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
oh foo think my comment went to spam
” BACON, BACON, BACON!”
It is so affirming to know that someone is speaking out in solidarity with my pit bulls.
Since the city of Winooski allows people to put up signs for beautifying city streets, other shop owners should do the same, but put up signs for the Bacon restaurant.
I think that if this were done as a publicity stunt, it would have the opposite of the intended effect. I perceive it to be something like this: A weak willed business owner caved to the unreasonable complaint of the woman.
” The diner responded by immediately taking down the sign and personally apologizing to the woman. ”
The bent over backwards for having put her through the horror of displaying a product she does not personally believe in consuming. Perhaps she had never heard of bacon before, and this new found information was literally a monkey wrench in her gears?
“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.”
Rightly, as I feel, it should. The owner should have informed the injured party that it was his right to display said sign, and it was her right not to patronize said establishment. Neither of us are being detained, so we’re free to go.
I’d personally have trouble supporting this establishment after such a display of spineless appeasement.
I think the owner of the restaurant is a candy-ass. I’d have given her some free pork and told her to go stuff it……..sausage, I mean. What is she going to bitch about next……a person walking his/her dog on the sidewalk in front of her house because Muslims think dogs are pure filth and then she would not be able to use the sidewalk afterwards. I’m sick of Muslim crap. American, keep kowtowing to Muslim demands, keep your head in the sand about the growth of Sharia and the Califate and soon you will be looking at your wife through the facial grill of a burka. Won’t that be romantic?
doc – if i lived there, I would stop using that business and I would tell them why. The woman is next going to ask them to take bacon off the menu because the menu offends her. Geez.
Which gets more publicity/exposure? The sign? Or the press coverage of the sign being taken down supposedly because of a Muslim?
It’s doubtful he took it down for business concerns. When you’re that proud of your bacon you’re probably not relying on Muslims (or vegans) for your clientele.
This is typical Vermont. A once conservative stronghold has yielded to a bunch of goat farmers from NYC and Boston, and the likes of Bernie Sanders. Some one once said that if the U.S. was settled from west to east, instead of vice versa, Vermont would still be unexplored. Why would anyone allow one person to dictate signage for their business?
So, if I were to refer to Roger Bacon and his seeming proclivity toward empirical scientific methodologies, would I not only offend those whose religion prohibits eating pork, but also offend those whose religion prohibits empirical science?
@PaulCS
I am nothing but a conduit for the Poetry Gods. Sometimes these things just write themselves. 🙂
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
squeeky – Michelangelo always said the statue was inside the stone. All he did chip away the parts that did not belong. So, you must be enthused by the gods (muses) of poetry. I will say, they seem to be upping their game. 😉
No.
Of course, if it weren’t (voluntarily) taken down, it’s doubtful this would be getting any publicity whatsoever. I’m not sure if this is a great publicity stunt on the owner’s part, or just another manufactured opportunity for the religious right to whine about their feigned victimhood.
Paul, You are tasteless, so it is Squeeky hitting her stride.
fiver, You are conflating issues. This is about PC. Was taking down the bacon sign right?
LOL!!!! You Islamaphobic Mick.
Defend what, Nick?
I don’t believe any religious preferences (hypocritical or not) should be imposed on others. I was just pointing out that this imposition of “correctness” and “moral rightness” is a right wing staple.
I like bacon. So I’m not crazy about those trying to impose their dislikes on me. Those dislikes might come from Jews and Muslims, but that’s not an important distinction in my mind.
I also like science. It works; it’s proven. So I’m not crazy about those trying to force creationism into public schools instead of (or along side of) biology, physics, geology, and archeology (and pretty much every other science), just because it conflicts with their flat world view.
Sure, one woman (in a country of over 300 million) made a personal preference complaint and a sign was voluntarily taken down. That’s nothing. The Religious Right whines about their personal preferences and we get things like Prohibition. That’s serious.
fiver – Prohibition was not from the Religious Right, it was from the Women’s Temperance League. Women got the vote, we got Prohibition.
Well, this story begs for an Irish Poem!
Keeping Ahead???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a guy from Vermont
Making bacon at his restaurant.
It is said that he dreaded
Being beheaded,
Sooo, he does what the Muslims there want.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
squeeky – either you are getting better with your poems or my taste is lowering. 🙂
At least fiver has the balls to defend this. And, being a perfect PCer, he throws “ISLAMAPHOBIC” @ us. PC 101.
A lesson in tolerance would have been taught had Sneakers Bistro left the sign up. Taking it down rewarded intolerance.
leej, Comedians are supposed to be our failsafe line against PC. I do watch both Stewart and Colbert and they do skewer PC. That’s what they are supposed to do. They skewer Dems sometimes, when they’re just so blatant it would be comedic malpractice not to. But, come on, they LOVE to skewer Rep. As you hopefully know by now, I detest the duopoly. So, any skewering of it is pleasing to me. And, your common sense on this issue is one of the reasons I like you.
So now we are going to allow vegans and Mulims to tell us what signs we should or can put up. I say put up a million to them. BACON, BACON, BACON!
The heartlessness of right wingers complaining about “PC” in this economy is astounding – especially as it affects conservatives themselves.
If people enforcing their personal preferences and religious beliefs on others is to be decried, then the result is sure to have a devastating effect on the conservative economy. The effects would cross most all sectarian lines. What other primary purpose could Bill Donahue and the Catholic League possibly serve? What about a Puritan’s inalienable right to whine about at errant boob flashed at the Super Bowl? What would the self-appointed God-cops have to do on a Tuesday besides harass women at health clinics? If Ted Haggard can’t continuously rail against drugs and homosexuality, not only would that cut into his income, but he’d probably end up spending twice as much on meth and gay hookers. Think about his children!
Enforcing personal preferences while hiding behind God’s skirts is part and parcel of Religious Right’s purpose in life and essential to its financial well being. Sheesh. Have some respect and let financial interest outweigh Islamophobia.