Better yet, have you offended?
Remember Piss Christ, the object d’ art of a crucifix dipped in a jar of urine 35 years ago? How the rubes and Babbits howled! The chattering classes scolded: Isn’t art supposed to discomfit the comfortable? Except that “artist” used taxpayer money to finance his offensive speech. By contrast, the Stockholm firebug burned his own Koran with his own matches, something Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will never appreciate.
Werkes Rule #218: You want to challenge The Establishment? Don’t take their money!

One-third of students in the University of Wisconsin system “feel strongly” that offensive speakers should not be allowed to speak on campus. That metric moves to an alarming 43% when confined to UW-Madison. (Survey result here.) Which is why conservatives avoid UW-Madison. We remember when Tommy Thompson was shouted down on that campus. Tommy Thompson!
That’s the problem with free speech today. Everyone is an Erdogan. No soup for you! No NATO for the Swedes! America has reached the stage where it’s not enough to disagree. One must claim moral offense!
Students at Oxford University in the UK claim “a right not to be offended. (More here.) By contrast, Massachusetts Institute of Technology resolved to defend even speech some find “offensive or injurious.”(More here.)
Conservatives need not apply
“States need to use the power of the purse to reform higher education,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley advises.
Despite years of complaints over a rising orthodoxy at schools, most universities have reduced conservative and libertarian faculty to rare oddities. Some schools have virtually no Republican faculty. Faculty have created political echo-chambers that advance their own views while excluding alternative voices. As a result, polls show a high number of students are fearful about sharing their views in classes.
— Jonathan Turley
Free speech on campus
According to Foundation for Individual Rights and Freedom:
Speech is freest in these universities:
1. University of Chicago
2. Kansas State
3. Purdue (run by a former GOP governor)
4. Mississippi State
5. Oklahoma State
Somewhere in the middle:
98. University of Wisconsin
184. Marquette University
Speech is most repressed:
199. Skidmore
200. Georgetown
201. Rensselaer Polytechnic
202. Penn
203. Columbia
The Left is certain that the governor of Florida is stifling black history, never mind that the State of Florida, by law, requires teaching slavery. But using tax dollars to advocate FOR reparations and FOR “Black Queer Studies” to captive high school students — these are not college students — is to use the Turkish strongman’s methods to enforce a particular ideology.
The College Board has released a serious rewrite of its framework for a new high school advanced placement course in African-American Studies. Critical race theory is out and Condoleeza Rice is in.
— “Ron DeSantis schools the college board.”
You want offensive?
We give you the late, great Norm MacDonald!
Blaska’s Bottom Line: How did that song by Sam Cooke go? “You …of-FEND me!”