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
Darren, Some of the faux feminists who troll here are perpetually offended. Hell, this comment probably gives their tender hearts the vapors. Blanche DuBois feminists.
It never fails when there is a post that shows the idiocy of the left the cultists start talking about other stuff. Bacon, the First Amendment, pernicious PC. Discuss. Guns are the 2nd Amendment, the one liberals hate.
Yep, Annie, “gun nuttery” indeed. (“Investigators say he (the “instructor”) was shot with an automatic Uzi” by a 9-yr-old girl)
anon,
I just read about that too. What absolute idiocy, gun nuttery gone bad.
Bringing it back around to crazy signs. Here’s one:
http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/23/15-foot-parking-rules-signs-spotted-in-c
Pick a crazy thread, any thread… This one’s as good as any. (Great pic, BTW, Annie. Fitting.)
“Charles Vacca, Shooting Instructor, Fatally Shot By 9-Year-Old Student”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/charles-vacca-shooting-instructor-dies-9-year-old_n_5717603.html
anon – anyone who would give a 9 year old an automatic or semi-automatic weapon without holding it with her when she first fired it, deserves to be shot. Sorry he died. Little girl must be devastated and it really is not her fault.
http://shop.fgpizza.com/media/Pot-stirrer-fg-pizza.png
Leej, Grothman is a real tool an a laughingstock in Wisconsin.
It is edifying to read the threads and see which ones are civil and intelligent like this one and which ones are littered w/ vapid comments, cartoons, etc.
leej, I know better than to try and get your mind right. It’s all about the prisms from which you see the world. I see the idiocy on both sides.
Signs mean different things to different people.
Do the Constitution and original intent provide for religious freedom regarding protestant belief as separate from the Roman Catholic Church, atheism and deism, or freedom of all religions globally including Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, etc. religions? Did the Founders address the globe or “themselves and our posterity?” Did the Founders establish a theocracy? Did they intend for religion and law to mix?
If religion has any discernable relationship to reality, something with which physicists would disagree, can all religions be correct and veracious? Does not the fact that multiple, competing religions exist prove they are false and illegitimate? Marx is popularly credited with saying that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” He doesn’t even give religion the credit of being mysticism.
Don’t the founding documents confine us to “ourselves and our posterity.” If this Muslim enjoyed the religion and culture of her country of origin so much, why doesn’t she go home; why did she ever leave; just to b—-??? This Muslim should be deported for insurrection, conspiring and inciting to replace the government with a theocracy.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
Professor Turley wrote: “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.”
Very well said! I love that last sentence, because if Sneakers diner had refused to remove its sign, it would have been labeled intolerant.
In my view the restaurant should have just ignored her. How does this woman go about life without complaining about everything that is outside her narrow world or non-offense? Does she complain when a newspaper has an ad from Safeway with a sale on ham and bacon? I guess there is quite a difference between Vermont and its neighbor New Hampshire.
Some people use the term “I was offended so it must change” as if not being offended was a civil right, which it is not. I tire of its usage to attack what is disagreed with.
Darren – I wonder how well her husband responds to her criticisms. How often does he change his behavior because she is offended?
Squeeky,
The poem was just delightful.
Paul,
You’re a bit off on the name. It wasn’t the “Women’s Temperance League”; it was called the “Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”
Agreed on the connections with the suffragette movement though.
fiver – the way Carrie Nation was busting up those bars was far from Christian. 🙂
Jewish people are not allowed to eat pork. I’ve never heard a complaint. If looking at the word is offensive, then take off the veils, which offend me. I’m growing very suspicious and would like to know if she was born here or moved here? I’m 72 and don’t recall women with veils being around until the last decade. She lives in a free country; we don’t tell people they can’t use a proper word. I hope Sneakers puts the sign back up. Or is he afraid?
The sign: YIELD for BACON
Makes me think of a police stop…
Max-1 – I thought the sign was clever. Now I think the owner is just a wimp.
thght Id try it again)
Nick, Thanks. ((*_*)) and lets face it it is s much easier to make fun of repubs with some of the idiocy we have seen coming from them. (R-Minn.), Steve Stockman (R-Texas), and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) (and Bachmann) have given voice to some bizarre and twisted ideas in recent years, but theyre not running again. Instead we get this guy: Glenn Grothman
Broun an MD refuses to let go of his conviction, biblically inspired, that the earth is only 6000 years old
but this guy holds even more odd beliefs, or at least more and odd beliefs)
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/wisconsin-gop-house-candidate-glenn-grothman-s-10-most-outrageous-moments
1. Claims women earn less because “money is more important for men.”
When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed the states equal pay law, Grothman explained pay disparties by saying, “You could argue that money is more important for men. I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”
2. Advocates for seven-day work weeks.
This year, Grothman has pushed to undo a state law that requires businesses to give their employees at least one day off a week. Grothman also backed efforts to block paid sick leave requirements and require state employees to work on Martin Luther King Day. In 2011, when protesters were occupying the state capitol in protest of Gov. Walkers’ union-busting laws, Grothman called the protesters “a bunch slobs” and “college students having a fun party.”
3. Worries gays are using sex-ed classes for recruitment.
After Wisconsin passed a comprehensive sex education bill in 2010 in an effort to combat a growing rate of STIs among teenagers, Grothman told a reporter that the sex ed classes would be used to recruit kids into homosexuality.
“Did people even know what homosexuality was in high school in 1975?” he asked. “I don’t remember any discussion about that at the time. There were a few guys who would make fun of a few effeminate boys, but that’s a different thing than homosexuality…Homosexuality was not on anybody’s radar. And that’s a good thing.”
He added: “Why sit down with 7th graders and say to some you will be heterosexual, some homosexual? Part of that agenda which is left unsaid is that some of those who throw it out as an option would like it if more kids became homosexuals.”
4. Warns of a “war” on white men.
In a 2010 speech to a Tea Party rally warned, “in a lot of ways, I’m afraid our country is in the process of committing suicide” through welfare, diversity, and a “war on men.” In particular, he was upset about businesses making an effort to hire “gals”: “In this country, can we continue to exist if we have a government that is actively discouraging businesses from hiring men? Our country is not going to survive if we continue this war on men.” In a 2009 press release on diversity programs at the University of Wisconsin, he asked, “Does the university hate white men?”
5. Wants to classify single parenthood as child abuse.
In 2012, Grothman introduced a bill that would have required state agencies to list single parenthood as a contributing factor to child abuse. He later claimed that single mothers scheme to have children out of wedlock and are “trained” to say that their pregnancies are unintended. He wrote in a newsletter the same year that “the Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.”
6. Thinks low-income people are fleecing taxpayers.
In the same newsletter, Grothman writes that he “frequently” hears store clerks say that “the people on food stamps eat more generously than people not on food stamps…some may say this is harsh, but we cannot continue to have the single mom buy food that the married clerk at the food store could not afford.”
He also reported complaints that “sometimes apartments available with Section 8 vouchers are superior to apartments people pay for themselves as well as boyfriends illegally staying in these apartments.”
7. Champions voter suppression.
Grothman was the chief sponsor of a bill to limit early voting and prohibit weekend voting in Wisconsin, a direct assault on turnout efforts in Democratic-leaning districts. Grothman also proposed a measure to weaken campaign finance reporting requirements and another to make it more difficult for the elderly to seek assistance in voting, and even tried to end same-day voter registration in the state, which in 2012 had the nation’s second-highest turnout rate.
Last year, Grothman co-sponsored a bill that would weaken local courts that had ruled against voter suppression measures. He supported a state voter ID law in 2012, which he admitted he thought would help Romney “in a close race” and implied that voters without ID probably didn’t want to vote anyway. After the election, he claimed that President Obama and Sen. Tammy Baldwin both won their elections due to fraud.
8. Opposes water sanitation.
National Journal reports that “in 2011, Grothman sponsored a bill to do away with municipal water disinfection. For context: in 1993, a Cryptosporidium outbreak in the Milwaukee area’s water supply led to the deaths of at least 69 people.”
9. Thinks Planned Parenthood is targeting Asian Americans.
In an interview last year, Grothman called Planned Parenthood “the most racist organization” in the country and suggested that it was “aggressively promoting” sex-selective abortions to Asian Americans. Last year, Grothman backed Planned Parenthood funding cuts that closed four clinics in Wisconsin. This year, he is sponsoring several bills meant to restrict access to abortion.
10. Will not abide by Kwanzaa.
Grothman issued a press release last year declaring that “Almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa — just white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans.”
Leejcarrol, I retrieved your comment at 1:56.
People are far too easily offended, and far too self-centered to realize that what offends them or bothers them may be funny and acceptable to someone else.
A conductor on my train used to walk up and down the train with various props to lighten up a long trip. One of them was an ax as he asked who had a complaint about service. The train being Amtrak of course someone complained and that stopped. It’s a shame because little things can make a day brighter, like seeing a sign saying stop for bacon.
Another thing that has bit the dust as we’ve become a more tolerant society I guess.
Bailers – I would posit that we have become a less tolerant society.