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A Lament for the Frito Bandito


I am fed up with political correctness. It has never been a good thing and it never will be a good thing. I want to shake people who are willing to throw away the hard won freedoms we have in the United States because they think that they have a right to go through life without being offended. I have news for you. Going through life without being offended isn't one of your inalienable rights. For that matter your happiness isn't an inalienable right, the pursuit of happiness is. There is a difference. People died to give you the freedom to be different from me. The whole point was to get away from intolerance and you're trying to breed it back in! Diversity tolerance does not equate with the right to go through your life unoffended.

I have been building up to this rant since I was a kid and the Frito-Lay company took the Frito Bandito away. Why? Because some Chicano or LaRaza political activists thought that the character had a negative social impact for Latinos and Hispanics. I have news for the political activists. I was totally willing to go without table grapes and lettuce to support your seemingly more legitimate causes. Your idiotic decision to get San Francisco television and radio stations to boycott the Frito Bandito was just that, idiotic. Sure, it was effective. You got rid of him- but then I associated the inability to think clearly with you. The causes you told me were important became suspect. Nice trade off. I never associated the Bandito with the Hispanic community any more than my friends associated my Italian heritage with the guy who was in the Alka Seltzer commercials saying "At'sa spicey meat-a-ball!"

Here's the thing that scares me; we (our society) haven't stopped trying to eliminate being offended ever since. Instead of teaching our kids to value human beings because of their humanity and thus to appreciate the differences between our various ethnicities, we have widened the chasm between us. We're not fixing the real problem; we're trying to legislate opinions instead. It's ludicrous.

Romans 12:1-2
1 I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, {which is} your spiritual service of worship.
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
(NAS)
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