October 21, 2011

 Joe and Mika pretended to be offended (because offended is more acceptable than laughing out loud) by the Hermanator's assertion that gay is a choice and that Black does not wash off.  Dan Savage offers a scientific test of Cain's hypothesis.

A backwoods resident is offended when his backwoods newspaper refers to his backwoods town as backwoods.

This one's a bit obscure, but as near as I can tell, an ANC leader was arguing to a group of South Africans of African ancestry FOR inclusion of South Africans of Indian ancestry, and, in the course of his talk (in FAVOR of including Indians), he used a mildly(?) derogatory word for Indians.  Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the Indians got offended and demanded an apology.  Really?

Offended--Clash of cultures edition

In Austria Muslims were offended by their neighbor's yodeling.  In fairness to the neighbors, he seems to be quite a dick and was apparently yodeling in order to intentionally  interfere with their prayers.  He was fined 800 Euros, presumably for interfering, not for offending , which does not seem to be a crime in Austria.  Still, who isn't offended by yodeling?

Gays (apparently all of them) were offended when the head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, suggested that they keep it in their collective pants when visiting Qatar.  He swears he was just trying to help.

Brits (apparently all of them, too) are offended by the sport of dogging which involves random strangers having sex in cars parked in a public lots while crowds watch.

Candadians were so offended by Maclean's suggestion that certain Canadian universities were "too Asian" that the government is considering cutting off subsidies.  In what world is "too Asian" a bad thing for a univerisity.  Speaking as a dad, I would hate for my kids to be surrounded by a group of bright, hard working high acheivers.

A letter-writer in Anniston, VA is offended by those he sees as offended by Christmas.  Take that you..."minority of malcontents posing as atheists, diversity czars and protectors of the fictional separation of church and state".  

This Week in Offended--My Mission

Remember when political discourse was driven by reason and rational debate?  While I wasn't paying attention a little while ago, all of that intellectual give and take was replaced with phony outrage and dramatic posturing.  Every day I hear about how offended someone was by something someone else said or did.

Sure Hamilton offended Jefferson, but is there even one sound byte of Tom weeping to Keith Olbermann about how offended he was?  I think not.  Really wasn't Tom's style.

When did we all get so thin-skinned?  When did self-rightousness replace reason?

The answer would appear to be that it occurred in the last half of 2008 unless you count a brief flurry of offense-taking surrounding the exposure of one of Janet Jackson's really lovely boobs in 2004.

Google Trends records this pattern of hits (with data point A being the aforementioned breast):



The lower line is news volume, which appears to have increased impressively at the beginning of 2008, with the overall Google hit rate lagging half a year behind.  The trend appears to be on a downslope now and I would be pleased to see it return to its zero baseline.


Until it does I'm going to link to the most egregious, lamest, and funniest news stories about thin-skinned people taking offense.

Enjoy and understand that the only criterion for comments is that none of them may begin with "I'm offended..."