Offended?

The best response to being offended

Bill Maher

The New York Times

From The Week April 6, 2012

Everyone, apparently, is deeply offended, said Bill Maher.  In the past year, Americans have claimed to be “shocked and appalled” by the insensitivity of Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Don Imus, the Super Bowl halftime show, and just about every partisan utterance. Con­servatives are sputtering with fury that 22 years ago, Barack Obama hugged Derrick Bell, a law professor who taught that we lived in a racist country. Liberals are out to drive Rush Limbaugh off the radio for calling a Georgetown law student a “slut.” Rather than trying to force people who offend us to “go away forever,” I have a better idea: Let’s declare an amnesty on feigned outrage. If you see or hear some­thing you don’t like, “turn the page or flip the dial.”  I find Limbaugh obnoxious, but I have coexisted with him comfortably by never listen­ing to him, except when idling at a red light next to a pickup truck. Do we really want to live in a country where all colorful language and emotion have been drained from public discourse—where no one says anything that offends anyone? “That’s why we have Canada.”