Today's blog post was brought to you by the letters P and C

I haven't had coffee yet this morning so forgive me if I'm not as coherent as usual - but when a blog post strikes me I have to drop everything and type.  They hit me so rarely these days.

Today I want to talk about political correctness. I was reading back through one of my favorite blogs when I stumbled upon a post where one of my favorite writers lamented a purchase of pans that she found on the Target clearance rack for a ridiculously low price. The problem was that they were made by Paula Deen.

I completely understand the hesitation, but frankly I would have had maybe a millisecond of pause before I would have been running to the checkout with those pans at that price. I'm fairly sure that Paula doesn't donate any of her money to the KKK and even if she does, Paula had already gotten her money from those pans and my bloggy friend's purchase off the clearance rack wasn't sending any messages to Target to reorder those pans.

So, in that instance, I say throw politically correct caution to the wind and buy the damn pans.

But then I was reading through the comments on that entry and I read a quote that said "Political correctness is not making our world a better place."

And that's where I had to disagree. Perhaps political correctness is not making our world a better place for white men between the ages of 24 and 60 - but it's damn sure making it a better place for everyone else. Have you ever watched an episode of Mad Men and found yourself horrified? Political correctness has gotten us a long way, Baby.

I'm not saying things don't go overboard - because they oh-so-often do - but I'd much rather have people overly concerned about saying the wrong thing than not concerned at all. Remember what Thumper's mom told him? "If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all."

So yes, occasionally this hyper-sensitive politically correct movement kicks us all in the ass and someone gets crucified in the media for an insensitive comment they made years before (sorry Paula) - but for the most part, it keeps us on our best behavior. It keeps us actually thinking about the words coming out of our mouths and off the tips of our fingers.  And that is absolutely making our world a better place.