Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Please Stop Apologizing

This was Bill Maher's closing monologue on his Real Time show a few weeks ago.
I agree with this 100%.
As Americans, it is not a RIGHT to not be offended. Whatever happened to "sticks and stones...?"
The coddling and cow-towing of special interest groups in this country has become sickening.
It's especially refreshing to see this view coming from a liberal. It's usually liberals that are the ones that are always trying to make sure no one's feelings get hurt.
I've always said that the difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives want to keep you from saying "fuck," while liberals want to keep you from saying "fuck you."
It should be noted that the lines in bold are my doing for personal emphasis.

Please Stop Apologizing

By BILL MAHER
 
Published: March 21, 2012
THIS week, Robert De Niro made a joke about first ladies, and Newt Gingrich said it was “inexcusable and the president should apologize for him.” Of course, if something is “inexcusable,” an apology doesn’t make any difference, but then again, neither does Newt Gingrich.
Mr. De Niro was speaking at a fund-raiser with the first lady, Michelle Obama. Here’s the joke: “Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?”
The first lady’s press secretary declared the joke “inappropriate,” and Mr. De Niro said his remarks were “not meant to offend.” So, as these things go, even if the terrible damage can never be undone, at least the healing can begin. And we can move on to the next time we choose sides and pretend to be outraged about nothing.
When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?
This week, President Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, described Mitt Romney’s constant advertising barrage in Illinois as a “Mittzkrieg,” and instantly the Republican Jewish Coalition was outraged and called out Mr. Axelrod’s “Holocaust and Nazi imagery” as “disturbing.” Because the message of “Mittzkrieg” was clear: Kill all the Jews. Then the coalition demanded not only that Mr. Axelrod apologize immediately but also that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz “publicly rebuke” him. For a pun! For punning against humanity!
The right side of America is mad at President Obama because he hugged  Derrick Bell, a law professor who believed we live in a racist country, 22 years ago; the left side of America is mad at Rush Limbaugh for seemingly proving him right.
If it weren’t for throwing conniption fits, we wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
I have a better idea. Let’s have an amnesty — from the left and the right — on every made-up, fake, totally insincere, playacted hurt, insult, slight and affront. Let’s make this Sunday the National Day of No Outrage. One day a year when you will not find some tiny thing someone did or said and pretend you can barely continue functioning until they apologize.
If that doesn’t work, what about this: If you see or hear something you don’t like in the media, just go on with your life. Turn the page or flip the dial or pick up your roll of quarters and leave the booth.
The answer to whenever another human being annoys you is not “make them go away forever.” We need to learn to coexist, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. For example, I find Rush Limbaugh obnoxious, but I’ve been able to coexist comfortably with him for 20 years by using this simple method: I never listen to his program. The only time I hear him is when I’m at a stoplight next to a pickup truck.
When the lady at Costco gives you a free sample of its new ham pudding and you don’t like it, you spit it into a napkin and keep shopping. You don’t declare a holy war on ham.
I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone. That’s why we have Canada. That’s not us. If we sand down our rough edges and drain all the color, emotion and spontaneity out of our discourse, we’ll end up with political candidates who never say anything but the safest, blandest, emptiest, most unctuous focus-grouped platitudes and cant. In other words, we’ll get Mitt Romney.
Bill Maher is host of “Real Time With Bill Maher” on HBO.

1 comment:

Superb Jon said...

Santorum prefers Obama to Romney because Obama was raised by a Catholic grandmother. Vatican Osservatore Romano editor Vian said on May 18th that Obama "is not a pro-abortion president" - proves stand to encourage Catholics to breed and to encourage non-Catholics to abort out of spite. The Vatican likes the abortion status quo in the USA for this reason. Their purpose is only conquest, not faith. Carolignian Brzezinski spawned Zia al Haq, Khomeini, and bin Laden - breaks up superpowers via Aztlan and Kosovo as per Joel Garreau's Nine Nations. Brzezinski, Buckley and Buchanan winked anti-Semitic votes for Obama, delivered USA to Pope's feudal basket of Bamana Republics. Michael Pfleger and Joe Biden prove Obama is the Pope's boy. Obama is half a Kearney from County Offaly in Ireland. Talal got Pontifical medal as Fatima mandates Catholic-Muslim union against Jews (Francis Johnson, Great Sign, 1979, p. 126), Catholic Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott decision. John Wilkes Booth, Tammany Hall and Joe McCarthy were Catholics. Now Catholic majority Supreme Court. Catholics Palmisano, Grasso, Damato, Langone, Mozilo, Ranieri, Dioguardi, Palmieri destroyed American industry with their casuistrous ethics. Subprime construction mobsters had hookers deliver mortgages to banks. McCain's Keeting started it all. Brzezinski set up Arab Spring and Zia, so why surprised bin Laden was in Sineurabia code? Pakistanis descend from weasels who sold their Hindu brothers into hundreds of years of islamic slavery. That is why FIAT supplied Iran and every Catholic is like a Manchurian Candidate programmed to kill their best friend of they felt the "Holy Father" required it. They find American cars too advanced to use or their mechanics to fix. Ellis Island Popecrawlers brought in FDR. Since Pio Nino banned voting they consider our Constitution and laws immoral and illegitimate and think nothing of violating them or passing legislation that undermine them. They believe that they can not be fully loyal to their superiors if they do not go the extra stretch and break the law intentionally. Their slovenly, anti-intellectual work ethic produces vacuous, casuistrous blather and a tangle of hypocritical, contradictory regulations. Their clubhouse purges provided praetorian training for corporate misgovernance. They sided with the enemy in both World Wars and now, too. Every American boom has been caused by an Evangelical Revival and every major Depression by the domination of new Catholic immigrants. NYC top drop outs: Hispanic 32%, Black 25%, Italian 20%. NYC top illegals: Ecuadorean, Italian, Polish. Ate glis-glis but blamed plague on others, now lettuce coli. Their bigotry most encouraged terror yet they reap most security funds. View this life as casuistry training to survive purgatory. Rabbi circumcises lower, Pope upper brain. Tort explosion by glib casuistry. Hollywood Joe Kennedy had Bing Crosby proselytize. Bazelya 1992 case proves PLO-IRA-KLA links. Our enemy is the Bru666elles Sineurabia feudal Axis and the only answer is alliance with Israel and India. They killed six million Jews, a million Serbs, half a million freemasons, a quarter million Gypsies, they guided the slaughter of Assyrians and Armenians, and promoted the art of genocide throughout the world now they are relentless in their year to canonize nazi pope. 9/11 was Yugo Crimean blowback: Napoleon started the crusade against the Photius Heresy to avenge his uncle, Clinton wanted to cover Pacelli's war crimes. They had no qualms hijacking American policy in Vietnam or Balkans to papal ends, but when American interests opposed those of the papacy in Iraq and Iran, they showed their true fangs (Frum, Unpatriotic Conservatives).