This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

It’s Halloween season, and the decorations are going up. Every year, it seems, folks who like to decorate their homes and yards come up with more and better ideas for a good, old-fashioned haunting.

The city of Manchester was getting into the spirit of the season as well, with several scarecrows put up around town.

They’re not there now.

Because one person was offended by them.

The person offended contacted the Downtown Development Authority, which agreed to remove them. I guess that’s the easy way out for the DDA.

Social media, however, is taking the issue and running for the goal line with it.

And, because one person saw something totally unintended in a decorative scarecrow, the whole idea was tossed. The city took them down, and now I wonder if any other Halloween decorations are going to offend someone.

About three years ago, I wrote a column here about being offended. Here’s some of it, for you to chew on as you see fit:

On December 4, 1970, newsman Frank Reynolds made his final broadcast as anchorman for the ABC Evening News. During his final closing commentary, Reynolds said something that I recall and which resonates with me, and which has been preserved online so it can be viewed.

“I suppose I ought to say I hope I have not offended anyone,” Reynolds said, “but that’s not really the truth. Because there are a few people I did very much want to bother, and I hope I have.”

I like that line. It basically says, “If I have offended you, that’s too bad.”

Perusing social media as I do from time to time, I have come across many people – both friends and acquaintances – who every now and again seem to go off into the stratosphere about some insult or offense that has been given. They act as if being offended is some horrible crime, and that their feelings are more important than anyone else’s.

I have a news bulletin for these people. Your feelings are just that, your feelings, and have absolutely no bearing on how anyone else should conduct their lives.

We live in a world where everybody apparently expects everyone else to walk on eggshells, lest their delicate sensitivities be wounded. Poppycock. I have no truck with people who intentionally seek to wound, but in day-to-day life, there are going to be times when we say or do something that could be interpreted as offensive, and if it’s not intentional, then let it be and move on.

British comedian Stephen Fry has, what I think, is a classic line about being offended. Fry has a tendency toward “blue” language, so I’ll clean it up a bit for a family newspaper.  But he says basically this:

“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’  As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more … than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so what.”

I have searched the Constitution, the legal codes of the state, and just about anything else I could find, and you know what?  I can’t find one single word that says you or I or anyone else has a right to not be offended.

Frankly, if something is said that is offensive, it means you have taken note of it as a challenge to your way of thinking. A truly open-minded person would use that as a learning moment and see if, maybe, your rock-solid belief in something bears a little more scrutiny.

It does not mean, in any way, shape or form, that the speaker has to change his or her way of thinking to conform to yours. What it should do, instead, is open a portal to a meeting of the minds and maybe, just maybe, adjusting both ways of looking at an issue.

Too many people tiptoe around topics they might otherwise wish to engage in, simply because they worry about giving offense to someone else. Why worry about that? If offense is given, so what?

Maybe, as Frank Reynolds said, some people should be offended.

I don’t have a real conclusion for this controversy. At its base I do understand why the offended person was so moved, and I can respect that.

But to make the city take down all scarecrows because of one person’s complaint?

Poppycock.