Because of the unique nature of each individual in society, there will be times when one will inadvertently act or speak in a way that causes another to be offended. With this in mind, I would like to make several apologies. I apologize to whoever erected the John Kerry campaign sign on Lawn Avenue, upon which I urinated last week. I am sorry for going to Kol Israel meetings and asking the girls to “blow my shofar” and “set my eternal light on fire.” I apologize to the staff of the Athenian Diner for causing a scene after seeing that they advertised a beer called “Vergina.” I apologize to ARC for calling their clients “retarded.” I am sorry for referring to Women’s Studies as “Home Ec.” Finally, I would like to apologize to Jesus. I just saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” and I had no idea that my people did that stuff to you and I really just feel terrible about it.
We live in a pretty fucking offensive world. If you walk around or turn on the news (like Leno or Conan) and don’t feel offended by something, then you are heartless and/or a Republican. Wesleyan often gets criticized for being too sensitive, too politically correct, essentially, too “offendable.” I disagree with this assertion for two reasons: 1. I have not found that to be the case, 2. there is nothing wrong with being offended. If something offends you, that gives you the chance to engage in discussion, to examine what exactly made you upset and why, to reach a productive synthesis of understanding. There are some things that I can safely say offend most of us: poverty, imperialism, illegal wars, the cancellation of Suddenly Susan in 2000. But for most things, we all have the right to enjoy or be offended by whatever we want.
For instance, a lot of folks in Georgia are offended by the concept of evolution, so the state superintendent waged a campaign to have the term “evolution” in all high school curricula replaced with “biological changes over time.” First of all, I’ve been to Georgia and, I hate to tell you this, but, there haven’t been many biological changes over time. Being there was like being in the opening scene of 2001, except instead of throwing a bone into the air I saw a large furry man toss up a bible that then morphed into a NASCAR Racer with the logos on the side spelled wrong. My point is, Georgians have the right to be offended by concepts like “evolution” and “progress” and I have the right to be offended that Georgia is part of the United States.
Wesleyan students may not be offended by vulgar, sexually explicit “chalkings” or posters, but we might be offended by someone who claims that poverty is a necessary element in society. We may not be offended by a naked pot-smoking yodeler on Foss Hill, but we might be offended by an NRA speaker on campus. We may not be offended by some of the politically incorrect humor in the Ampersand, but no one reads it anyway. You never know how people are going to react to certain material. Let people be offended. Let them confront you, but don’t let that stop you from doing what you are doing.
I know what it is like to have people come up to you and say, “Dude, that wasn’t funny.” Sometimes they say it because they think I went too far; usually, they say it because it just really was not funny. You know what’s really not funny though? You know what’s really tragic? A monkey will never know how funny it is to see monkeys hurling their own poop at each other. That’s tragedy. That’s why we’ve accomplished so much as a species. Because we look at monkeys, we see the poop flying all around, and we just think, “God, that’s really funny.” We’d be nowhere without that revelation. There has to be some point in our evolution (fuck you Georgians) when we just realize that there is shit being flung all around us and if we just take a step back for a moment and forget how unpleasant and offensive the shit is; if we just drop our defenses and self-righteousness for a moment, then we’ll all just say, “You know…that is funny shit.”
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