I'm offended, you racist. Somebody who knew me from only one statement yelled that to me today on Fakebook. Yeah, yeah... I'm offended, he's offended, you're offended, we're all offended! These days everybody is offended by something and if you're not, well quite frankly, we find that offensive. No, I'm serious. This I'm offended bullshit is bordering on mental illness.
Take for instance these assclowns at Washington High in of all places, San Francisco. Isn't that where offensive behavior once migrated to become the norm? Anyway I digress. Somebody there spontaneously became offended one day when they noticed a brilliant mural depicting life with our founding father/first president, George Washington. This person became unglued because a black people were depicted as the slaves they were at the time, so instigated a pitchforks and torches vigilante mob to restore justice. "Paint over the mural," they cried! "It's offensive!" they pleaded, and so right away to avoid an angry mob at their doorsteps, there was a hasty vote to paint over what is actually a school treasure. Fortunately sanity spoke up in the form of actor/advocate, Danny Glover, who happens to be an alumnus of the school and who grew up with the mural, and oh yes, he's a black man who had this to say, “As a Washington High graduate, I’ve spent my entire life fighting for freedom and the right of artistic expression,” Glover said in a statement. ” Whether it was being in the forefront to bring about the first Black Studies Department in the country at San Francisco State or being involved in films like The Color Purple and most recently the Last Black Man in San Francisco, my record is clear and unambiguous.”
He said as a student he viewed the mural as “a reminder of the horrors of human bondage.” https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/08/12/washington-high-mural-actor-danny-glover-book-burning/
“As a Washington High graduate, I’ve spent my entire life fighting for freedom and the right of artistic expression,” Glover said in a statement. ” Whether it was being in the forefront to bring about the first Black Studies Department in the country at San Francisco State or being involved in films like The Color Purple and most recently the Last Black Man in San Francisco, my record is clear and unambiguous.”
He said as a student he viewed the mural as “a reminder of the horrors of human bondage.” That's right, folks, it's history, and you don't hide history because it's distasteful, much like the Catholics try to ignore the inquisitions that killed millions of people or their 1,000 year old global pedophilia ring. And yes it is offensive that slavery happened, but worse that it happened because according to the Bible, God sanctions slavery, and in fact provides guidelines for how masters and slaves should treat each other!
But instead of hiding facts of history, especially the awful ones, we should have daily reminders of where such bigoted ideology leads. Isn't that why the Holocaust survivors created the Auschwitz Prison Camp museum and the traveling Auschwitz Memorials? We can't, no let me walk that back, we must not whitewash history no matter how ugly, and when you get right down to it, most of this country's history is ugly, because it is imperative that we learn from those mistakes, and clearly we are not learning from past history when people are successfully hiding history and pretending bad stuff never happened. So clearly Mr Glover was a voice of reason amidst chaos. However when somebody gets the, I'm Offended Bug up their ass it's hard to back down because nobody wants to offend the offended by suggesting they're wrong this time, but fortunately in the end Mr Glover was able to negotiate a compromised and instead of painting the wall, they will board over the work of art until this century's bookburning era
Comments