HILTON KRAMER
573
But this is not the only task that is required of the opponents of PC, for
they must not allow the PC movement to politicize their own critical
judgments. To win this battle, it is equally important for the opponents
of PC to persist in the work of judging art by artistic standards.
Criticism must not be allowed to degenerate into a contest between one
set of political criteria and another opposing set. Disinterested aesthetic
assessment of the arts must remain a primary task, lest we too succumb to
the practice of judging every aspect of our culture according to a politi–
cal standard.
Finally, we must engage in a more vigorous examination of what
the political correctness movement has done to language - to the lan–
guage of criticism and theory, the language of politics and the law, the
language of the classroom, the media, and the cultural bureaucracy. PC
has been responsible for a corruption of our language on a truly
Orwellian scale, yet we still lack a new Orwell who - if we are lucky -
might someday give us a definitive account of the melancholy fate that
language has suffered as a consequence of this atrocious assault on our
culture. There is a lot to be done.
LEONARD KRIEGEL
Imaginary O thers:
Blacks and Jews in N ew York
Is
it the ultimate PC high, this way we have of casting victimization into
acceptable and unacceptable modes? In the New York City I live in,
suffering is no longer an evil in itself but a source of analogy. Donne's
bell may toll for each of us, but before we can allow ourselves to heed
its call the sound must be approved. Suffering must be made politically
correct if it is to be meaningful, its victims framed not by their pain and
anguish but by the extent to which that pain and anguish can be ac–
knowledged by others.
Every man is a piece
oj
the continent, a part oj the main.
"Empowerment" is the fashionable PC word of our times, but ac–
knowledgment is what the times demand. Ethnic successions, gender ul–
timatums, the right of individuals to infringe upon the larger society
