| EDITORIAL | |  |
|
 |
|
| Last updated at 1:18 AM on 09/12/07 |
On the offensive 
The Telegram
Don’t get your knickers in a knot, or perhaps it would be less sexist to write “boxers in a bunch.” Or maybe a reference to underwear is unfit for the editorial page.
Oh, what the heck.
Why are people so easily offended these days — offended so deeply they have to make a public case out of their hurt feelings?
Three cases brought the question to mind this week.
First there was the Ontario Ministry of Transportation crackdown on potentially offensive personal licence plates.
Two plates were involved: the first read REV JO, the second, HV F8TH.
The REV JO plate belongs to Rev. Joanne Sorrill, who got the plate 19 years ago. When she decided to renew it, her request was denied by a bureaucrat.
No one had complained about the plate, but officials felt it could be offensive on three grounds: first, it could be seen as condoning speeding; second, it could be seen as religious; third, it could promote alcohol consumption, since REV is a vodka-based drink.
The religious argument was also used to reject a Peterborough man’s request for licence renewal of his HV F8TH plate.
Again, no one complained. Rather, the ministry was worried it might bother someone.
Not to be offensive, but wow — that’s pretty stupid.
So stupid that Premier Dalton McGuinty eventually promised the reverend would get her plate, as would the faithful Peterborough driver.
A second case involves the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), which was offended by a 2006 Maclean’s magazine piece written by Mark Steyn.
In it, Steyn warns the secular West faces a demographic time bomb as its birthrates fall, while the number of young Muslims rises exponentially.
The CIC has filed complaints with provincial human rights commissions in Ontario and B.C., arguing Steyn’s piece is “flagrantly Islamophobic.”
Flagrant it is — if, by flagrant you mean abrasive, unapologetic opinion. That’s Steyn’s speciality.
Is it Islamophobic? That’s a matter of opinion, which is what the article presents itself as.
If the CIC wanted to refute it, a well-written epistle to various media would be more appropriate than complaining to government-run anti-hate bodies.
Finally we have Irene Mathyssen, an Ontario NDP MP who rose in Parliament Wednesday to say she had seen Tory MP James Moore looking at images of “scantily clad” women on his laptop while the Commons was sitting.
His action, she told the House, “reflects an attitude of objectifying women,” noting the vile image was perused by Moore on the eve of the anniversary of Mark Lepine’s killing of 14 women in 1989.
Turns out the photo was of Moore’s girlfriend.
Mathyssen later apologized, but not after effectively calling Moore a dirty old man in front of the nation, without even speaking to him before making her allegation.
Perhaps it’s too much to expect rationality from the deeply offended. After all, they’re not getting much blood to their brains, what with most of it trapped by knotted knickers in their nether regions.
|
09/12/07
|
|
|
|
4
