Some people take offense because they have legitimate grievances. Others seem to take offense because doing so gives them a kind of currency and at least momentary significance. A lot of offense taken and/or expressed probably has some mix of the two. What prompted this post was online debate over Tina Fey’s “sheet cake” skit. Some are calling it a tone-deaf response to the legitimate problems of Trump by a privileged white woman. Others are calling it incisive satire by a woman aware both of real problems and her privileged position.
I’m an educated white male professional and United States citizen with just about any kind of privilege you’d care to name. So, I’m in a uniquely bad position to judge where one stops and the other begins. I don’t have any particular take on the Fey skit. All I can say is that I was mildly amused by it.
In some sense, I think the complaints about “political correctness” is a flip side of the same coin. Some folks making this complaint are just assholes who are mad that someone is calling them out on being jerks. Others are people of good will who legitimately feel like, despite the best of intentions, they are scorned by people who put what seem like arbitrary landmines everywhere in the culture. A lot of the complaints probably have some mix of the two.
(No doubt I have given offense here by engaging in an impermissible degree of “both sides”ism.)
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