The banh mi thing was one example out of a dozen paragraphs of examples. It is relevant, but focusing solely on it is missing the forest for the trees. It's cherry picking.

I'd also like to point out that the definition of political correctness, as it's used colloquially, doesn't change just because you say it does. I also don't think that using the term political correctness in the sense that practically everyone understands it constitutes a deliberate misconstrual. Also, to the authors point, I don't think the majority of commenters on the right (when did this become a discussion of partisan politics again?) are talking about "the expectation of adherence to the norms of basic decency, like refraining from derogatory epithets" when they rail against political correctness. More often it seems they are railing against the perceived suppression of their unwelcome beliefs and ideas. Hence my comment to the effect of "don't dish it out if you can't take it."

The term "political correctness" is nebulous. He defined the term because he wanted to clarify what he was talking about. If you read what he wrote using different definitions than he gave, then you're not really being fair to him. You have to accept some premises to understand what he's saying. But if he was defending one definition and claiming to use another, you could call him out on it. For instance, if he was defending your colloquial definition, but pretending to use his definition, then you could say he's being disingenuous, but that doesn't seem to be what you're arguing and I don't think he's mixing definitions either.

As for the second passage you copy/pasted, I don't see how that disagrees with what I said.

He thinks current methods do more damage than aid. He also thinks they're motivated by selfishness. When you read my response to your next point you'll have a better understanding of why he thinks this.

Also, since you seem to have read the article more thoroughly than I, what do you make of the authors closing statement, where he says,

His article is about two religions. The first religion is the political correctness religion. The second religion is meritocracy. He attempts to relate the two. He says that the elite use the religion of meritocracy as an excuse to further their own gain and political correctness as a religion to place themselves outside of their own system. Professors and college students benefit from systematic bias the most, but they use political correctness to feel morally superior by focusing on problems that don't threaten their life style. It's easy to take responsibility for bias. It's hard to take responsibility for poverty.