I'm giving up being offended, having my feelings hurt, righteous indignation - the whole nine yards. I. Am. Sick. Of. It. I come from a family of women for whom equanimity is a character flaw. We are like princesses for whom the slightest slight is a pea beneath our mattress (worse even than peeing on our mattress). If being offended were an Olympic sport, we'd own the gold medal.
And forget about our national discourse - we're so pleased with our ease of offense, that we get our hackles up as easily about Jamie Lynn Spears as we do about torture, illegal wars, dead soldiers. A common slip of the tongue and, man, ain't we fired up about what a right bastard you are?
Every pundit, politician, and barroom provocateur aspires to Josesph Welch. And if he were standing in front of us today, asking the question he asked Joseph McCarthy, the short answer would have to be no:
Sense of common decency? Who needs it when we have a sense of entitled righteous indignation!
*Edited to note that the irony of me being so offended by people being so offended hit me rather after I wrote this post...
