Conservatives used to have field days mocking political correctness – the urge to scrutinize every cultural product for anything that might conceivably offend the sensibilities of some aggrieved group.

But more recently conservatives have adopted their own versions of p.c. This can take the form of bewailing alleged discrimination against conservatives in the media or in academia. But another popular form has been the sniffing out of anything that might be deemed “unpatriotic” including not just outright anti-American sentiment, but mere insufficient zeal for the greatness of all things American such as the failure of Hollywood to produce pro-war propaganda like in the good old days.

The reductio ad absurdum of this tendency came recently when several professional culture warriors lambasted the new Superman movie for failing to declare Supes’ dedication to “truth, justice, and the American way” as the old TV show had it. At Books & Culture Jeremy Lott applies some sense to this “controversy.”