Overall I like Michelle Goldberg, and I understand where her (albeit overarching and shrouded in privilege) theory about the current crop of hashtag activists is coming from, but political correctness -- if you want to call it that -- isn't a new or particularly cyclical thing. It's that the tools to enforce it are different than they were even five or ten years ago. The immediacy twitter or tumblr has to offer makes activism seem fresh and patently democratic, at least compared to the channels previous generations would have to go through to protest something.
My biggest issue with Tumblr activism is that anyone can call themselves one. Someone with twenty-plus years fighting for civil rights has the same platform as a thirteen-year-old with an agenda. And it's often the loudest, not the smartest, voices that are heard.
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