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Carson, Trump using same tactics

4 min read

“All you have to do is go to an article on the internet, and go to the comments section – and you don’t get five comments down before people start calling each other names – and acting like idiots.”

Dr. Ben Carson on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Nov. 29.

Ben Carson cracks me up.

He claims he’s very concerned about the lack of civility in today’s public discourse, and, at the same time, he’s something of a crusader against “political correctness.”

Take a look at the statement at the top of this column.

He spent 36 words lamenting the fact that the language deposited below internet news articles is coarse and unseemly.

And within a couple of exchanges, “People start calling each other names,” Carson says.

I’ll agree with that part.

That’s one of the benefits or liabilities, I guess, of free speech.

But Carson seemed unaware of how silly his comment would become when he got to that 37th word – “idiots.”

If you’re going to accuse people of name calling, it’s most likely helpful if you don’t call those people “idiots.”

And besides, Carson, of all people, is on mighty shaky ground when he talks about the lack of courtesy people show toward each other.

He’s built much of his public persona on his fervent dislike of “political correctness.”

He’d not been known in political circles in February of 2013 when he spoke at a National Prayer breakfast in Washington.

Much of his speech dealt with his sense of political correctness.

“I’m very, very compassionate, and I’m not ever out to offend anyone. But PC is dangerous. Because this country, one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression. And it muffles people. It puts a muzzle on them,” Carson proclaimed.

I don’t buy any of that.

If you avoid offending anyone, you ARE being politically correct.

Carson seems to be saying that he, and he alone, can be the official arbiter of what is offensive and what is not.

Besides, he certainly wasn’t so protective of “freedom of thought and freedom of expression,” when he suggested in October that the U.S. Dept. of Education might want to “monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists.”

That’s prime, first class, Grade A – hypocrisy.

“The real problem is that we have become coarse and hateful toward each other. We’ve allowed the purveyors of division to put us in separate corners and have us hurl hand grenades at each other,” Carson recently said.

I wonder if he thought about that when he responded to a friend who told him that he thought the way President Obama dressed is elegant, and he responded with the words, “Like most psychopaths.”

“What happened to us? What happened to the civility that used to characterize our society?” Carson asked in his usual near whisper during that ABC interview.

Civility, and attacks on “political correctness” can’t easily exist at the same time.

But Carson’s tirades against political correctness pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s.

“I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” Trump recently told an adoring crowd in South Carolina.

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either,” he added.

And if you can sit through one of his speeches, you can understand how, by eschewing political correctness, it gives him license to verbally attack Muslims, Mexicans, Fox News’ Megyn Kelley, John McCain, each of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, handicapped reporters, anybody who ever disagrees with him, or asks him for hard proof of any of his wild claims.

The only difference between Carson’s aversion to political correctness and Trump’s is that Carson doesn’t seem to fully understand it.

Trump, on the other hand, is aware of it; uses it to draw support; and he’s built his entire presidential campaign around it.

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net

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