Robinson takes offense

Eugene Robinson has, to no one's surprise, a rather annoying take on the Bennet abortion comment:

I know what a real racist is like, and Bennett certainly doesn't fit the description. But that's what's so troubling about his race-specific "thought experiment" -- that such a smart, well-meaning opinion maker would so casually say something that translates, to African American ears, as "blacks are criminals."

Essentially, he's suggesting that it doesn't matter what Bennet said, it only matters what people (and while he specifically refers to African Americans, it could really encompass any minority or interest group) choose to hear. Thus Bennet, and - one assumes - any other political commentator, ought to avoid saying what they mean not because it's wrong, but because some subset of the population might choose to interpret it as offensive.

This is the sort of anti-free speech garbage that the left has been preaching for decades now, and it's just as awful as ever. Bennet's comment, by Robinson's own admission, wasn't racist, but Robinson doesn't care because of the perception by some that it might have been motivated by racist sentiment. In the age of South Park and The Aristocrats, one would've thought we were beyond this culture of entitled offense, but the PC movement, albeit in stunted form, lives on.

UPDATE: Over at Tech Central Station, Robert McHenry traces the culture of victimhood back to (where else) schoolyard bullies.