In this week’s episode of the podcast, I made a comment which offended one of our listeners. She emailed us anonymously and stated she would be unsubscribing from our podcast.
After further consideration over the weekend, I decided that I was wrong, not in my initial comments to which she chose to be so offended by, but in the rendering of my apology. Why? Because I realized that I do not feel sorry for my comments. While I do feel sorry that this person is so bent out of shape over what was a harmless joking comment, with absolutely no ill will whatsoever, I am not sorry for my own actions, and therefore, I cannot apologize for them with any degree of sincerity.
After having a (rather in-depth and heated) discussion with my wife, who argues that anyone has the right to be offended at anything, I decided this post needed changing.
Can anyone take offense at anything? Yes. But that doesn’t mean they should do so. I realized that if I were to take the attitude that anything I say might be offensive, I would spend the rest of my life never saying anything, or apologizing for everything I said.
I refuse to live my life like that.
So, to the anonymous person who chose to call me an a**hole and unsubscribe from our podcast because I dared quote someone else in jest, referring to the Ubuntu Netbook Edition as “girly mode,” I now say “grow up!” If you are the type of person who goes around taking offense at every little thing, trying to turn what is, at worst, insensitivity, into bigotry and sexism, then by all means carry on. Just don’t do it around me because I find your deliberate attack on me and my co-host, who was completely innocent in the affair, in reaction to my comments, to be offensive – far more so than my comment ever was.
The personal blog of Peter Nikolaidis