Heaven help us if the desire not to be offended is ever enshrined as a right. There seems to be no end of people who think they have some inherent right to be sheltered from anything that offends them, and some pursue it, even to the point of violence.
"Angels & Demons," the latest Ron Howard/Tom Hanks/Dan Brown religious blockbuster, received mixed faith-based reviews. Hanks plays a Harvard professor on the trail of a sinister religious society plotting to install their candidate as Pope and blow up the Vatican.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India would like to have the movie banned, but will settle for a disclaimer that states the movie is a work of fiction. "It deliberately denigrates the Catholic Church and is intended to offend the faithful," said Father Babu Joseph.
Here in the U.S., the Catholic League and the Universal Society of Hinduism asked the film's producers to add a disclaimer wherever the movie is shown.
You may recall that the earlier Howard/Hanks/Brown film of “The Da Vinci Code” was condemned by the Vatican as “an offense against God.” The condemnation didn’t seem to affect the film’s box office, and the Vatican’s reaction to the new film is low key.
Some years ago, Muslims took offense to Salman Rushdie’s novel, “The Satanic Verses,” and to the works of a Danish editorial cartoonist. They were so offended that they sanctioned the killing of the offenders.
Of course, it is not just religious matters that raise hackles.
Closer to home, an Auburn, Ala., city councilman was so offended by the small Confederate battle flags on the graves of Civil War soldiers at a city cemetery that he removed some of them.
They had been placed by members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate Confederate Memorial Day.
The councilman, who is black, said the flags were “offensive to me.”
“It’s intimidating to black folks, and it’s intimidating to me as a civil rights leader,” he said.
One can understand the councilman being offended, but it’s difficult to imagine him being intimidated by much of anything.
It is equally difficult to imagine the United Daughters of the Confederacy setting out to intimidate anyone.
It’s not just symbols that offend, of course. Words do, too.
Take the word niggardly, which means stingy. It dates back to the 1300s in Middle English and has no racial origin, unlike the Romance language root of the infamous N word.
Niggardly has caused a world of commotion over the years, mostly from people presuming to know what it means without bothering to look it up.
Several years ago, a white aide to the black mayor of Washington, D.C., in a discussion with two city employees used the word to describe a budget appropriation. He was accused of using a racial slur. In the uproar, he offered his resignation and it was accepted, though eventually reason prevailed and he was rehired.
An English major at the University of Wisconsin complained to the Faculty Senate that a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word "niggardly" and continued using it after she told him that she was offended. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid," she said.
Someone is always getting outraged by a book in the pubic schools or in the public library and they want to make certain not only that they are not offended but that others don’t get to judge for themselves whether they are offended.
Almost any writer, philosopher, artist or composer whose work has endured has offended someone.
I am offended by many things. I am sure you could make your own list.
I am offended by the burning of the American flag, for example. But as much as I am offended, I would be much more offended by any action to punish those who burn the flag. Nearly any speech (and that includes symbolic speech) that is worth its first amendment protection is likely to offend someone.
When someone argues that the thing that offends him or her is somehow different, that it deserves to be suppressed, it is time to be particularly wary. We have already surrendered too many of our ideals. We must now surrender our support of the first amendment right of free speech and the other rights it guarantees.
As Benjamin Franklin observed, “…If all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.”
Write Bill Brown at billatthelake@gmail.com
