There is an interesting controversy out of Winooski, Vermont over a sign for Sneakers diner. As part of a city program, Sneakers helped beautify its street with flower beds and in return was allowed to put up a sign. The diner featured its favorite dish with a sign that read: “Yield For Sneakers Bacon.” However, a Muslim woman who was also a vegan objected that a sign with the word bacon was offensive to her due to her religion’s ban on eating pork products. The diner responded by immediately taking down the sign and personally apologizing to the woman. That accommodation has led to a backlash from others who feel that the diner is yielding to ultra-sensitive individuals and encouraging such demands from others who may be offended by any number of food references and dishes.
The woman who described herself as “a vegan and a member of a Muslim household” made a complaint that called the sign offensive and that led owner Sneakers owner Marc Dysinger to take the corrective action.
It is not clear if the objection was motivated by the woman being a vegan or a Muslim. Regardless of whether this objection was from the perspective of a Muslim or a vegan or a Muslim vegan, there remains the question of whether there can be too much accommodation of such views. While tolerance is greatly (and correctly) valued in our society, there is a countervailing concern over a type of self-censorship where words and signs are increasingly eliminated to satisfy every sensitive group or individual. On a large scale, the Redskins debate has focused on this issue when a board ruled that it did not matter if a small group found a name offensive to be stripped of its trademark protections. The question is whether, despite our desire to protect values of pluralism and tolerance, we also have to protect pluralism in free speech and to resist pressure for common denominators in messages that remove every term or phrase deemed offensive to someone. There is a tendency in a tolerant society to say simply “well, what is the problem? If something hurts someone’s feelings, just change it.” However, in our world of mass communications and messaging, most messages could be deemed to have offensive elements. It requires judgment and certainly creates the danger that you will be viewed as intolerant. However, a reference to bacon — even “yielding” to bacon — would seem to all into a category of unoffensive speech by any objective standard.
This is obviously just a single small sign of a small diner in a small town. However, it is an interesting context to explore the limits of accommodation in speech and the dangers that it presents to the free exchange of ideas, tastes, and viewpoints. We have seen a comprehensive crackdown on the West on free speech under some laws combating hate speech, discriminatory speech, and even disruptive speech. While the first amendment only deals with government action, we have to be concerned about the chilling effect of private action over speech. For example, we have discussed the controversy involving Yale University Press. 
In a shocking decision, Yale University Press published Jytte Klausen’s “The Cartoons That Shook the World” (on the cartoons that led to riots and over 200 killed in protests worldwide). However, Yale removed the the 12 cartoons from the book so not to insult Muslims. Thus, you could read the book but not actually see the cartoons themselves. It was a decision by Yale University Press that is still discussed as anti-intellectual and cowardly in academic circles.
It is unclear how this person in Vermont goes through life surrounded by pictures of pork, including advertisements. The appearance left by these stories is someone who sees bacon in a sign that then stews (presumably vegan stew) for hours and days over the reference. A better lesson for her might have been for the owner to politely say that the sign was not meant to insult her but that she should consider whether she is overly sensitive as a person living in a pluralistic society with many different views and tastes. Tolerance includes the ability to walk through society and understand that you will be exposed to the expression of many things that you might not like. However, we protect your right to live your life as you choose. That does not grant the additional expectation that others will conform to your preferences in their own speech or expressions. It is hard to say that the diner should not have taken down the sign since it seemed to care little about the content of the sign. Yet, the action reinforces a view that businesses and people should yield to such objections regardless of their objective merit.
We cannot have a society where terms, words, and expressions are banished by any objection of any group. That course will drain away the vitality, diversity, and spontaneity of speech in our society. It requires not an act of intolerance but a commitment that there must be tolerance of speech and images in a pluralistic society.
What do you think?
Source: WPTZ
I just don’t get it. If you don’t eat bacon then don’t eat it. That doesn’t mean I can’t eat it. This whole thing of “I don’t eat bacon and so I am offended by seeing the word bacon” is simply absurd. What right does this silly woman have to prevent the store from advertising its bacon?
Nick, Just watch Jon Stewart or Colbert report. They have no problem skewering anyone, even at times, gasp, liberals. (:
As for the dign. If they were force feeding her bacon, she has a right to say Stop. This was idiotic and the diner owner in my opinion was absolutely mistaken in giving in to her.
Paul, you don’t? OK here it goes again, yum me like bacon.
Annie – it was the WordPress part of your response, that I did not get.
The usual PC folks must have not read this post yet. Or, they have and realize it’s a loser.
This is how it starts, folks… A little chink here, a little chink there. Soon we’ll all be on our knees, five times a day… Not me, I’d rather loose my head, than bow down………..
Karen, The irony is PC is the most intolerant and obviously unconstitutional movement in this country.
Mel:
I get what you’re saying, that there are a few words we absolutely must not say, including the “N” word. The key is, “a few.”
Here is the definition of PC:
“the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.”
The operate phrase is “to extremes.” Politically correct took simple politeness and made it completely intolerant.
There really only should be a few terms that are unacceptable, not an enormous laundry list. I recall a recent instance where they tried to make the word “Obamacare” derogatory in a racial sense for Obama.
What is more interesting is how this woman denigrates her religion. How can non-muslims take this mumbo jumbo seriously when the word ‘bacon’ on a sign advertising a restaurant is grounds for action? This attitude is part and parcel with the extremism that is terrorizing the world. I this woman were in control, imagine what our society would be like.
There is a point where intelligence has to reign over non sensical perceptions of the world and how it should be. The West is evolving out of the quagmire that was its religious world. If Islam wants to root about in its own muck and mire, so be it. However, not in the supposedly more enlightened countries.
The restaurant owner does not represent America.
Why did she single out this sign? Why not complain about every single advertisement that references pork? Or, perhaps she does, and this is the only company that responded to her demands.
It is not tolerance, but rather intolerance, when we try to force everyone around us to change to accommodate our personal views or beliefs.
The PC Police are universally intolerant, reminding me of Fahrenheit 451.
Liberal guilt is a good thing.
Reblogged this on Reality Check and commented:
Ultra Sensitivity… Kill them all with Bacon.
Gulag? Work camp? The salt mines? Where should the Progs be gotten rid of to? Realistically what should be done with the Progs?
American Patriot – if we kill the current ones with bacon, we just have to be sure not to allow any new ones.
Since you sent this to my WordPress reply thingie Paul, I will say I love bacon, it’s very Paleo. I hope I haven’t offended any vegetarians or protein avoiders.
Annie – I do not understand your reply to me.
Nick:
“Hmmm… a man’s gotta stir…”
https://www.google.com/search?q=pot+stirring&client=firefox-a&hs=P8d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=iZj8U-SGHtDJsQSuhoHABw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1536&bih=707
Progressives are going to ruin this country
Get rid of the Progs – I think Progressives have already ruined this country. All we can do now is mitigate the damages.
I am mortally offended by Planned Parenthood. Do you think they would take down their sign over my long-held views that abortion is murder?
This is a great morning for libertarians @ the Turley blog. “I love the smell of libertarianism in the morning, it smells like…victory.”
Steve, Part of PC is the removal of humor. We are NEVER to laugh @ someone because it might hurt their feelings. You see, a tenet of PC is everyone has a right to never be laughed @ or scorned. Unless they’re conservative or fat. If they’re a fat, white, male, conservative, well you can do or say anything you wish. Those 4 demographics, white, male, fat and conservative are not protected classes.
There seems to me to be a pretty well-defined line between insulting ethnic, gender, or religious groups themselves–as the Redskins brand clearly does–and just referencing things that groups may find offensive. Are we to remove all public references to alcohol and caffeine because the LDS proscribes them? Representational art of living beings because it runs counter to Islamic teachings?
I am wary, however, of decrying the concept of political correctness–because one person’s “PC” is another’s “deeply offensive.” You could, after all, say that the n-word is “not PC.” And sneering at the concept of political correctness is a favorite tactic of the privileged.
Amazes me how many people have become mortally offended when they realized that society wouldn’t laugh at them.
I suspect that the old fashioned laugh response kept some people from inflicting their biases on the rest of the world.
PC is pernicious and must be stopped by any means necessary. We see so many people who love to play victim and people jump through hoops. We got a contingent of that ilk here, and they’ll be here soon!