Can older Americans attack politicians for not conforming to modern-day political correctness?

by philg

A Hillary supporter expressed outrage about the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. He cited 1986 hearsay about how Sessions had called a black subordinate “boy” and had joked about the KKK. I said “Suppose that any of that were true. How many of us could survive scrutiny of things that we said 30 or more years ago against modern-day standards?

As an example, I asked him if he had reacted with proper outrage every time one of his high school friends had referred to someone as a “fag.” (he’d graduated from high school in New Jersey in the early 1980s) It turned out that he had never objected to anyone’s use of this term.

Did that make him as bad as Mr. Sessions?

The answer was “no” because he said that, as an 18-year-old, he had no idea what “fag” meant and in no way associated it with homosexuality.

12 thoughts on “Can older Americans attack politicians for not conforming to modern-day political correctness?”

  1. In 1986 Sessions was 40 years old, not 18, so I don’t know what kind of equivalence you’re trying establish. Or did you not bother to read the wikipedia article you linked to?

  3. Grumpy: The comparison was “things said in the mid-80s that would be un-PC now”. I was not attempting to compare things said at equivalent ages.

  4. The answer was “no” because he said that, as an 18-year-old, he had no idea what “fag” meant and in no way associated it with homosexuality.

    Your Hillary supporter is a liar.

  5. Your friend is full of shit, Phil. He clearly thinks you’re an idiot, also. No one I know and call friend would intimate to me they didn’t know what fag meant when they’re 18 years of age. And I’d bet my friends on whole are a lot dumber than yours.

  6. Smartest Woman, Mark: Why couldn’t he believe it, looking back 30+ years? Suppose that his belief in Hillary is religious. Then he would assign himself the mental task of making facts and history conform to his religious belief. Why couldn’t he both (1) have understood the meaning of “fag” in 1985, and (2) currently sincerely believe that he had no idea what “fag” meant in 1985? These simultaneous beliefs would enable him to sync up with Democrats opposing Sessions.

  7. –The answer was “no” because he said that, as an 18-year-old, he had no idea —what “fag” meant and in no way associated it with homosexuality.

    –Your Hillary supporter is a liar.

    Reveals something about you, not about him.

  8. Don’t be vulgar, Phil. When we were in high school, we of course called that sort of thing the love that dares not speak its name. Because we were … I won’t say it.

  10. >The comparison was “things said in the mid-80s that would be un-PC now

    Are you suggesting that a white man calling a black male subordinate at work “boy” would not have been considered racist in the mid-80s?

    Anyway, I thought the main objection to Sessions was that he prosecuted people for the crime of organizing to increase black voter turnout.

  11. Neal: I think you are reading too much into my above comment, which was just an attempt to clarify that it was not about same age human but same year. I was not offering an opinion into the relatively offensiveness of various kinds of speech (particular as I have no reason to believe that Mr. Sessions ever said anything offensive; see http://www.infotextmanuscripts.org/falserape/false-rape-502.pdf for how people are motivated to make false assertions).

  12. >How many of us could survive scrutiny of things
    >that we said 30 or more years ago against
    >modern-day standards?

    How is this relevant if what Jeff Sessions allegedly said would not have survived scrutiny against the standards of the time?

    >particular as I have no reason to believe that
    >Mr. Sessions ever said anything offensive;

    Also not relevant since the original posting posits “Suppose that any of that were true”

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