Questionable
I’m at TAM 7 right now and can’t post, so I’ve scheduled a few amusing pictures to run as cheap filler. I had reservations about running this one. Is it too offensive? Or just slightly so? Should I pull it down when I get back? How offensive is too offensive? Who gets to decide?
July 11th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I consider it funny. My kids love apple juice and chug the stuff so I can relate. I vote for leaving it up! I hope you enjoy TAM.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Who cares if anyone is offended by that? Leave it up. The more people get offended, the more us godless heathen bloggers have to write about.
I didn’t actually get it at first. Then I thought it was funny. That poor kid though. The adult that dressed him up like that just for a play on words joke should be ashamed (and proud too, because it is damned funny).
July 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Wow. That really is one incredibly offensive picture. But I’m not going to advocate that you take it down or threaten to leave the site in a huff. Instead I’ll reserve my deep disgust for the person who thought it would be funny to dress up a child as Hitler and for the person who created the image. Probably, but not necessarily, the same person.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
People might bitch and moan about this picture (not me, though), but they’ll never utter one word of protest when kids are dolled up as their parents’ favorite Bible character. Not to diminish the atrocities of Nazi Germany, but the Bible and its sordid cast of characters has been used to justify horrors of all types, including the Holocaust, I might add.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:17 am
The little kid dressed up as Hitler is a little weird.
But it’s a funny pun, dammit! That’s clever!
July 12th, 2009 at 4:09 am
It’s offensive, to be sure, but also rather hilarious. It’s certainly a clever pun.
Vis a vis removing the picture, that’s obviously your choice, but self-censorship is censorship nonetheless and the idea of censoring humour because it offends some people disturbs me.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Me too. As offensive as I think the picture is, I fully and completely support Ron’s right to publish it.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
You can call it self-censorship, or you can call it an editorial decision. I’m always making decisions on whether something is on-topic enough to be relevant. If something is somewhat offensive and only somewhat on-topic, I usually won’t run it. I like to keep the blog’s content fairly well focussed most of the time. I also don’t like to be distracted by a lot of pissing and moaning about something that’s only peripherally related to what I’m really doing here.
Take this comic for example. I had no idea when I published it that it would be controversial. It got StumbledUpon, so it got a ton of traffic from people who had never been here before and would never return. For some stupid reason, most of them couldn’t see the humor in it, and somehow thought I was advocating violence against Scientologists.
In the case of the image above, I was going to be gone for a few days. I had nightmare visions of returning and seeing that it had been StumbledUpon, and I was getting 50,000 hits a day from chronic offendees.
I find the above picture rather offensive myself, which is the main reason I resisted publishing it. The caption isn’t nearly as offensive as the thought that there are parents out there who think it’s hilarious to dress their little kids up as Hitler.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:45 am
“Chronic offendees” — I love it!! And it’s not in urbandictionary. Ron, you need to submit that. Gogogo!
July 13th, 2009 at 7:19 am
PL:
You’re welcome to do it. I can’t think of any generic examples, and I can’t come up with 5 synonyms and antonyms. If you think the term has merit, I’m satisfied just knowing I coined it.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
really, offensive? it sucks to be that kid and i never liked hallows eve anyway, but its not like its hurting anyone. also it was funny the first time for me, but I’ve seen this too many times.