“Public civility, public manners and courtesy.”
I’m all for it. but whatever happened to “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Somewhere between the time I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the mantra became “words wound.”
We learned, back then, to deal with abuse and insults ourselves, to become inured to them, to fight back, if necessary, or to disregard them completely. WE LEARNED TO DEAL WITH IT.
The free speech right of the one who was doing the insulting was the given, how YOU dealt with it was the variable. Not so anymore.
Now, your fictional ‘right” not to be offended has trumped the right to free speech. Now, apparently, the government has to deal with it for you.
As G. Gordon Liddy has said, “When I was a kid this was a free country...”
When I’m talking to someone being mean, I tell them to grow up and be civil.
When I talk to someone who is complaining about being attacked, I tell them not to let other people have control over their own feelings.
I touched on that only briefly in the column when I noted that the girls should not be letting what Imus said change how they feel about their acheivements.
We have become a people looking for chances to be offended, as well as a people going out of our way at times to offend.