Comments
by Scoper...
I'M OFFENDED,
AND YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!
I've said in this column before that
in the future, it will be illegal - illegal - to hurt someone's
feelings. When I brought it up in casual conversation a few years ago,
people just thought I was being silly. But today, the silliness is all
around us. The future is now.
You've probably known people who
spend their days looking for ways to be offended, then reacting to the
imaginary offense as if an important body part had been caught in a wringer.
And it's YOUR fault they're in so much pain, you know. And mine. WE'RE
the insensitive ones, and we need our brain-waves adjusted so that we not
only won't mind walking on eggshells, we'll be grateful for the experience.
You've also known people who are
just plain unpleasant, whose semi-empty heads are filled with mindless
insults about anyone or any group that happens to be different in some
way. We used to call these people "bigots" or "jerks," and avoid them when
we could. But now, suddenly, they're a threat to civilization, Barbarians
at the Gate who must be stopped by any means necessary. And this irony
is so sweet it can't wait till the end of the essay: in their zeal to silence
the speech and thoughts of others, the zealots themselves have become the
"jerks." Take a look:
Accusations of racism were flying
recently at the State University of New York-Albany, when the school scheduled
a picnic to honor baseball great Jackie Robinson (the first black player
in the major leagues.) Some students (how they came up with this I'll never
know) insisted that the word "picnic" was a reference to lynchings. If
you care to look it up, picnic is derived from a 17th-century
French word for a social gathering where everyone brings food. No mention
of rope, or trees.
To appease these ersatz "crusaders"
- who didn't have their facts straight to begin with - the school changed
the event from "picnic" to "outing." Uh oh! That's even worse. The gay
community, it seems, has co-opted the word as its own (much as they did
the very word "gay," which has an entirely different meaning to your grandpa.)
"Out" is now a verb, meaning to expose someone (or one's self) as homosexual.
And now that they've claimed it, no one else gets to use it. Unless they're
"insensitive," of course.
The event honoring Jackie Robinson
was finally held, without ANY WORD describing what it was. Crazy enough
for you? Let's look across the Atlantic.
In Gloucester, England, police are
entering restaurants undercover, listening for racially-offensive conversation.
(Source: U.S. News.) They arrested one man for what he said to a table
companion, and detained another who was perceived as making fun of an Indian
waiter. (Imitation, the sincerest form of flattery? To the "politically
correct," it's a crime.) "Thought-police," in the most frightening, Orwellian
sense.
What else have the "injustice collectors"
targeted? A Stephen Sondheim musical about street gangs lost in their own
ethnic hatred. Maybe you've seen it: "West Side Story." Good grief! Who's
more liberal than the arts community? Apparently they're not liberal enough
for the loopy fringe: A production of the Broadway classic has been banned
at a high school in Massachusetts. (Maybe they'll replace it with "Li'l
Abner." It's quite politically correct to portray southerners as everything
from stupid to incestuous.)
Remember the "Frito Bandito?" Years
ago, Frito-Lay canceled its gun-toting cartoon spokesman because of an
outcry that he promoted "negative stereotypes" of Mexicans. Does anybody
with half a brain REALLY believe that ANY Hispanic person is lurking in
the bushes, waiting to kill you for your corn chips? On that basis, we
should immediately ban the movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," in which
the "bandidos" (proper spelling) told Humphrey Bogart that they "don't
need no stinking badges!" Funny how the PC crowd never went after the McDonald's
"Hamburglar." He's giving trench-coated crooks a bad name, too.
For that matter, maybe I should sue
the Nickelodeon Network, which is now showing 35-year old episodes of "The
Beverly Hillbillies." As a kid, I thought it was a funny show. But Oh!
The insensitivity! You see, it happens that I grew up in Tennessee, and
God forbid someone should ever draw a comparison between Jethro and me!
Before I do get the lawyers, though,
I'll have to talk myself into believing that the word "picnic" is synonymous
with "murder," that the word "outing" is gay-bashing, that cartoons will
kill me for snack food, and that because of my birthplace, my mother must
also be my aunt. Somehow, I just can't steer my mind in that direction.
Must be all that inbreeding.
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