Being offended is a bit of a national pastime. We live in a world in which we're told that everyone is entitled to their opinion, you're cool as long as no one is getting hurt and everyone can be right no matter what. Until two people have different opinions, and then it becomes a battle of who is more right. And while we should be offended about elected officials abusing our trust, CEOs of massive corporations stealing money, the destruction of our environment for profit and a million other abuses that affect us all on a greater or lesser scale, some people seem to want to put a lot of effort into getting thoroughly pissed over the smallest, most insignificant things that really have no effect on them at all.
#4. Team Names
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Offensive team names are as old as offensive people forming teams. It's all fine and good if you want to play field hockey and call your team the Surly Marmots if that moves you. But maybe the guys from the next town over want to call themselves the Flaming Fecalphiliacs, and suddenly everyone has a bug up their ass, even if they've never gone to a field hockey game before and have no plan on seeing one.
All professional sports have enjoyed some degree of team name controversy. Any team you can think of even remotely inspired by Native Americans has been deemed offensive at some point -- the Redskins, the Indians, the Braves, and so on. Kennesaw State University in Georgia used to have an owl named Hooter as a mascot until some boobs got offended by it and his name was changed to Scrappy. A high school in Utah had to change their mascot from a cougar because someone decided it's now offensive, since saucy old tarts like to call themselves cougars.
London, Ontario's Frontier League baseball team went so far as to call themselves the Rippers and are at risk of the city not renewing their contract to play in town because their mascot is a cartoon depiction of Jack the Ripper, who, you may recall, was a killer, in another country, over 100 years ago, and was never caught, so we don't even technically know what he looked like. But the cartoon version of him playing baseball is awful and worthy of protest. In fact, it garnered so much attention and so many people were offended that Rush Limbaugh actually took the time to voice support for the team. It's OK to read that part again. Rush Limbaugh had to be the voice of reason.
The London Rippers are averaging about 1,000 attendees per game in their hometown, which seems to indicate that people really are offended by the team name, if you don't include the fact that London's previous teams -- the Monarchs, the Werewolves and the Tigers -- all averaged less than 2,000 fans per game and all ended up folding thanks to low attendance. This despite the fact that no wildcats, manwolves or butterflies had ever gone on murder sprees in Victorian England.
Do mascots and/or team names ever burn villages and rape the helpless? Very rarely, according to my research, but people still have time to give a shit about them.
#3. Supporting a Cause
Recently, the good people in the magical land of Oreo created this ad:
Does that shit not look delicious? Oreos normally aren't my thing, they're fine and all, but I'm not crazy about them. But man, if you gave me rainbow-colored icing in the middle of a chocolate cookie, I would be on that shit like a drunken hobo on a Lysol-infused rag. But everyone does not share this opinion.
Oreo's ad, meant to show Kraft's support of gay rights and the pride movement (it's not even a real goddamn cookie), has been met with actual protest. Not out in the streets protest, because the people who protest cookies generally need a hand getting off the couch, but protest nonetheless.
Of course, many are supportive of Kraft and Oreo's ad and position, and at worst a large portion of people are indifferent. But make no mistake, when idiots feel they have been affronted, once they master the language skills necessary to raise a stink, they will absolutely do so.
Arguably, this is indicative of the larger debate about gay rights, which in itself is kind of stupid, but in this microcosmic way it really shows just how far some people will go to unwittingly be complete ass-brained chucklefucks. To even form the thought that you might want to protest a cookie, let alone speak the words, is something future peoples may read about and laugh at the way we mock people who used to take tapeworms to lose weight, because obviously those people had been hit on the head many, many times. And maybe they ate some lead paint chips.
Protesting Oreo proves literally nothing. In fact, less than nothing. What you're trying to prove has turned around a complete 180 and is now proving something completely different -- that you probably have to stop every 10th word or so to take a breath to avoid passing out when you speak. How does Kraft management's support of a social issue that obviously doesn't even pertain to your particular lifestyle reflect on their product? Is there gay in the cookie? Do the boxes play George Michael tunes when you open them? No? Then shut up and eat your cookies.
#2. Vegans
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Often in my writing, I like to take a bit of an ignorant blowhard viewpoint on things and complicate the issue by being liberal 80 percent of the time, then ridiculously conservative in a way that's inconsistent the rest of the time, because that makes me laugh. So right now I'm hopping on the vegan bandwagon in opposition to about everything I've ever written about vegans in the past.
Why does anyone care if someone is a vegan?
If you Google "hate vegans," you'll get over 1 million results. This alone is offensive, simply because if you Google me, you get way less, and half of those are pages Gladstone started. A lot of the results are kind of jokey in the way you, too, perhaps in your younger days, would half jokingly tell your one vegan friend in high school about how delicious meat is and why they're being ridiculous. Lots of people do that, because we're still in a curious carnivore renaissance where bacon is somehow funny and things like Epic Meal Time offer a curious representation of both manhood and a criticism of the super healthy push that Western society really started in on a decade or so back. We feel that veganism is the new hipster trend (it isn't, but that's how some people view it), and we're being even more awesomely cool by rejecting it and embracing beef like the dirty cow lovers we all are.
I would punch a toddler right the hell out for a delicious burger if he got all uppity and thought to deny me that meat, but I also would require a team of MIT-trained researchers and maybe a robot designed by NASA to help me devise a way to give a shit if you want to grill up a portobello mushroom and call it a hamburger.
And yet there is a lot of genuine anti-vegan hatred on the Internet. Some people really want to slap that beet away from your mouth. Some of the hatred is directed not at the practice itself, but at what is perceived as a self-righteous attitude that vegans may have, that they have to tell you they're vegan and condemn you for eating meat. And sure, anyone who judges you for eating a ham sandwich can go fuck themselves with a tube sock full of jacks, but does every vegan do that? And is that because they're a vegan, or just because they're an asshole? Assholes, you'll find, are omnivorous. Also, Omnivorous Asshole would be a fine name for either a band or a porn site.
Here's an awful video and the first YouTube result for hating vegans:
Notice that most of this illiterati's beef with vegans (ha, meat joke! Fuck, I'm writing that down) come from vegans just espousing their beliefs. Kind of like this guy does, but in reverse. And then he tosses in complete horseshit like #5 about how vegans are evil. As much of a facetious point as that seems to be, I've heard it before. Hitler was a vegetarian, y'know? Yeah, well Jeffery Dahmer wasn't. Pass me some cornbread.
If you don't like vegetables, that's great. It's kind of lame and childish, you should eat some vegetables, you overgrown baby, but whatever, it's your thing. If you don't like assholes who push their beliefs on you, that's fine as well, because all of those people deserve crotch rashes. But not liking someone who chooses to not eat meat, just because they choose to not eat meat, is like hating someone for choosing to not watch HBO. Is that weird? Of course it's weird, HBO is awesome. But where did you get the time to worry about it at all? Does it change your life in any way? No. No sir.
#1. Health Care
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This is not about Obamacare exactly, it's about not being dead. Obamacare is one example of many health care initiatives countries all around the world employ as part of what those nations offer their citizens by way of security and protection. Health care is a thing that protects you from dying. But holy shit do some people really want to see some death.
Do you not want to pay extra taxes or insurance rates? Fine. Do you already have health coverage? Awesome. But at the end of the day, there are kids with leukemia, parents with Parkinson's and superheroes with Only One Thigh Sclerosis who maybe can't afford to go to a hospital. Or they go and their insurance says "Sorry, annual cap," or maybe lifetime cap, if it's an untreatable condition. Or God forbid a pre-existing condition that will then limit them from coverage at all. Health care in America sucks, it really does. Don't feel bad about that, it's like saying John from Cincinnati was a crappy HBO show. HBO is still good, it just had shit on it. It happens.
Despite the fact that access to health care stops people from dying and/or living with festering head wounds and the like, the big critique is how awful and socialist such a thing is. People have even said that they're going to leave the country because of it and move to someplace like Canada. The people who say this are dumb as damp burlap sacks full of shit, mind you, but they're saying it enough that the media is covering it.
Libertarian-leaning people don't like the government stepping in and giving them insurance because they like to be difficult. That's really the gist of it, and you can try to argue differently, but come on. No one can say, with a straight face, that if they have a heart attack they'll be pissed off that the government forced an insurance on them that helped them survive that heart attack. Damn, I'm alive! Now I can get revenge!
Are there good arguments against a health care mandate on paper? Sure. You can argue points of contract law and precedent, but is any of that any more than sour grapes? It's not like the government wants you to wear genie pants all day, they want to let people go to the damn doctor. All other arguments against it are smokescreens that cover two arguments -- it costs too much and it's a filthy socialist initiative.
Every other developed nation has universal health care. Every one. Because the government and the people they represent see the benefit of not having streets full of lepers. The cost is not unbearable and, in fact, repealing the act would increase the deficit by billions. Hundreds of billions.
So there is no cost argument. It comes down to people not liking the fact that this is perceived as socialist and, in principle, that must be bad. No matter how much good it does, the word sounds bad. If we replaced the word "socialist" with "Robot Rainbow Fucksplosion" and had to listen to Fox News pundits tell us that Obamacare is a Robot Rainbow Fucksplosion policy that means insurance companies have to treat us with basic human dignity, we'd all be in the streets with signs demanding more of it.
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