The Right to Be Offended

I don't know how you have it in your country, but here in America, we have rights. We are guaranteed freedom of assembly in front of the television (but dad gets the remote control). We have the right to bear arms for the purpose of making "gangsta" picture poses for our myspace pages. But our most important and undeniable allowance, which is number one on our Bill of Rights, is freedom of speech. Our forefathers saw fit to secure America this right because they liked to get drunk and swear. A lot.
There are various theories surrounding the exact nature and interpretation of freedom of speech. Some believe that this right was intended only so that we could criticize the government. Others believe that it was written so that we could expand our national consciousness, considering and adapting to as many ideas as possible. Still other believe that it was created solely so we could peddle beaver shots at the newsstand. However you interpret freedom of speech, its very design points out that those guys in powdered wigs wanted to create a legal foundation for free speech, one that could be used in a lawsuit for or against it. If there's anything we Americans value as much as our free speech, it's our litigation.
The right to free speech is the right to be offended. Like your parents told you about getting a driver's license, it's more than a right: it's a privelege. Yes! The privelege to be offended. The privelege to be put off your food. The privelege to hear or read something that shocks your senses, that makes you sick and worried about the moral fiber of this modern world. You have to imagine what it means to never be offended. It means no creativity, no spontaneous thought, no clue as to what the person standing next to you is thinking. There are a lot of sick people in this world, but we don't get any closer to understanding or aiding them by shutting them up. We would do better to tape up our ears rather than their mouths. Pretending that we are a polite society that won't suffer indignity is a complete crock of shit. We invented the practice of belching out the alphabet.
When you are offended, it is your right--no, your duty--to let it be known. That's the only way things progress. Yell out loud, stage protests, take it to court if you feel it is necessary. But remember that you should always be charging the words, not the person that said them or the medium that conveyed them. It's a lot more difficult to get mad at a word than it is to get mad at a person, but that's what the right to free speech is about. Freedom for everyone to say what they think and feel. When a radio personality makes racist comments over the air, we are allowed to be annoyed. Many of us should be offended. But taking him off the air doesn't make him or his comments less racist. More than likely, such comments are a reflection, and not a fomentation, of the cancerous racism that affects every aspect of our lives. So let us hear them. Let's embrace their prickly points into our bosoms and bleed all over them. Censorship is nothing but DayQuil for our sick society. It treats the symptoms while the disease gets worse.