Writers don’t have to be politically correct

John Scalzi, the author of Old Man’s War, pointed me at Nick Mamata‘s story of talking about his book Under My Roof to a bunch of freshman.  It’s quite funny.  The listeners seemed to think that his book would corrupt people:

Explicitly, I was asked several times if I didn’t think that a kid
might read the book and build a bomb or become a racist or
anti-American.

By people that seemed to be having some politically correct issues of their own:

Indeed, one woman went off on a long tangent about making English the
official language of the United States — this was of course prefaced
with "I’m totally not racist, but" (you know, racist throat-clearing)
and then her friend said that yeah, she’d read a study that predicted
that in a few years New York would be 75% Spanish and that "we’ll be
the minority." And I said "We who?" and she said "We, you know, us,
normal people." (I shared an eye-roll with the Nigerian and Pakistani
students in front of me at that point.)

I recommend reading his whole story – it was funny.  And thought provoking.  Hopefully authors can continue to write the stories they do without having to be politically correct.  The day they have to change their words to be politically correct will be a sad day indeed.