THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL

"Are you crying? Are you crying? Are you crying? There’s no crying. There's no crying in baseball." (Baseball manager Jimmy Dugan, in "A League of Their Own," 1992)

When Tom Hanks said that now-famous line to one of his players on an all-female baseball team, the audience laughed. But that was 1992, and 1992 is long gone, ancient history. Sir Richard Hunt and his wife learned that lesson, big-time. 

Hunt is a septuagenarian, a British biochemist. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Leland H. Hartwell for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells. He's a cancer research scientist, a heavyweight. Or, at least he was a big-time researcher. He's in the past tense because of a joke he told while making a speech. He said:
 
"It’s strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists. Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls?

"Now seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it. Science needs women and you should do science despite all the obstacles . . ."

WHAT'S YOUR FIRST CLUE, SHERLOCK?

It's obvious (the first clue is, "Now seriously") to any sane reader that Sir Hunt was doing what many speakers do--beginning with a joke. But when ONLY the first paragraph was reported, the high-tech lynch mob that is the Internet went crazy. Long story short: Hunt was promptly fired from his positions at University College London, the Royal Society’s Biological Sciences Awards Committee, and the European Research Center. One might debate the merits of the joke for its humor content, but failed jokes are a dime a dozen and every speaker has told a joke that falls flat, Johnny Carson was no exception.

LET ME GUESS, WHAT DID HE DO NEXT?

We could have predicted Hunt's reaction. Unlike Julius Caesar who majestically wrote, "I came. I saw. I conquered," Hunt would have to admit: "I apologized." "I grovelled." "I confessed." He didn't exhibit any righteous anger; he didn't follow Paul's dictum, "Be angry and sin not." Public shaming had done its work; a cancer researcher was ruined. In a high tech world, all the mob has to do is label someone a sexist, bigot, or racist, and he's toast. Who knows? Hunt might have found the cure, but the mob deemed his joke an affront to political correctness. He's gone.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

However, is there more going on with political correctness than meets the eye? What's the big deal? If you're asking, "So?" read the following accounts from around the world:

"Officials who failed to stop gangs of males from Pakistan [now living in England] preying on young girls for fear of being branded racist are set to cost taxpayers up to £200million. At least 1,400 girls aged as young as 11 are believed to have been sexually abused in Rotherham, South Yorks, for 16 years by men who viewed them as 'white trash'. But it is feared the real number could be more than 2,000." What? The authorities failed to stop crime for fear of being called what?

"In October 2004, the European Parliament attacked Italian European Union commissioner Rocco Buttiglione for . . . the fact that he sees homosexuality as a sin. . . . he was denied an important post due to his politically incorrect ideas on homosexuality."

"The Defense Department runs schools for dependents of servicemen overseas and of these is the American high school at RAF Lakenheath (near Cambridge if you know your UK geography). In the same month as the Buttiglione fiasco, the new principal stated that if any students were overheard using the common expression, 'That's really gay,' they would have legal charges brought against them." (Not reprimands, or even suspension or expulsion, but actual charges.)

"Douglas Wood, an Australian, was held by Islamic terrorists in Iraq. During his ordeal, while blindfolded, he had to listen to the murder of two of his colleagues. Luckily he was released. Subsequently, in a statement, he called his captors a vulgar term. . . the editor of a Melbourne, Australia newspaper, Mr. Andrew Jaspan, took offense and said that Wood's comments were 'insensitive.'" What? We're supposed to be sensitive to murderers? Tell that to the parents who lost their child to the Boston marathon bombers.

"In 2007, certain British schools have been advised not to teach students about the Holocaust because it may offend Muslim students who are taught by their imams that the Holocaust did not happen." What? If you don't like history, rewrite it?

"Some banks in the UK have banned leaving piggy banks around their offices as the sight of a pig, however whimsical, may offend Muslims." One author, in facetious mode, suggested goat banks.

"Some police in the UK have been reluctant to investigate so-called honor killings because it could be construed as being politically incorrect. Fathers, mothers, and uncles are butchering young girls in their own families merely because they wore 'indecent' clothing or dated the wrong boy." (The official rationale for this is that you can't investigate the killings because they are part of their culture.)

  "A gentleman in the UK lost his job in 2009 for saying in a private conversation that he was against allowing homosexual Church of England vicars marrying their 'partners.'" This means someone turned him in to the authorities. What? Friends, families, and neighbors reporting on friends, families, and neighbors?

 "In 1997, a Canadian newspaper was fined as was the purchaser of an ad (1,500 Canadian dollars each) because it contained four Biblical references: Romans 1:26, Leviticus 19:22 and 20:13, and 1 Corinthians 6:9." If you wanted to know what those verses said, you had to look it up. At least three people did and sued.The charge was "inciting hatred." What? The Bible is now "hate literature?"

And for the sake of the silly: "The government of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, voted to replace the term 'manhole covers' with 'personhole covers.'" (They relented because of the laughter.) 

COULD RICHARD HUNT HAVE BEEN RIGHT?

But back to Nobel prize winner Richard Hunt. Could it be that what he said is true? Romance does bloom in the workplace, doesn't it? He met his wife in the lab. Women do cry in the workplace, don't they? How many men have you seen shedding tears at work? How many women? Could we at least discuss it or ignore it, instead of running someone out of his profession in disgrace? One author wrote that, in all her working years, she's seen only one man cry at the office, but she can't count the large number of women she's seen tearing up at their desks.

HERE'S THE RUB

The point: political correctness hides the truth. The truth is that honor killings are murders, but political correctness hides the truth. (Here is an example of multiculturalism as an extension of relativism--murder is deemed OK in one society because it's part of the culture. Had relativism ruled the day, there would have been no Nuremberg Trials, since killing Jews was "part of the culture.") The truth says that honor killings need to be investigated and the murderers punished. The truth is that certain Bible references do condemn homosexuality, whether one agrees with them or not. The truth is that whoever preys on young girls is a criminal and should be tried, convicted, and sentenced. The truth is that the Holocaust did occur.

What happens in a family when the members can't or won't tell the truth to each other? That family is ripped asunder. When the members of a society can't tell the truth to each other, the fabric of that society rips apart. 

We are in living in Orwell's nightmare: a society in which you cannot say 2 +2 = 4.