Offending People is a Good Thing

Truth be told, I'm really not good at very many things. I'm an alright guitar player; a better bass player. I'm definitely an above average singer, but you'd never know it unless you installed a hidden microphone in a vehicle I was driving. For that matter, I'm a well-above-average driver (as most professional truck drivers are). But my truest of talents, honed relentlessly for the past 27 years and counting, is pissing people off. Anyone who's known me for more than five minutes has been in at least one argument with me, often resulting in elevated voice levels, occasionally resulting in flying fists. I've had liberals fly into spats of rage, frustrated Mennonites to the point of tears, made employers lose it in front of the entire staff, and had an "atheist" yell at me for insulting his faith. If I could get an audience with Benedict XVI, then the whole world would find out if I really have what it takes to "piss off the pope". My dad would put money on me.

So, after my last blog piece, it occurred to me that I wasn't playing to my strengths. No comments have been posted up to now, and the only feedback I've gotten was one glowing review from a bar owner in Gaithersburg MD. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong.

I don't know how many (if any) other people have actually read that piece, but I was really hoping to get one or two responses from band members telling me I was an asshole, that I'm a shitty promoter and my shows all suck ass, and spew other delicious bits of vitriol at me. They'd do this because they'd know I was talking about them, and they'd know I was right.

I'd smile. A smirk of haughty satisfaction. Then I'd take another swig of the ever-present pint of Guinness in front of me, which is quick becoming the reason for the rambling nature of this essay. I should get to the goddamned point.

Point is this: offending people gets way too bad a rap in modern American society. So much hemming, hawwing and hand-wringing takes place over the very notion that someone might not like what someone else says, you'd think it was something new (or important). Worse still, regulation and litigation abound in a feeble effort to stop it.

A few bits to mull over:

-In February of 2006, California's supreme court heard arguments in the case of Lyle v. Warner Brothers. In 1999, Amaani Lyle was working as a writer's assistant on the TV show Friends. Her primary job was to sit in on "creative meetings" and take copius notes of jokes and plot ideas posed by the writers. After four months she was fired, the writers claiming she didn't type fast enough. Soon after she filed a sexual harrassment lawsuit, claiming that the writers frequently made inappropriate remarks and jokes that created a hostile working environment. The CA supreme court will decide whether the case will go to trial.

So let me get this straight: Ms. Lyle goes to work on a show which consists mostly of immature humor (dick & fart jokes dumbed down for primetime TV) which frequently revolves around sex, and discovers that the dweebs who write this shit are themselves immature, potty-mouthed types who make raunchy jokes. I'm fucking shocked.

Now it may well be that the working environment there was too hostile for the likes of Amaani Lyle. One of the great things about life in these united states is that if you don't like one job, you can leave it and go to another. Notice that she never did that, and that her lawsuit only came forward after she was fired for matters related to her job performance. It may also well be that the writers in question are complete assholes, but if all they did was offend her (as opposed to assault her, defraud her, etc.), then the government has no place sticking it's nose in it. Her lawsuit is born of vindictiveness and opportunism, plain and simple.

-Harvard University president Lawrence Summers caused quite a stir at the prestigious college back in February. Speaking before a conference of professors, he cited research which posed the thought that men and women may not have the same innate abilities (or intrest) in the fields of math and hard sciences. He noted that boys tend to test at the top of these areas, with girls averaging slightly lower (boys also test at the very bottom of these areas; the girls' scores tend to have less varience). He also noted that certain differences in situation, such as child rearing, may also contribute to the underrepresentation of women in the sciences. His real heresy though, was when he said that the low number of women in the sciences could possibly be attributed to more than just discrimination. All shit hit the fan. Female professors were outraged. Wimpy male professors feigned outrage with them. The National Organization for Women (N.O.W.) called for his resignation, and they got it. Summers will be stepping down as of June 30th, 2006.

I't's worth noting that the organizer of the event had specifically asked Summers to touch on controversial topics. It's also worth noting that Summers is by no means the kind of right-wing-boogeyman usually associated (usually falsely) with mysogany and gender discrimination. Such people don't become president of Harvard. Indeed, Summers served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton.

Regardless, he said something that some Group didn't like. The way I see it, if N.O.W. or anyone else didn't like the research Summers quoted, then all they have to do is offer evidence to the contrary. There's plenty of it out there. But no, instead they do the lazy thing: demand his resignation; punish him for offending them.

It's been my experience that reactions like this to statements like those of Lawrence Summers are almost always rooted in one thing: fear that it might be true.

The fact is this: being offended is a part of life. Deal with it. If you can't handle that, crawl up in a hole somewhere and wait to die. Please.

So, while the thin-skinned, the intellectually lazy, and the cowardly search for new ways to rid the world of things they don't want to see and hear, I'll keep extolling the virtues of offensiveness. Don't like it? Offended? Say so. Piss me off. I'm looking forward to it.

Larry Summers story, Boston Globe
Larry Summers' Speech
Amaani Lyle Story, San Diego Union-Tribune
An article that pissed some people off, and the responses of the pissed off people