(FORTUNE Magazine) – Far more fun than collecting stamps in the present period are noting and cataloguing the succession of dopey ideas that suddenly get to be rated politically correct. For example, the idea that the Aztecs were more civilized than the Spaniards. Or the weird judgment, now being broached by influential educationists, that the Babar stories are dangerously middle-class and Eurocentric. Or the even more astounding proposition that girls who say no always mean it. Wait. We didn't render that last one quite right. In truth we know of nobody out there who is literally claiming that ''no'' always means ''no'' in amorous situations. A more precise formulation: It is now rated politically incorrect, in spades, to cite any folk wisdom and/or empirical data telling us that ''no'' might mean ''yes.'' Telling us, as Shakespeare felicitously put it in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, that ''Maids in modesty say No to that/Which they would have the profferer construe Aye.'' Your servant glommed onto the suddenly politicized yes-no-maybe controversy via NBC's Today show, which on July 30 ran an interview with country music lady Holly Dunn. It seems that Holly had just pulled the plug on a record of hers -- asking radio stations everywhere to stop playing it -- even though it was careering toward the top of the country charts. Her problem: The lyrics featured the highly retrograde sentiment, ''When I say no, I mean maybe, or maybe I mean yes.'' The lyrics were denounced by the women's movement, which argued that they would increase sexual harassment and date rape. ''That lyric sends shivers up my spine,'' said Tammy Bruce, who heads the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women. Holly instantly caved in to this line of reasoning, while simultaneously trying to argue that the fateful yes-no-maybe words referred only to light-hearted banter about whether the girl would or wouldn't go out on a date. The Today interviewer, Faith Daniels, solemnly reported the widespread criticism of the lyrics as ''a sexist portrayal of fickle women.'' Faith prudently did not address the underlying question: whether girls on dates do in fact send out misleading signals on occasion. Nor was this fascinating question raised in the AP story about Holly's record, or in the accounts in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, or several other papers that ran reports on the contretemps. Possibly this omission reflected the byliners' ignorance of certain scholarly research. / Among academic scholars now looking into the yes-no-maybe question, the most eminent appears to be Charlene Muehlenhard of the University of Kansas at Lawrence. Charlene was once before (July 16, 1990) quoted in this space for her epochal finding that more than one-third of college women put up token resistance when they are contemplating amour. Reached the other day and told that Keeping Up was thinking of writing something that would relate this research to the Holly Dunn story, Charlene proved instantly wary. She said her findings had to be dealt with ''sensitively.'' She added that there could be no further discussions with Keeping Up until she had read over some of our past columns and gauged the sensitivity level around here. Then, she said, she might call back. Friends, we have been waiting by the phone for quite a while. Coming in two weeks: more on Babar.