Sadly, PC was conceived of with very good intentions, but it's obvious that it has become this unstoppable behemoth that has too much momentum for its own good.
Some of the words we used to refer to different cultures were unintentionally insulting to them - such as when the word that made it into English came from the traditional rival of the people, and not from them directly. When they realize that the word in our language to refer to them does have a historically derogatory nature to it, it's only showing good manners to change the preferred exonym (name for that culture in the context of a different culture) to one derived from their own word for themselves or at least one that is based on another long standing root word referring to where they live, etc.
In the same way, I remember seeing the word Moslem a lot when I was growing up, but people now use the more correct word Muslim in its place.
There's nothing wrong with periodic corrections to fix those minor new additions to the language - sometimes the phrases enter use in completely nonsensical ways, so formalizing the grammar around them isn't a big deal and indeed is almost mandatory to stop the language from shifting too quickly. It's going to drift over time, but it would be nice if the English of 300 years from now is not so different that a Stephen King book looks like a foreign language. And it's a good thing if the exonym and endonym for a group of people sound a lot alike - so if the original one your language was using is replaced with a more correct version, so be it... a typo was noticed and edited, which is much different than "use this word so it doesn't make somebody feel bad".
Unfortunately where PC has failed worst is the part where people go out of their way to reword their thoughts so as to try to make sure there's no possible confusing or potentially "offensive" phrases used - but that REALLY muddles up the language.
Considering that English is a non-gendered language, we don't have a lot of the "remember the gender of a stapler" type of crap that accompanies so many languages - so it is really odd to see those remaining few markers to be driven out with such passion.
I really don't think it's a bad thing to use the terms manhole, stewardess, mailman (even if it's a woman), and so many other words that they now want us to refer to with a long and mushy sounding replacement term. Instead of manhole it's "sewer access cover" or some other unintentionally vague phrase. Stewardess is now "flight attendant"... but they barely attend to us, so if they want a new name why don't we choose one more appropriate, such as "cattle minder". Mailman we are told, is now "postal delivery specialist". The old names didn't necessarily imply that certain jobs were only for certain genders - the old men who called the shots back then did!
Don't take it out on the language for some close minded old dead dudes actions. :P
The other one that is in vogue now is saying "I'm offended" when somebody says something that you clearly didn't understand, yet instead of accepting the fact that the person you are speaking to apparently has a broader vocabulary than you do, and simply asking them to restate what they said - out comes the OFFENDED flag. Let's be honest, that is only to be used if somebody called you a racist, sexist, homophobic or similar type of term - or said a pretty hateful statement about some other group, groped you (without permission), etc. Yeah seeing a racist spout off about how much better their race is than some others is enough to make one shudder, and I really do believe that one is allowed to feel offended then. But if you're just too stupid to understand what somebody says and you pull the offended flag, you need to find a tall bridge and go diving.
Another irrational PC bonus we get to deal with is the trend to grant names onto people when they incorrectly think the name being applied to them "is offensive". The best example in use is the use of the word "Asian". In America, for whatever reason, people have been duped into being told to believe that Oriental is a bad word. Until the late 1980s, it was in common use to refer to either the cuisine or the people of East and Southeast Asia. Then somebody who thought it had been used in a bad way cried out and demanded to be called Asian instead. People caved, without even realizing what they were doing. Whereas the word oriental, which is simply the Latin word for "Easterner" (not something that anybody, regardless of how far the stick up their butt has been shoved, should find anything offensive with) was a great term that everybody understood to refer to members of the "yellow" race. Instead, we're told in the US that the word that actually means "anybody at all from the entire continent of Asia" (including it's hundreds of very non-Oriental ethnicities alongside many that are) instead means "the people we formerly called oriental until they raised a full on hissy fit and asked us to use a word that they have absolutely no right to co-opt, since it belongs to ALL groups from that continent and not just them".
It's sad, because now I will tend to say Southeast Asian, East Asian, South Asian, etc when I need to refer to somebody's origins - but I refuse to use Asian (bare word) to describe a specifically oriental person.
The other great one is of course the euphemism train... PC isn't kind enough to just rename a group or an item once - it feels the need to keep rebranding things, once somebody ignorant or confused pulls out the offended flag. What used to be called negroes became colored people; then they became black. Then somebody tried to tell me they should be called African-Americans. Many of them don't have the slightest of clues about their African heritage, but I'm supposed to use a term that implies direct immigrant from Africa to America to refer to somebody whose family has been here for centuries? Seriously? Huh?
Then of course, people save and use the word to refer to the race and don't even bother to think about the words coming out of their mouths. I had to correct a friend once who referred to a Canadian Olympic athlete as "African American"... erm, the term doesn't really work when you're talking about a Canadian dude... but as long as you don't mean disrespect, you still CAN use the word black to refer to him. Such simple plain concepts can be so hard for people programmed with PC to understand.
Words are not bad - only some of the people that use them. Banning words is stupid... reminding people to shed their hate for others should be the goal, not to create Newspeak.
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