House of Eratosthenes

My e-mail folder is a wonder to behold. There are over eight thousand notes of congratulations for how the Good Lieutenant and I handled that liberal half-wit the day before yesterday. Also, a half a dozen additional requests for interviews from the Washington Post, the last couple of them with a promise to put my blog on Page A-1 above the fold. Michelle Malkin, social butterfly that she is, wants me to come over for dinner just so she can brag about having been in the same room with me, and of course Al Franken has finally admitted that I’m right. About everything.

None of this is up for challenge from anyone, because it’s in my e-mail. Only I have the password. The contents of my e-mail are whatever I say they are. Logically, it therefore follows that whatever is to be inferred from these contents, is whatever I say it is. Nobody else is in a position to assert anything different.

And that, right there, is the power of being offended.

A friend pointed out an off-color billboard on top of a building at Westport Road and Southwest Trafficway.

Apparently people hadn�t learned from the bad publicity generated a few years ago from a lawsuit involving Southwest Airlines.

The Boulevard Brewing Co. beer billboard uses the racist rhyme “Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moe…” Each word is positioned with a period over one of four foam-filled glasses of Boulevard�s popular Wheat, Pale Ale, Bully Porter and Dry Stout beer.
:
Bob Sullivan, vice president and chief marketing officer with Boulevard Brewing, said no one had complained about the beer billboard. “It�s a choice campaign,” he said.

“It has nothing to do with race, color or creed,” Sullivan said. “You would be the first person who�s brought that to our attention.”

The billboards started going up in different Kansas City locations in May. They will remain up until October, Sullivan said. The ads ran for two years in other media in 11 states.
:
The history is too fresh. The rhyme still evokes the N-word, and no amount of beer will wash that down.

Now I think we can all agree that history is irrelevant. Or at least we can agree with the vital parts of that. If the rhyme has a racist history, but nowadays doesn’t offend anybody, it should be permissible. If the rhyme lacks any racist history, but neverthless still has the capacity to offend people, it should be forbidden. So the debate is about capacity for offense, not about history.

But like the messages in my personal e-mail folder, the residual effects of personal offense, are for each person to state, and nobody else is in a position to contradict.

Somehow, the assumption rises up from relative oblivion, that when people make statements as to how personally offended they are, they must be speaking the whole truth. Nothing but the truth. Now way would they ever dream of saying they’re offended by something not offensive.

And yet once they say they’re offended, whatever the color of their skin happens to be, they have been empowered if & when something like a billboard is dismantled on the strength of their words.

The citation of the Southwest Airlines lawsuit doesn’t help. The Wikipedia entry includes a footnote, pointing to a Google-cached copy of the court’s order ejecting the lawsuit. Laughing it out of court, as they say. Good for me, since this is the way I recalled the events, so no CAT-scan for me just yet.

Plaintiffs contend that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of Southwest on their claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress and plaintiff Fuller’s claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress. This court reviews the district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo, viewing the evidence and drawing reasonable inferences therefrom in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Gossett v. Okla. ex rel. Bd. of Regents for Langston Univ., 245 F.3d 1172, 1175 (10th Cir. 2001).

After reviewing the record, we conclude that the district court properly granted summary judgment on plaintiffs’ claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court correctly enumerated the elements of and burdens of proof for a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress under Kansas law. It also correctly applied Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c) and the law to the summary judgment evidence, to reach its conclusion that the announcement was neither extreme and outrageous, nor had plaintiffs suffered any severe emotional distress. See Sawyer v. Southwest Airlines, Co., 243 F. Supp.2d 1257, 1273-75 (D. Kan. 2003). As such, we affirm the court’s summary judgment order.

The Wiki article linked above also poses a problem for the notion that the rhyme is inherently racist: “Some believe that the modern version is a politically correct version of the “nigger” version, but no versions of the rhyme are known to predate the oldest examples of “tiger” versions.” [emphasis mine] Personally, I found the “talk” page highly amusing on this particular entry. It is recognized that whether or not you can pin an inherently racist undertone on the nursery rhyme, depends strongly on the genesis version from whence all other modifications came. If the N-word is the “Eve” of all other variations, perhaps then the claim can be made — participants then start to provide personal anecdotes.

A demonstrably futile exercise, since the racist version would be so ancient, you’d have to be in your 160’s or 170’s to have witnessed it’s heyday.

In the end, it’s a matter of personal taste. You may say the nursery rhyme offends you because you’re black, in the same way I may say the word “diversity” offends me because I’m white. Our blackness/whiteness is a matter of fact, but who on earth is to say we are not offended? Like the content of personal e-mail, this is a matter for individual discernment.

The power to change public things according to this discernment, therefore, is the power to affect public policy unilaterally. In America, we rankle at the idea of a single pair of hands being able to inflict that kind of change, even if those hands are attached to someone elected and accountable. Should we worry any less, when such change is made at the behest of an unaccountable, unelected private citizen, just because he says he’s offended?

Thing I Know #52. When angry people make demands, the ensuing fulfillment never seems to bring a stop to their anger.
Thing I Know #106. Making sure no one is offended, virtuous as it is, seems to be antithetical to real achievement.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Who Is To Say Otherwise?Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Who Is To Say Otherwise?
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006