Being offended and other ramblings

There are many things that offend me.

The insinuation (or outright statement) that women cannot choose what is best for them and their families.

The blatant disrespect for the office of the President of the United States.

The blatant racism that has come completely out of the shadows and is now accepted in mainstream society since President Obama took office.

The knowledge that too many of our elected officials (and our non-elected ones!) are there for the power trip and not attempting to provide the best support for their constituency.

The idea that a presidential primary race could have gone on in the manner which we've seen the Republican primary this past year.

The knowledge that the rest of the world thinks we are backwards, uncaring, assholes here in the states.

Someone else attempting to force their religion on me.

Calling anyone you don't like or agree with, a Nazi.

Nazi jokes.

Let me reiterate.

Calling anyone you don't like or agree with, a Nazi.

Nazi jokes.

I've already discussed how angry I get with the media for allowing politicians and spokespersons to call people Nazis, compare them to Hitler, and generally undermine the importance of the Holocaust.

Sidenote
I admit to being an education snob (hello, Rick Santorum!). I can't understand why grammar isn't important to learn anymore, and while on the one hand, I blame spellcheck, on the other hand, the lack of resources and commitment to funding our education system at all levels makes me furious. There are so many people out there who simply don't know how to spell and simply do not know how to write effectively. I take blogging off the table, unless you blog for a media outlet, in which case all the rules apply. If you blog for your own pleasure (as I do) then you should still know how to spell, for crying out loud. If you ever need to write a letter, or a job application, or a resume, or an email, or a paper you need to know how to spell. Spellcheck only looks for words that don't exist in the dictionary. It doesn't look for proper usage.
End sidenote

So... back to my original topic. There are a lot of posts, graphics, etc on social media making fun of those who can't manage to understand the difference between homonyms. The most common one that I see is the "there, their, they're" comparison. A huge pet peeve of mine, to be sure.

Yesterday, which was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, a graphic seemed to be getting a lot of "airtime". It's an adorable picure of Charlie Brown and Snoopy (my personal fave) and the text reads: "When comforting a grammar Nazi. I always say softly, 'there, their, they're'."

First of all, please note the grammatical error above. If you are going to make fun of people for incorrect grammar usage, perhaps you should ensure that your grammar is correct when you make fun of them.


Another sidenote
I couldn't find the above image at first in my Facebook or my Twitter stream, so I Googled "Grammar Nazi" and looked at the images in order to find it. Apparently, this is a totally amusing way to pass the time for some folks, because here is page 1 of image results:

Click the image to see it all...

End sidenote

I think it's obvious how I feel about using the term Nazi for anything other than to refer directly to the Nazi party in Germany or the neo-Nazis or anything that is specific in nature and directly references the actions of actual Nazis.

So yesterday, I posted this on Facebook:

While I love the "there, they're, their" sentiment in the grammar cartoon making the rounds on FB & twitter today, I think circulating it on Yom Hashoah is a tad offputting. We have Soup Nazis, Grammar Nazis, etc. Everything perceived strict, uptight, and punitive is nicknamed "[fill in the blank] Nazi". It totally diminishes the atrocities committed and the importance of the Holocaust. Just my opinion....

I posted the equivalent on Twitter, of course in spurts of 140 characters.

I got some backlash from that. Apparently, being sensitive to irrelevant and irreverent Nazi comparisons on Holocaust Remembrance Day is surprising to some. I had a few people (all on twitter) tell me that I was too sensitive, that they couldn't believe that would offend me, that I should "get a life" (you know - like all those murdered Jews and their families should get a life). Not one of those people was Jewish. I know, because I asked. They all self-identified for me as Christians. Perhaps it takes being raised in a Jewish household during the tail end of the first post-war generation. But the idea that anything is a "Nazi" simply because it is strict, militant, punitive, or otherwise unyielding is abhorrent to me. It completely diminishes the importance of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed in the name of the Nazi party and in particular, Hitler.

I was in charge of the email program at my company when all the relevant legislation was passed, specifically CAN-SPAM. It was my responsibility to ensure that all outgoing emails complied with CAN-SPAM and any other relevant legislation, as well as email best practices. Because I frequently had to make changes, or deny an outgoing email, I was gifted with the moniker, "Email Nazi." I can already see you nodding. You know where I'm going here, don't you? Yes, me. The token Jew. I was named the "Email Nazi." And the sad part is that nobody even understood that there might be any sort of discomfort generated by that.

We are 70 years past WW2 (60 at the time), and so many of these kids I work with really have no sense of WW2, or the Holocaust. If they know about it at all, it's because it was a war their great-grandparents fought in, or it was one of those wars they learned a little about waaaay back in high school (all of 5 or 6 years prior at the time). I grew up learning about it. I grew up hearing about it. In temple. At religious school. In my home. My grandfather was in the Army during WW2. My husband's grandfather was in the army during WW2. My parents were in elementary school, and once what happened over there became widely known following the war, it immediately became a topic of importance. I can't count the number of folks I know who lost relatives to the Nazis. And we aren't talking about great-anythings here. We are talking about parents and grandparents. Siblings. Cousins. Friends. To this day, my mother dislikes anything German. It's not likely that kind of passion or sentiment is present in so many of my coworker's homes.

So I complained. As a Jew. And as a human being. Please. Do not call me a Nazi. In any sort of way. I know that my coworkers meant it to mean that I was strict about the rules. Then they should say, "Damn, Lori's really strict about the rules." Don't say, "The Email Nazi has spoken."

Anyway, I complained. And got the expected response. First: "You're Jewish? Wow." (relevance?) Second: "I had no idea you'd be offended. It's all in good fun."

First: does it matter that I'm Jewish? I'm not some museum piece to be looked at, pointed at, and studied as a rare specimen.
Second: I really don't care if it's meant as a joke. It may be good fun to you, but it sure isn't to me.

The desensitizing of our society to the atrocities committed during WW2 is a source of major concern to me, and it should be to all Americans. We have politicians comparing one another to Hitler. They casually compare things like mandating that birth control be a covered expense in insurance policies to Nazi Germany. Mind you, nowhere does the policy mandate that women be PUT on birth control. It simply states that if a woman WANTS birth control, then it should be a covered expense.

To compare that to Nazi Germany, where Jews (and blacks, and homosexuals, etc) were systematically pulled from their homes, hunted down, and murdered by gassing, by automatic weapon fire, by biological weapons, by medical experimentation, by starvation, with the intent to rid the earth of them is, yes, offensive.  To compare our President to the mastermind behind all of the above is yes, offensive. To call someone who enforces the rules a Nazi is, yes, offensive.

To not teach WHY this is offensive in schools is, to me, also offensive. The information age is a wonderful thing. However, we get so desensitized to atrocities being committed around the world (such as in Sudan, Rwanda, and other nations); we get so desensitized to outrageous rhetoric, that it barely registers. And frankly, it's exhausting to hear the bad news all the time.

We are well on the path to repeating mistakes of almost a century ago. Because we don't remember. We don't teach about it. We don't emphasize its offensiveness and enormity and world impact or importance.

What we are doing? We're making it completely acceptable for that desensitization to happen, and therefore tacitly acknowledging and condoning its acceptability.

Both NCLB and the new Common Core standards for schools have 2 areas of emphasis: English/Language Arts and Math. Where is the History? By not including history as a core subject in school, we grow a generation of adults who believe that Nazism is acceptable, that Nazi jokes are funny, that the Holocaust never happened. We get a generation of politicians who have no concept of history - either American or global, distort it, and don't believe in its importance. We get presidential candidates who tell America that to be educated is to be a snob. Compared to a global community that DOES remember? That IS educated? We seem like irrelevant, uneducated, incompetent buffoons. When our President is obviously well educated, he is labeled by the media as "too scholarly", and therefore alienates voters. When did it become en vogue to be fricken stupid? Ahhhh yes. I remember.

I'm disappointed in our government (at both the state & federal level) for the decision to deemphasize history in the curriculum. And scared at the path our country is taking in accepting that history is not important for our children to learn.

So yes. I'm offended by Nazi jokes.

Just. Stop.