Doris Lessing & September 11: Not Politically Correct At All

by Mondoreb

Nobel prize-winning author Doris Lessing was her non-PC self in her recent quotes. Praised for her "scepticism, fire and visionary power", it was all on display in a recent interview. From the Telegraph:

Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning British author, has called the attacks on New York on Sept 11, 2001, "not that terrible", compared to the campaign of terror waged by the IRA in the UK.


"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible,” she told Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Lessing explained and added a bit of history. She also included a little bit of an observation about Americans that's sure to rankle.

"Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think. They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be," she said of the Americans.

"Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our Government.”

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept 11 attacks of 2001. More than 3,500 died and thousands more were injured in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

The loss of life was concentrated into one horrific incident in the United States. The loss of life in Great Britain was no less horrific, though spread out over a much longer period. Those who quarrel about the details are missing the big picture: Doris Lessing thought both occurrences were horrible. She just wasn't politically correct about in stating it. That's a right you gain when you've lived 88 years on this rock.

Let he who is without sin, cast the first bomb.

Also from DBKP:
Doris Lessing: 9/11 Attacks Not So Bad, Doris Not So PC



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Watson Apologizes to Blacks:The Nobel Winner And the Forces of PC

[photo:CNN}UPDATE:
Watson Suspended From Research Post

by Mondoreb

UPDATE: 1:47 pm 10-19-07--James Watson has been suspended from his research post. The forces of political correctness are strong in the United Kingdom. From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Nobel laureate biologist James Watson was suspended Friday from his longtime post at a research laboratory and canceled his planned British book tour after controversial comments that black people are not as intelligent as white people.

Our Original Story:
Score one for Political Correctness.
James Watson, Nobel prize-winning discoverer of the DNA double helix, discovered something quite different this week: what it's like when you say something that runs afoul of the forces of PC.

From CNN:

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Nobel laureate biologist Jim Watson apologized "unreservedly" Thursday for stating that black people were not as intelligent as whites, saying he was "mortified" by the comments attributed to him.

"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said," Watson said during an appearance at the Royal Society in London.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief," he said.

There are mountains of research about IQ and the subtle, but quantifiable differences between groups, races and individuals. Professor Richard J. Herrnstein and AEI political scientist Charles Murray felt the PC backlash in 1994 when they published the Bell Curve.

From Wikipedia:
The Bell Curve is a controversial, best-selling 1994 book by the late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein and American Enterprise Institute political scientist Charles Murray. Its central point is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than parent's Socio-Economic status or education level. Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend

It's dangerous when reporters, editors and bloggers attack research they don't understand. A comment which might be perfectly correct in a room where everyone is a scientist and used to rigorous testing of ideas is taken out of context. The forces of PC jump on it, shouting down the author, the scientist and the research itself. This is can be seen everyday in the debate about climate change.

James Watson's comments are the story here to many. The worrisome habit of branding something which is disagreeable as "racist" and shouting it down is what's troublesome. Climate change or IQ,: the forces of PC are more interested in a rigid conformity than they are in debate.

James Watson is the latest to discover this.