While I try to stay clear of politics in regards to my role as an author (I have readers of all different backgrounds and opinions) , I have to comment on this. For the past decade, we have gone down a path in which everything has become offensive, and offending individuals or groups is a greater crime than murder nowadays. Imagine, if you will, a world where every creator was conscious of offending someone. 

Dracula: Stereotypes Slavs, Turks, and Eastern Europe as backward and superstitious.

HP Lovecraft: Many of his works, including “The Call of Cthulu” and “Herbert West the Re-Animator” would never be published due to their disparaging racial remarks. In fact, so many of Lovecraft’s works are racially insensitive, he would be thrown out of the literary world altogether and left to rot in the ash heap of forgotten history. 

In virtually every slasher film, including Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, it is only the pure, virginal type who lives to see another day. All those empowered women, celebrating their freedom to do as they wish, are dispatched with sheer brutality by the maniac (usually a white male). Think I’m joking? Just ask Bret Easton Ellis about the “American Psycho” fallout, and the flood of death threats that were hurled in his direction. 

And while we’re on the subject, Books like American Psycho, Fight Club, Less than Zero, Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, and The Divine Comedy, would have never been written since each one is sure to offend at least one special interest group. 

Imagine cinema without Gone With the Wind, Scarface, The Godfather, or The Deer Hunter. Each one can be criticized for racial or ethnic stereotypes. 

I’m also a huge pro-wrestling fan. Can you imagine how boring Hulkamania would have been if the Hulkster didn’t have Ugandan head hunters, Angry Russians, or giant, overweight behemoths to contend with? 

And comedy! Do you think Andrew Dice Clay could have ever launched his career today?

The fact is, that anything is going to offend someone, and believe it or not, our Constitution protects our right to be offensive.