No Apologies

The Bill of Rights does not contain any guarantees that we will be free from being offended. In fact by the presence of Freedoms of Speech, Religion, and Press, we are almost guaranteed to be offended at some point in our lives. So why is everyone so upset with Ann Coulter this week? She made a bad joke, that’s all. By bad joke, I mean that it wasn’t all that funny. At best it was mediocre and certainly not up to her usual standards, but that’s all it was: a joke. If you happened to be offended by her choice of words then you probably don’t listen to Ms. Coulter or read her columns very often. If you do, then you probably get offended quite frequently.

For all the people calling for Ann’s head, you would think she had committed a crime rather than just exercised her freedom of speech. You have to wonder what the ultimate goal of these people really is. Do they really want to limit speech to such an extent that no one is ever offended? There’s nothing wrong with being offended. Being offended simply means that you strongly disagree with someone else’s point of view and that’s something that will eventually happen so long as you have an opinion on something. Everyone can’t share the same opinion, so you should expect to be offended at some point. The trick is deciding just how offended you should be by something that’s not directed at you and essentially amounts to a poor choice of words by someone.

In the case of Ann Coulter insulting John Edwards, it seems that many people are overreacting and many more people who probably weren’t offended are acting as though they’ve been personally insulted. John Edwards should feel insulted and maybe a little bit offended, but that’s about it. Ms. Coulter wasn’t trying to disparage anyone but him. She could have perhaps chosen a different phrase to use, but that wouldn’t have fit with her style. If you didn’t know, Ann Coulter makes a living by being a very sharp witted, often insulting, conservative writer and public speaker with a no-holds-barred approach. Her comments about Mr. Edwards were fairly typical of what she has to say about Democrats.

So what’s the big deal? If you didn’t like what you heard, don’t buy her books, and don’t read her columns. If enough people do the same, you’ll stop hearing from her. That’s how it works. In the meantime if things are offending you, be happy. That means we still have some of our Bill of Rights guarantees! Ann Coulter need not apologize for that.