Reply #88: I am a civilized person, as you say, QuestionAll, and on two occasions I have "gone off" [View All]

on assholes who were using the "socially secure" arena of a public gathering to express their odious personal beliefs in the same manner as has been described here and in the original post. In both instances it was obvious that they had an agenda and were expressing it publicly for all to hear but they were not-so-cleverly using their best "stage whisper" as cover for their actions.

Being civilized does not mean that one allows hateful things to be said in public knowing full well that the offended person is within earshot, while at the same time PRETENDING that the conversation is A) private or B) not offensive. That is not called being civilized, it is called being complicit.

In both cases, I was not the targeted individual, meaning that the so-called private comments were not directed at me, but rather at another person in the room who was obviously the target. For me to stand silently and politely (civilizedly?) in the face of such obliquely direct condescension would have made me a coward of the highest order and an accomplice to the coward who would not directly address the targeted person but chose to shoot from ambush.

Your kind of "civilized" is the so-called politeness that many of us Southerners have known all of our lives. In reality it is not politeness, courtesy, or even acceptable social intercourse, but rather it is acquiescence in the face of bigotry or intolerable displays of bad manners by persons who are willing to take unfair advantage of others in situations where the ill-mannered feel they have the upper hand. In other words, just plain old-fashioned bullying.