Posted on 08/23/2014 3:00:27 PM PDT by Scoutmaster
WINOOSKI, Vt. —A sign on a lamp post at the bottom of the Winooski Circle displayed the words "Yield [for] Sneakers Bacon" until Friday morning. The bistro owners took it down.
It got there as part of "Operation Bloom."
A city program put it in place to keep its flower beds beautiful. If businesses do some gardening they can post an advertisement where they do it, but the word "bacon" on the Sneakers Bistro sign started a discussion about diversity on the Winooski Front Porch Forum.
It started with a post from one woman who wrote that the sign was insensitive to those who do not consume pork. She said as a Muslim she is personally offended by it.
The owners of Sneakers spoke to WPTZ. They say they've reached out to the individual who made the post and proactively took the sign down. They also say they regret any harm caused by the sign, and that their goal was never to cause stress or bad feelings.
"It's nice that they were respectful enough to take it down," said Caleb Wiley an area resident, "but I also think they shouldn't have, or had to at any right."
Other Winooski residents joined the conversation, and online too. One post reads the word "bacon" is not offensive. It's something that describes food.
Winooski's city manager spoke on behalf of the city. She said:
"The cool part of living in a diverse community is that it's not always comfortable. It's a fascinating place with lots of opportunities for conversation. The City has to pay attention to a lot of factors while acting within what we can regulate," said Katherine "Deac" Decarreau.
Others recognize it's a complicated issue, too.
"I respect her religion and her right to believe what she wants but I'm pretty sure the first amendment extends to bacon and the selling of it."
Sneakers' owners say their goal is to provide a joyful place for the entire community.
The Winooski Islamic Community Center was not available for comment.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
I am offended by muslims and bendovers like Wiley.
These are the hand-wringing, politically correct “Rambos” that will be tapped to go door-to-door and confiscate firearms.
Spiders such as the Black Widow use venom to paralyze their prey before devouring them.
This is precisely what the Islamicists and their Progressive lapdogs are doing with political correctness. This constant harping on “offensive” words and ideas is intended to paralyze our society’s cultural confidence in preparation for the kill.
I and my family are offended by Sneakers Bacon, Winooski, Winooski Front Porch Forum, and the State of Vermont offend me and my American family!
Please remove yourselves from the Universe!
All of the aforementioned entities can SWMR!
I wish these people off this planet.
they are pretty much...already....
Just hovering around to be offended
You mean like when Muslims aren't comfortable seeing words like "bacon," they think diversity is cool and don't make an issue about it?
Or is it only non-Muslims that can't be made uncomfortable.
I am offended when I see Muslim women with head coverings, which is an increasingly common site in my area. I never say anything about it, and certainly would never initiate a confrontation. But it offends me. Don't I have a right not to be offended?
Or is it only the Muslims who can't be offended? They need to STFU until they start handing out building permits for Christian churches and Jewish synagogues in Mecca.
Yet somehow, not one Jewish person in the community had a complaint. Huh.
I guess “diversity” doesn’t mean a bunch of different kinds of people getting along, it means everyone trying to be the first to put their boots in everyone else’s face
As my Dad used to say, some people just need slapped upside the head.
There is a bacon themed restaurant 222 miles down the road in Oguinquit Maine called Lets Get Bacon. They have had no complaints about their product.
It is time to tell them go be (or pretend to be) offended all you like, but that does not trump my right to free speech.
Your outdoor barbecue is next, when someone is "offended" by the smell of the cooking pork wafting their way.
-PJ
On the political level, one of the clearest examples has been given by the sociologist Peter Berger, who said:"My mother was from Italy and my father was Austrian. As a child I spent a lot of time in Italy. This was in the 1930s, when Italy was of course under Mussolini. Sometime during that period, I forget which year it was, Mussolini made a speech in which he called for a reform of the Italian language.
In modern Italian - - as in most Western languages, with the interesting exception of English -- there are two forms of address, depending on whether you are talking to an intimate or to a stranger. For example, "tu" and "usted" are used in Spanish. In modern Italian "tu" is the intimate form of address, "lei" is the formal address. "Le"> happens to be the third person [feminine singular].
I do not know the history of this, but it has been a pattern of modern Italian for, I would imagine, some two hundred years. No one paid any attention to this. Even as a child, I knew what one said in Italian. It meant nothing.
"But Mussolini made a speech in which he said that the use of "lei" is a sign of effeminacy, a degenerate way of speaking Italian. Since the purpose of the Fascist Revolution was to restore Roman virility to the Italian people, the good Fascist did not say "lei"; the good Fascist said "voi" -- from the Latin "vos" -- which is the second person plural. From that point on, everyone who used "lei" or "voi" was conscious of being engaged in a political act.
"Now, in terms of the empirical facts of the Italian language, what Mussolini said was nonsense. But the effect of that speech meant an awful lot, and it was intended to mean an awful lot. Because from that moment on, every time you said "lei" in Italy you were making an anti-Fascist gesture, consciously or uncon sciously -- and people made you conscious of it if you weren't --- and every time you said "voi" you were making the linguistic equivalent of the Fascist salute.
"The "funny feeling" which we associate with generic "man" and with other instances of inclusive language is the same twinge of uneasiness that second- person "lei" would have prompted in Fascist Italy. The feeling is not a natural response but a conditioned response to the stimulus. We feel it because we have been coached to feel it. We feel it because, like rats repeatedly given a jolt of electric current when they move in a particular way, we have become aware of potential unpleasantness accompanying certain behavior. That is how a taboo works.
The Italian who used stigmatized risked Fascist anger; the English speaker who uses stigmatized "man" risks feminist wrath, but the phenomenon is identical. The converse is also applicable. As Berger says, the accommodationist Italian who said voi was giving the equivalent of a fascist salute. The accommodationist in our time who uses "inclusive language" is making a little genuflection, a curtsy, in the direction of feminism
An insight on PC language. Every time you open your mouth, it makes you bow, or face the consquences.
Ain't gonna happen. Do the math.
Not to mention the casualty rate.
/johnny
If they want to be “offended” I’ll give them something to really be offended about.
I have a T-Shirt with a Pic of a piggieand the words
POWERED
BY
BACON
100%
and one that says
STAY CALM
AND
EAT PORK
Sorry, but you’re not likely a member of a perceived minority group. I bet you’re one of those oppressors, maybe even a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant. If so, you’re feelings don’t mean squat. Suck it up, insensitive oppressor!
ESA: extreme sarcasm alert!
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 America demands Justice for the Fallen of Benghazi! |
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But I’ll bet they think a Crucifix in a glass of urine is art. Would they have ditched the sign if it were a group of Orthodox Jews protesting?
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