Frivolous suits send wrong message

As an indirect result of my current job, I’ve been reading a lot more news than usual. As a direct result of all of this news reading, I’ve become increasingly aware of the over-sensitivity and overall frivolity of people in general.

It was sometime last week that I came across what seemed like the 100th headline that made me think, “We’re becoming a nation of [wusses]!” It’s worth noting that “wusses” was not the word that was originally in that thought, but the word that readily came to mind at that time is considered impolite in most company.

And it is here that I believe it is prudent to note that there’s nothing wrong with a little self-censorship for the sake of professionalism or propriety (as I have just demonstrated), but there is such a thing as going too far—one shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells every moment of their life for fear of offending someone. That said, anyone who is easily offended should either stop reading now or get over it PDQ.

A good place to start as far as my examples of over-sensitivity and just flat-out ridiculousness is a story I read about a woman who claimed that Southwest Airlines, after telling her that she needed to purchase a second seat under their “customer of size” policy, had discriminated against her, get this, because of her race.

Now I’m not saying that cases of racial discrimination don’t exist in this world, but last time I checked, “obese” was not a race. (If someone has a copy of the most recent U.S. Census form and can correct me on this, please do.) And if that weren’t enough, after her lawsuit went to trial in front of a jury and the jury determined that she had not been discriminated against, she claimed that she had been disadvantaged because the jury was all-white.

For one, it’s people like this woman who make it difficult for people who have truly been wronged to be taken seriously. For another, I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with asking an airline customer who physically takes up more than one seat to pay for two tickets. Such an individual is easily twice the weight of an average passenger and thus requires the same amount of fuel as two average passengers to transport. In these days of high fuel costs and airline financial troubles, to require a “customer of size,” as Southwest calls them, to pay for the extra resources they use makes sense.

Another relevant example of people taking themselves too seriously falls under the umbrella of “religious discrimination” and “cultural insensitivity.” Recent case in point: the Mohammed cartoon controversy. This one has been taken to such an extreme that even I don’t want to touch this one—people are getting blown up over it, and I value my bodily coherence. If you don’t know what’s going on, Google it.

To be fair though, extremist Muslims are not the only ones getting their metaphorical panties in a wad over religion. Conservative Christians want God in the schools; atheists want God out. I think everyone should just keep their gods (or lack thereof) to themselves and quit bothering the other kids. On a side note, I’m of the firm belief that a little blasphemy is good for everyone, and zealots of any religious or anti-religious movement need to get over themselves.

Speaking of kids, the little ones aren’t getting completely left out in this tirade of political correctness. The story that I mentioned at the beginning of this pontification is actually an editorial by Ned Crabb that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Crabb and I are very much on the same page, so to speak.

He referenced a story about a six-year-old boy who was suspended from school for sexual harassment because he put his fingers inside the waistband of a female classmate’s pants. Allow me to point out the same obvious thing that everyone else who has talked about this story has already pointed out: six-year-olds don’t know what sexual harassment is!

Most of them don’t even have a working knowledge of what sex is; the most any of them probably know of “where babies come from” is that they are from Mommy’s tummy.

But back to my buddy Ned. I don’t know the guy, but I would guess that he’s got a few years on me. Regardless, he recounts some of the same schoolyard antics as I do—the days where the teacher would tell students to “keep their hands to themselves” and make them stay in from recess or do lines if they didn’t—none of this sexual harassment business. In my day (get off my lawn…damn kids…), girls stole kisses from cute boys, boys chased cute girls on the playground (and vice-versa), and no girl dared wear a skirt on Friday because Friday was “flip-up day.” Most of the time, this kind of behavior didn’t even result in disciplinary action—it was chalked up to “boys will be boys and girls will be girls” and left at that, so long as no one actually got hurt.

What are adults teaching kids these days with this sort of litigious behavior? That if someone bothers you or hurts your feelings or doesn’t let you have your way, you can throw a legal temper tantrum and get whatever you want? I don’t think that’s too great of a message to be sending. After all, when is the last time that it was acceptable for a kid to throw a tantrum in the cereal aisle just because their mom or dad said they couldn’t have Cocoa Puffs? Or for that matter, when’s the last time it was a good idea for a parent to give in to that sort of behavior? That’s what I thought.

Offended yet? Good. Now get over it.