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..."