulls over during a tornado warning. A tornado is approaching and the bus is stuck in traffic. Eveyone is getting off the bus to hit the ditch. A young black man sees an elderly white lady who is physically having problems getting off the bus. He helps her off and gets on top of her to protect her from the tornado. Local reporters hear about it, but no mention is made of it in the local paper (instead, the only two stories about blacks deal with black criminals).

A gay couple lives next door to an elderly man who clearly suffers from dementia. He says mean and crazy things, including gay slurs directed towards them. I'm called to investigate, and I talk to the man and his daughter. The daughter explains that her dad was never like that, but that he had a stroke and changed mentally after the stroke (he called me a nigger twice while I was talking to the daughter). I explained what happened to the two neighbors (including what the man called me, and no sane person calls a big black cop a "nigger" LOL).

A year or so later, the elderly man's house catches on fire. The two neighbors rescue the man (incurring some burns in the process) and are not only never thanked by the man (they were thanked by the daughter), he called them "f----s" as they removed him from his burning house (he also said they started the fire).

These were five stand up guys, and this country has plenty more just like them.

A lawyer I know (a liberal plaintiff's civil rights attorney) is very non-pc and can be amusing. At a contentious meeting of an electric cooperative, the five male and one female board members (here first name was Molly) were being accused of being dishonest. The attorney stood up and said "I know these board members, and all of them are honest." Molly angrily said "I don't need a man to stand up and tell everyone that i'm honest." The attorney said "I stand corrected ... all of the board members except for Molly are honest."

Tyrone's posts are the big winners on this thread. If you just to try behave in a respectful manner toward people, you should get along just fine (most of the time).

Ty, that reminds me of a few years after moving to Idaho. I had gone to the local Co-op to pick up some oil for my dad. It was just nearing the end of lunch hour and these guys were all behind the counter gathered around one ole boy talking. He was very foul spouting about Californians. He rambled on for about ten minutes and no one had offered to assist me as they all intently listened to this guy spew. They all shook their heads and agreed with this guy how awful Californians were.

Finally after standing there obviously unseen for a while or simply assumed to be a local as I went in there several times a week to either get supplies for dad or my husband. One guy finally looked over to my direction and asked, "Can I help you?" All the eyes of this crowd of men now turned looking towards me. I looked at all of them and said, "I never knew what an awful person I am but know that I am aware I will keep that in mind from here out." A few mouths dropped and a few head hung as they tried to hide their eyes from interacting with mine at that point.

I never had to stand there again when I went to pickup supplies. I was always waited on expeditiously and the men were very curteous from that day forward.

I can make you a list of typical complaints for anywhere one could be considered an outsider.

One if someone comes from elsewhere and they have already earned their money or have more than the locals, "They must be drug dealers or crooks of some kind."
Two, if you pay more for local property than the locals think it should sell for, "Them assholes. Why that piece of ground I been renting for twenty years and they want to raise my rent!" or something along those lines. Personally I had a visitor here in Iowa that literally kick my door open to stand in front of me, point his finger at me then my field and tell me, "That there hay is mine!" I told him get his hay off my land.

Three matches with Two, all newcomers must be assholes when they want you to keep your pigs, kids, dogs, etc.. in your own yard. Most Californians come from cities or areas that have covenants on the property with lots of rules. So if you are local and have never seen such things it must be rather upsetting.

Fourth, Sometimes when people come into a new area and buy up land for development they will spend big to make big. Example California has some pretty hefty building restrictions. So does Idaho now. That one I can understand why it upset locals. In some areas now in Idaho if you own several hundred acres you can only subdivide enough for one family dwelling out of that two hundred acres. Unless you go through the full political realm and of course get all the politicians to vote in favor of your new propsed subdivion. That means unless you subdivided land prior to those rules your land is not worth as much as your neighbors land may be if he saw the new rules coming.

Five, California dairy farmers sold their farms and moved to Idaho where land was cheaper. Polluted the underground water terribly bad with Nitrates and other stuffs. no one had enough since to limit how many cows one could have directly over the aquifer.

Six, water rights. Some Californians knew to buy up water rights.

I could make some more comments but that should give you an idea. That also was over twenty years ago. Those same ones may like Californians now for all I know.