Well, I know everyone’s attention is elsewhere today, but I thought this might be a good time to go into my mailbag and answer some of my readers’ pressing questions about discussions of race in our mainstream media. Those of you who remember my old blog will surely recall that I sometimes adopted the persona “Mister Answer Man,” in which I offered, as a free public service, a kind of online guide to the perplexed. You’ve got questions – he’s got answers! That’s chief among the reasons his name is Mister Answer Man, you know.

Without further ado, then, let's go to two questions from yesterday’s inbox:

Dear Mister Answer Man: On Tuesday, former Quayle speechwriter and dedicated Hillary Clinton critic Lisa Schiffren wrote, “Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student.” Her larger point was that “for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics,” which seems true to me (because it is firmly based in Ms. Schriffen’s own personal experience), and if true, offers a scathing critique of Obama’s candidacy. So I can see why the mainstream liberal media would try to suppress this important question. But is it true that “political correctness” was invented precisely to prevent the media from investigating the links between race-mixing and Communism? One of my friends says it was invented to prevent people from asking why girls are bad at math. I say it was invented to prevent the media from acknowledging that the roots of grade inflation stem from the late 60's and early 70's, when white professors, imbibing the spirit of affirmative action, stopped giving low or average grades to black students and, to justify or conceal it, stopped giving those grades to white students as well. Who’s right? – H. Mansfield, Massachusetts

Mister Answer Man replies: Thanks for your question, Mr. Mansfield. Fortunately, I read about this scandal on the blog “Communist Timber,” where the comment thread is, as ever, most diverting. But strangely, no one among that latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing crew has bothered to explain the real origins of political correctness, and neither you nor your friend has the right answer.

The simple truth is that I invented political correctness in 1989 in order to ensure that every college student in America would one day be forced to perform in a campus production of The Vagina Monologues. I hoped also that it would work to stigmatize any religious conservatives who dared to object to the liberal media’s pansexual agenda for American children. I have to admit that while I was devising political correctness, I did think briefly to myself, “hey, maybe Camille Paglia will get a career out of this,” because she was quite obscure at the time and I thought it might give her a boost. I am so, so very sorry I ever had that thought.

Dear Mister Answer Man: I can’t believe the liberals’ faux outrage over Bill O’Reilly. First the man stands up for racial equality, noting that black people in Harlem restaurants are just as polite as white people, and as Fox News executive Bill Shine pointed out, “left-wing outlets” stirred up “false racism accusations for ratings” in response. Now O'Reilly explicitly says that he will wait for evidence before conducting a lynching party against Michelle Obama, and the Democrat party is screaming for his head. As Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times has explained, “Much of the current online attention to this incident on his Tuesday show has focused on O'Reilly, who is also disliked by many for his success, and on his bold use of the word ‘lynching’ in regards to a black woman, as in, ‘I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels.’” Malcolm asks some important questions, Mister Answer Man: “What in the world is going on in talk radio when someone wants to make an unverified slur on the air and the host, the notorious confrontational and not very shy Bill O'Reilly, won't let them say it until he checks out the details? Is some kind of irresponsible responsibility creeping into the nation's chattering airwaves in an emotional election year? Has something called fairness reared its ugly head in a world usually bereft of nuance?” And Malcolm is right, O’Reilly stopped that caller in her tracks and held the line for fairness and nuance. But I think there’s another important question here, too: shouldn’t O’Reilly be commended for demanding that a lynching party observe rules of evidence? He explicitly said he would wait for “hard facts” before proceeding. As I recall, lynching parties didn’t always do that. So shouldn’t we be applauding O’Reilly for holding everyone to a higher procedural– I might even say “civil”– standard? – T. Bilbo, Mississippi

Mister Answer Man replies: Yes. Thank you so much for this detailed question! You seem quite knowledgeable about the history of lynching, Ms. Bilbo, and I’m moved to add that liberal ignorance of this issue is truly appalling. It appears that the only thing liberals know about “lynching” is to complain every time someone uses the word. The truth, of course, is that O’Reilly was doing what he does best– looking out for you, Ms. Obama, by keeping his callers honest. More generally, I think we as a nation really have to stop indulging these petty identity-group obsessions with words. I feel quite sure that Mr. O’Reilly would use the same kind of language for any uppity person– black, white, or half-Communist/ half-Jew.