Let’s make 2019 the year ridicule trumps being offended by rubbish
Naomi Firsht wants 2019 to be the year we stop being so easily offended. I’d argue that the feeling offended is bad enough but it’s more than that: it’s the whining and shrill extempore demands for validation that irk and demean us; the pursuit of victimhood and to be defined by it; the summoning of police and other instruments of State control to salve your ego and crush your opponent, or to use Twitter parlance “destroy” the other side; the confusion between free speech and plain rudeness; the willingness by police to portray themselves as therapists and come running, seeking out muons of criminal intent in the dust of the offence industry; and the narcissism that backs it all. If you want the State to intervene in everyday discussion, to tell you what you can and cannot see, to protect you from ideas other than those which give you a sense of unchangeable foundation in the complex, hypocritical and contrarian world of human relations, then you need to get a grip.
Firsht wants us to wise up:
The war on sexism was also behind a particularly mad policy that came out of the Scottish parliament before Christmas. Gingerbread men in the Holyrood café have undergone something of a transition and are now known as gingerbread persons, thus putting an end to the gendered biscuit tyranny. Our suffragette sisters would be proud…
Make no mistake, 2018 was a bumper year for invented problems and manufactured outrage. The year began with millennials moaning about how “problematic” the anodyne 90s sitcom Friends was, after Netflix added it to its library: apparently it was too white and had undertones of homophobia, transphobia and fat-shaming…
When did we become a nation of humourless, offence-taking whingers, eager to waste our time on this rubbish? My one wish for 2019 is that as a nation we rediscover the stiff upper lip and stop prioritising a few hurt feelings over common sense. This year, let’s call out superficial nonsense for what it is.
Well said. Let’s make 2019 the year we don’t take offence at nonsense – The Times.
Posted: 2nd, January 2019 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
