Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News reporter and current leader of the Asian American Journalists Association, decried as racist Norman Mailer’s bashing of New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani as an “Asiatic, feminist . . . twofer . . . token.”
Mailer defended himself in today’s New York Post: “While my quarrel is with Kakutani, not Esther Wu, I will remark that political correctness is a toxic to American freedom. Over the last 20 years, it has certainly leeched out much of the initiative and integrity of the Democratic Party. I would go so far as to say that political correctness is totalitarian. It violates the old American liberty that you can make up your own mind, and then, even better, proceed to change it. That freedom is worth more to a good many of us than being told what we can say and not say. So, the Republicans, despite their endless catalog of evasions and hypocrisies, have profited from the ideological dead weight that liberals have taken on. As for being a racist, or next door to one, my response is not printable.”
Norman Mailer in War of Words with Dallas Morning News Reporter
Esther Wu, Dallas Morning News reporter and current leader of the Asian American Journalists Association, decried as racist Norman Mailer’s bashing of New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani as an “Asiatic, feminist . . . twofer . . . token.”
Mailer defended himself in today’s New York Post: “While my quarrel is with Kakutani, not Esther Wu, I will remark that political correctness is a toxic to American freedom. Over the last 20 years, it has certainly leeched out much of the initiative and integrity of the Democratic Party. I would go so far as to say that political correctness is totalitarian. It violates the old American liberty that you can make up your own mind, and then, even better, proceed to change it. That freedom is worth more to a good many of us than being told what we can say and not say. So, the Republicans, despite their endless catalog of evasions and hypocrisies, have profited from the ideological dead weight that liberals have taken on. As for being a racist, or next door to one, my response is not printable.”