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The trouble with Wayne Mapp's task
as the National Party's political correctness eradicator is that the title is
a parody of itself. PC eradication might be a worthy mission, because most
people are somewhere between amused by and contemptuous of the humourless
linguistic dance that tries to accommodate everybody's sensitivities
simultaneously, but the difficulty lies in trying to precisely describe the
target. National got into the same sort of trouble when its leader failed to
anticipate the question, "Define mainstream?" and Don Brash choked.
Dr Mapp struggles to describe PC because it is like trying to describe, say,
the air: we know it is all around us, but for anyone less than a scientist or
a fluent and imaginative speaker, it is difficult to pin down. Dr Mapp, PCE,
might be saved by the very instances themselves, which become
self-descriptive. This week, he is rescued by Qantas. The Australian airline,
and Air New Zealand, are revealed to have an absurdly ultra-safe policy
regarding unaccompanied children. They are, apparently, never to be placed
next to a man -- presumably because of the tired old cant that all men are
rapists. This latest example of
over-protection surfaced after an Auckland shipping company manager, 37 and
the father of two, was asked -- shortly after take-off on a Qantas flight
between Auckland and Sydney -- to swap seats with a woman because he had
mistakenly been placed next to a child travelling alone. The young passenger,
incidentally, was a boy. The poor man had to lug his gear to a distant seat,
mortified at what all the other curious passengers might be thinking. He
regretted agreeing to the surprise instruction, and stewed about it for the
entire flight -- and for a long time later, until the PCE gave him an
opportunity to vent his spleen. Even assuming the airline's standing order
was valid, the crew should have had the tact to leave the erroneous seating
arrangements for the two-hour flight, keeping a special eye on the lad if
they felt so inclined. But the rule is silly. It has even incurred the wrath
of the normally very correct Greens Party. An unlikely ally for Dr Mapp, MP
Keith Locke is referring it to the Human Rights Commission, which outlaws
discrimination on the grounds of gender, among other things. Mr Locke quite rightly points out
that it is prejudicial to assume that no man can be trusted with an unrelated
child. Worse than this, it embeds the notion in institutional thinking. This
is the mentality that has robbed primary schools of desperately needed male
teachers, and even deprived sons and daughters of the innocent -- and vitally
important -- affection of legions of fathers. Safety has got to be blended
with common sense, in the home, street, playground, and in passenger planes.
The chance of an unaccompanied child passenger being placed beside a man
deranged enough to grope him or her in a plane full of people, and patrolled
by attentive staff, is remote in the extreme. No amount of rule-making can
make life that safe. |
