Shortly after last season’s women’s college basketball championship game between Tennessee and Rutgers, talk radio host Don Imus offered up his now-infamous reference to the Rutgers players, calling them “nappy-headed ho’s”.  Misguided, short-sighted and just plain ignorant? Absolutely. But worthy of him being fired?  Hardly.  And yet, good soldiers that they are, the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, protectors of all things not quite in line with their own agendas, came riding in for the rescue, and the kill, and defended those poor, defenseless, young women from Our Lady of Fragility.  In fact, they defended them so well, they certainly got the ball rolling for Imus getting fired from both MSNBC and CBS.  This brings me to Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

If you missed it, Jackson, generally one of the more media-savvy professional coaches in all of sports, was asked after the Lakers game in San Antonio if too much penetration led to wide open shots from the three point line (San Antonio made 13 3-pointers in a 107-92 win).  Jackson responded “We call this a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ game because there’s so much penetration and kick-outs.”  The room of reporters laughed and the post-game conference moved on.  When the remark hit the wire services, When the remark hit the wire services it immediately drew the ire of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.  “Phil Jackson’s been coaching long enough that he should be able to talk about the Lakers’ performance without resorting to cheap gay jokes.”  The NBA also publicly admonished Jackson saying ”the remarks are in poor taste” and Jackson quickly tried to right the situation by offering an apology, in his own, special way.  “It’s poor humor…I deserve to be reprimanded by the NBA.  If I’ve offended any horses, Texans, cowboys or gays, I apologize.”

Clearly, the most telling aspect of his apology is the part about “horses, Texans, cowboys or gays.”  Jackson is of an age, and era, where jokes about anyone of any color, sexual preference, religious beliefs or one’s mother not only were par for the course, they were practically expected.  I’m only a few years younger than Jackson so I remember quite well the kinds of things we used to say to each other playing basketball on the playgrounds of northeast Philadelphia, walking the boardwalk on the Jersey shore or simply communicating with each other in everyday life.  Kids did it, adults did it . . . comics like Richard Pryor made a living off of off-color, nasty humor.  But there’s the rub: It was all for the damn sake of humor.  I had plenty of people getting on me for any number of things; I did the same in return.  And no one . . . no one ever took anything the wrong way.  If you did react, that was considered a character flaw in you.  If Jackson’s comment was about a movie with a heterosexual love story at its center, which group would have complained?  Is there a Heterosexual Alliance Against Defamation that would have protested? 

What in the name of political correctness has happened to people in this country?  And don’t jump to conclusions here: I’m not saying there isn’t a line to be drawn.  Imus went over the line of decency, no one questions that.  But the penalty didn’t fit the “crime”.  So then, did Phil Jackson’s comment really offend?  Was everyone in the gay and lesbian community offended by his remark?  The statement from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation — did they speak for everyone?  Where I live, I’ve heard people in that community say they thought what Jackson said was funny and didn’t give the comment any more significance than it deserved.  He’s a basketball coach, for Heaven’s sake.  He threw out a one-liner to a room full of journalists that are forever used to coaches and players uttering the same, mundane comments game after game.  And if you really think that was bad, go spend some time in a locker room and check out the dialogue between players.  If you’re a man, a woman, black, white, Hispanic, gay, lesbian, a goat . . . did I miss anything . . . you better bring your seat belt because you’re going to be offended.   

It seems more often than not in our society today, there is a small group of very vocal spokespeople that stand up and speak out for a much larger group.  And when they speak, they might not necessarily be speaking for everyone in their demographic.  I have no knowledge how many gays and lesbians were offended by Jackson’s remarks.  But the bigger issue here is why so many groups seem to have people in their employ that do nothing but monitor anything and everything said in public forums to make sure comments in their direction don’t upset an eyelash’s worth of what they believe is sacred territory.

The whole damn society we live in needs to lighten-the-hell up.  We have become a culture that has to walk around primed and ready to say “oh I’m sorry, I was just kidding . . . I didn’t mean to offend you or the squirrels that live in the tree on your front lawn . . . “ 

For that matter, let’s just go ahead and extend this out to the upcoming Christmas . . . I’m sorry, I meant to say Holiday . . . season.  It’s that time again where saying “Merry Christmas” might just offend someone who celebrates another holiday or, doesn’t celebrate anything at all.  It’s gotten so bad that rarely do you ever hear anyone saying “Merry Christmas” anymore.  If you don’t celebrate Christmas and it bothers you to even hear the words “Merry Christmas”, maybe it’s you that needs to make the adjustment seeing that the overwhelming majority of people in the United States do, in fact, celebrate Christmas.  For the people who say their rights are being violated . . . which right is that?  Can someone please spell out for me which one of the Bill of Rights, or which Amendment, provides that vocal declaration of a holiday is not allowable under the law?

With so many young Americans laying their lives on the lines every minute of every day in the middle east, gas prices going through the roof and simply trying to make a living often being a check-to-check existence every month of every year, do we really need to get worked up over things people say?  More to the point, have we lost all ability to separate the roll-off-your-back, roll your eyes comments from the truly hurtful ones?  I think we have.  And I think there’s an awful lot of people out there in need of sensitivity training . . . that is to say, training folks to be a whole lot less sensitive.

Merry Christmas!