Why is being PC (politically correct) so important one will look like a liar to do it?

I think the definition of PC is very different than just having manners, showing courtesy, showing sportsmanship or humility. I suppose the people involved in the Wikileaks cables are trying to maintain open communications with people they may have allienated or offended when their private correspondence were exposed. That is called diplomacy and I suppose there has to be a lot of PC BS involved in that alot of times. That’s how politics works sometimes.

I don’t know if this example is really germane to the question. Politicians and diplomats speak in a public language that is nearly always equivocating. The fact that they speak like regular people in what were thought to be private communications is no surprise.

As @bkcunningham1 points out, the “PC” card is thrown out a lot more than it deserves.

This is not political correctness.

Political correctness is calling something by a different name for the sake of appearing to be sensitive. Thus, saying someone is mentally challenged rather than saying they are “retarded”.

In the first case you mentioned, the Wikileaks case, the people who said the things in the communiques are now backpedaling, attempting to soften what they said.

In the second case of the sports team, they are simply equivocating so as not to offer their opposition ammunition to get inflamed and wipe them out.

Personally I throw PC out the window, and just say what I feel ALL THE TIME!

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it. The
lie can be maintained only for such time as the
State can shield the people from the political,
economic and/or military consequences of the
lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the
State to use all of its powers to repress dissent,
for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie,
and thus by extension, the truth is the
greatest enemy of the State” – Josef Goebbels

This is the principle behind the phenomenon called political correctness.
I think you are referring to embarrassment and poor sportsmanship.

I’m with @josie on this one.

The principle Josef Goebbels was referring to is propaganda. He was HIlter’s Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

@bkcunningham1 – I would argue that extreme PC is pretty much propaganda.

@bkcunningham1
I am with @iamthemob on this one. Some of political correctness is a particular form of propaganda.

@josie Propaganda it maybe some instances but most of the time it is still untruthful. At best it is subterfuge. To try and come off like you don’t or do believe something or didn’t say what you did because you don’t want to look like who you really are is kind of a fraud.

@Hypocrisy_Central – No…it’s kind of a-politics.

For me, I think people are so easily offended, and so quick to think people are racist or hateful, I think our real beliefs don’t come through necessarily when we are overheard behind closed doors. If someone says, “all those old Jews in the supermarket block the center of the aisle,” I don’t assume that person is antisemitic, but I think a lot of people would. The same person would probably never say it out in public. I totally made that up, I have never heard of Jews blocking aisles, but I have heard of them being agressive, bumping carts, and cutting people off in the supermarket. Lol. At least that was their reputation at Magruder’s outside of DC.

You mean like calling the War Department the Department of Defense? Because it sounds so much better than calling a spade a spade (did I just insult Black people?).

I would venture that quoting something by Hitler’s henchman and minister of propaganda isn’t very PC.

@YARNLADY Not this one… ;-)