It’s hard to imagine how something intended to create greater sensitivity and understanding among us all has actually accomplished exactly the opposite; the creation of complete intolerance. Like a piece of badly crafted legislation, the social movement of Political Correctness (PC for short) is having so many negative consequences that it is now to the point of absurdity. Yet anyone with half a brain could have (and should have) seen it coming.

It’s been going on for a couple of decades now, though it reached a tipping point in the last few years. It began as a truly noble goal; to eliminate Polish jokes, and black jokes, and retard jokes, and religious freak jokes and atheist jokes and jokes about every other group that has had the misfortune of being predictable enough to be stereotyped (regardless of whether the shoe fit).

Then it moved onto racial and ethnic slurs, condemning us for saying anything offensive, (deserved or not) within earshot of the victim of our saying the word (though out of earshot seemed to be okay for a while, but no more). Bear in mind, this is only for those outside the stereotype. Those within the group can call each other whatever they want, no matter how degrading, as long as they sufficiently fit the stereotype. One man’s offensive word is another man’s welcome. No wonder we started to get confused about what’s right and wrong in the social department.

Then, of course, religion got into the picture. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, there was a time when anyone could practice just about anything, call it religion and be left alone. It was called tolerance. As long as people weren’t hurt and laws weren’t badly or habitually broken, it was tolerated. After all, we began as a country because others were intolerant to us and our religious beliefs. It’s why we moved here from England, risking life and limb on a rickety ship across the North Atlantic. Tolerance has always been a true part of our culture, and even though we may not always have demonstrated it to the best of our abilities as a nation, we have always believed it was something we should strive for. Until now.

Now, it seems, we’ve gotten to the point where intolerance is the accepted practice. The PC measure for sticking your nose into someone else’s business has evolved from imminent and harmful physical danger to the innocent, to the possible, perhaps, maybe fear of hurting someone’s feelings, or making them "uncomfortable". What a bunch of woosies!

We should have seen it coming. Now that it’s here, however, and we can all agree it’s not fun or funny, we have to figure out a way to get the pendulum to swing back again. Maybe we should just all go back to telling Polish jokes. Now THOSE were funny.

(Jeanette Henderson is a writer, speaker, teacher, commentator and Special Correspondent to WCPI-FM 91.3 in McMinnville. She is co-founder of Podium Master, a presentation consulting firm, and author of the soon to be released book tentatively entitled "There’s No Such Thing as Public Speaking". She may be contacted through her website www.podiummaster.com)