There are some people who love to make fun of "political correctness." Some of them go out of their way to make the effort to avoid hurting feelings sound ridiculous. I suspect that whoever told shlio that "black coffee" and "blackboard" were not P.C. is one of those people. It's one of those convenient stories that I suspect won't hold up, a rumour spread by the anti-P.C. (mainly conservative) lobby.

Fred, I think there's another side to your suggestion that liberalism appeals to "young and unformed minds." I would argue that the tendency of young people toward liberalism (which is itself exaggerated; at Penn most of the students are Republican) is because conservatism quite naturally appeals to people with a stake in the status quo. Because they are less established, young people tend to have less of a stake, old people more. Thus the change from liberalism to conservatism as one gets older, puts a lot of money in the stock market, etc.