There were some low moments during the debates yesterday, both from the candidates (I often want to ask Rick Perry the question that Jules Winnfield asks that poor idiot in Pulp Fiction right before things go bad: “English . . . do you speak it?”) and from the moderators, too (“So, Dr. Carson, you’re black . . . ”). But the lowest moment was the big cheer Donald Trump got for his Rosie O’Donnell line and for his follow-up denunciation of political correctness.
That was a low moment for two reasons. First, it was a lie, albeit a lie that may have been offered in jest: Trump’s ungallant behavior hardly has been restricted to O’Donnell. Second, political correctness is in this case a dodge: The complaint isn’t that Trump violated some rarefied code of conduct dreamed up this morning by the dean of students. As Megyn Kelly reminded him: “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ . . . You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.” If you think that saying that sort of thing is merely a violation of political correctness and effete coastal liberal etiquette, try it on some dry-land cotton farmer’s wife or daughter and see if you live to boast of your free-spiritedness.