Jonah Goldberg notes an incident of a county commissioner in Texas being attacked for using the phrase “black hole” in precisely the metaphorical manner in which it is used regularly across the nation. Writes Goldberg:

Obviously, there’s something to be said for ignoring the childish grievance-peddling that motivates so much of this nonsense. But the simple fact is that ignoring political correctness has done remarkably little to combat it. Meanwhile, people who make a big deal about it are often cast as the disgruntled obsessive ones.

Meanwhile, in a Corner post, he offers some evidence from Britain of the PC path if taken farther:

Okay, toddlers who don’t like foreign food are racists. Non-Muslim kids who won’t kneel to Allah are bigots. Tall shrubs for gay swingers are a civil right. And Al Qaeda’s “Ambassador in Europe” lives in a million and half dollar house and enjoys nearly $100K in government benefits.

What sets the “black hole” story apart some what — and indicative of a more insidious strain — is that the phrase was leveraged to insert racial grievance into a debate that, as far as one can tell, had absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. I observed such “argumentation” frequently when I was in college, when rhetorical opponents would seize on any word in order to distract from the fact that they were losing the argument.