Can we as a nation promise to grow some thicker skin? Because I’m tired of hearing people complain about how offended they are all the time.
Jeb Bush is potentially running for president in 2016, and his top tech adviser had to resign because of “offensive tweets.”
In his tweets, Ethan Czahor called women “sluts” and made homophobic remarks and racial slurs. He basically used Twitter as if it was Yik Yak.
“Most people don’t know that ‘Halloween’ is German for ‘night when girls with low self-esteem dress like sluts,’” he tweeted.
“When I burp at the gym I feel like it’s my way of saying, ‘Sorry guys, but I’m not gay.’”
He posted additional tweets, which were pretty bad, and I would completely understand how they could ruin a presidential campaign. After all, if Bush kept Czahor on his staff, he’d be associated with a bigot. And bigotry isn’t a positive quality for presidents.
However, Czahor’s most recent offensive posts were from back in 2011, almost four years ago. If everyone was punished for stuff they said or did four years ago, we’d be an unproductive society.
Czahor’s posts from 2011 shouldn’t affect him now. They should be almost irrelevant to his position. But of course, Bush doesn’t want to risk his potential presidential campaign, so he had to let Czahor go.
I could understand firing him if this guy was tweeting offensively within the past few months. But he wasn’t. He made those mistakes long ago. Of course, people were offended anyway.
These types of easily offended people are the reason we’re still living in a Puritan society.
Our television is void of nudity and sex. We have to bleep out every other word in a Nicki Minaj song on the radio. People get so offended by profanity and nudity we have to pretend to be saints in the public.
What’s the point? We’re so afraid of stepping on people’s toes we have to act differently in the public’s eye.
It took until 2014 for Disney to even have a gay couple appear on one of its shows. They didn’t want to “offend” people by demonstrating families that don’t fit every viewers standards.
An all-women’s university sent emails to students who were considered overweight. In the email, they encouraged the women to sign up for a weight-loss program that would make them more physically active.
Of course, people were offended by it.
“How dare you call your students fat? Why would you do something like that?”
The answer: probably because they’re fat. It’s not nice. We don’t like it when our flaws are pointed out, and honestly the university could have handled the situation differently.
But Americans are obese people. We eat badly, and we don’t exercise. If you’re overweight, I’m sorry. But you need to exercise more, and someone needs to tell you.
Stop policing our thoughts and actions. Censoring offensive speech doesn’t make problems go away. It just makes them more difficult to talk about.
Cody Sibley is a 19-year-old mass communication freshman from Opelousas, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @CodySibley.