Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

The temptation was too great. Try as I might to avoid the news, hoping in vain  to maintain my sanity, world events just keep offering up chances for the human race to demonstrate how unhinged we all are.

With you, I was saddened to read of the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco this past weekend. As horrible as a plane crash is, it seems much worse when it looks like the cause points to human error. Unfortunately, the tragedy wasn’t bad enough for the uptight, busy-bodies of the Asian American Journalists Association.

You see, this past Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times, ran a piece on the crash with the headline “Fright 214.” Now you and I dear reader, being innocent of prejudices, and lacking a need to grind the axe of the perpetually aggrieved, see that as a play on words which tries to convey the fear of the passengers, albeit a corny one.

However, the perpetually aggrieved members of the AAJA  saw that headline as a racially insensitive joke, because the airline in question is Korean. They saw it as the kind of thing Krusty the Klown might say, not the editorial staff of a major metropolitan newspaper. In case you missed the offensive “joke” like I did, it goes along the lines of, “Me so solly,” and “I likea flied lice.” Read the headline again and you’ll get it…sadly.

Now I readily admit that as a white male between the ages of 30 and 65, I am the last person to speak about what is offensive to Asian-Americans…or African-Americans, Female-Americans, Canine-Americans or the Dutch for that matter. But as a member of the human race, I can say that offense is wherever you want to look for it.

If I say that I find the AAJA’s website offensive because it uses a red font, the like of which is deeply insulting to people who have a deep-seated fear of tomatoes, you’d call me nuts, and with good reason. The point is that there doesn’t need to be an underlying current of racism in every damn thing someone says, writes, thinks, or hums. The offense usually exists only in the mind of the person ready to be offended.

The recent media-lynching of Paula Deen is an example. I don’t know the woman, or how her attitudes may have changed over the years, but if you can find a single human being—excluding Jesus Christ—who hasn’t said or done something offensive in their life, intentional or not, I’ll give you a medal!

Look, it’s one thing to castigate someone for blatant insensitivity, it’s quite another to tar and feather them for an innocent, albeit bad, pun. My apologies to the members of the AAJA, but your complaint says more about the racist sickness in your own minds, than in those of the editors of the Sun-Times whose only crime was indulging in a bit of yellow journalism.

No pun intended.