A small victory

4 thoughts on “A small victory”

1. Which brings us back to the “Army and Alien” game. Or is it Cowboys and Indians. Or the article on stereotypes in the recently released Star Wars movie.
   Why do people feel the need to feel offended? I’m an overweight white male, but I haven’t started a support group condemning Richard Simmons (yet). Or the stereotypes of my ancestory portrayed in Spike Lee movies.

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2. It’s a basic paradox of communication. Whose opinion rules regarding what was communicated — the sender or the recipient? If I say something that you take offense to, is that my fault or yours?

   We could argue it’s a matter of intent (on either end), but that’s always deucedly difficult to ascertain.

   Alas, it is one of those grey areas, where the sender of a message should try to be sensitive to how it might be received. And the recipient should be sensitive to how it might have been sent.

   This is unsatisfying for boors. It is also unsatisfying for those who prefer to take the role of victim.

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3. But how far does a sender have to bend to the sensitivities of others? Take Star Wars. I really find it hard to believe that the ethnicity of the characters was called in question. How many dollars has been spent appeasing the “victims”? We need to stop being enablers to the vocal few who, and this is my opinion only, make their living off of crying foul.

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4. Well, let’s see if we can categorize it:

   People who are truly and justifiably offended — most people would agree that they have a gripe, and they’re honestly ticked off about it. If I were fielding a football team called the Slant-Eyed Gooks, there would be folks who were angry and/or hurt, and most people would agree they have a grievance. Even those personally not offended would take offense on behalf of those who were. These people need to be supported.

   People who are falsely but justifiably offended — most people would agree that they have a gripe, but they’re just faking it to their advantage. Some people have a thick skin. They might not mind if I wrote a TV series with an outrageous drag queen who preyed on little kids, even if others with no reason to be offended themselves thought they should be. They might nonetheless feign offense to gain some other advantage (money, power). These people need to be condemned, but it’s difficult to do so in a society without telepaths.

   People who are truly but unjustifiably offended. These are people who take offense at something which most people think is not a legitimate clause. Someone who burst into tears and was traumatized so that they couldn’t return to the office simply because I corrected a spelling error on their memo would not garner much sympathy. These people need to be counselled and taught how to have a somewhat thicker skin.

   People who are falsely and unjustifiably offended These are people who feign offense at something that nobody thinks should be considered offensive, and are the folks I think you’re referring to, Adam — the ones who claim Darth Vader, because he wears black, is meant as an affront against African-Americans, and George Lucas better pay them a big sum of money in recompense. These people need to be laughed at.Of course, these are not binary items. There are degrees of offense and degrees (if this is to be our criteria) of public acceptance that the offense is legitimate. So if I savagely ripped somebody a new one over their poor writing skills, most people would agree that it would be okay for that person to be offended, but not for them to become an agoraphobe.

   I don’t know if that accomplished anything, but …

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