Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for December 17, 2024

How about we test Rat’s “sensitivity” by hitting him with a hammer?

Well, this is much better than yesterday’s rip off of an old joke with 3 bands playing: The Who, Guess Who and Yes. A parody on Who’s on 1st?

I love Pearls, but I didn’t like yesterday’s strip.

It is difficult to watch the news and comment on the news without triggering someone.

The sad reality is that it doesn’t work that way in today’s dominant culture. It’s OK to insult right-wingers and Christians. It’s terrible to say anything that leftists and nones and Muslims choose to find offensive.

How do you give a trigger warning to people to say that you don’t like trigger warnings?

Trigger warnings? I wonder what Roy Rogers’ horse thinks about that.

Rat is as sensitive as an anvil!

Goat is a hippie?

Being mindful does not translate to being responsible for.

‘Freedom of speech’ only applies to what I want to hear; all else is hate speech.

Trigger warnings aren’t a new concept and they’re there to give people with specific sensitivities to things like SA or animal abuse a head’s up if they can’t handle them.

They’re a warning for people that you’re about to show or say something that they might not be able to handle, not a restriction on speech.

Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County) called it offensensitivity.

Get a bat and give goat an attitude adjustment.

They didn’t used to give trigger warnings when they shot Presidential candidates on live TV.

Its too bad that doesn’t work. Left wingers spew the most vile nonsense while claiming they are the party of peace, love, and tolerance.

Please be sensitive to my disrespectfulness

… and respectful of my insensitivity.

Maybe well intentioned but really it has gotten so ridiculous. Humorless folks run amok.

Bidenomics

Green New Deal

Climate Change

Illegal Immigrant (yeah, that’s two)

DEI

CackleCackleCackle

Commie

Etc etc ets

Seems to me that all this bickering amongst ourselves mean our democracy is due for a course correction. A majority of our voters are dissatisfied with too many unanswered issues and problems. I’ll site the reaction of some to the murder of the health care CEO as an example of the general dissatisfaction with some health insurance practices that prioritizes shareholder profits over patients health care coverage. And voters electing a con artist who gets their vote by saying he alone can fix it, are due for major disappointment. Example, now it’s going to be very hard to get those grocery prices down, even though he said he would. Or wait until his voters on Social Security find out how he wants to lower the cost of government. (He has to find a way to afford all this tax cuts for the rich), IMHO,

What about you respecting the sensitivities of those around you, Rat?

If this is a trick to get people to stop taking to him, it’s a pretty good one.

The older I get the more I am triggered (i.e. pi$$ed off) by sensitivity awareness (i.e. millennial psychobabble).

They don’t bother me at all, I can still read the article. And I’m even occasionally glad they’re there, like if there’s going to be a picture of a tortured animal or something.

Rat is sensitive to anything that corrects or disagrees with him. If someone claims he’s wrong, they’re easily the worst person in the world. That’s the problem with the world.

Rat, kiss my tuchus!

Harvard study shows that trigger warnings are fruitless and anxiety-inducing.

I can’t put a link here, so google it, I guess

And while we’re at it, take your “preferred pronouns” and cram them.

If we could just lessen the perceived need to hold everybody ELSE accountable for ourselves…

Because you can say something doesn’t mean you should. Ad hominem attacks (by anyone) do nothing to move discourse forward. Ultimately, I believe what Lewis Carroll wrote in “Through the Looking Glass”:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” (Lewis)

Projecting power, “owning” people is the goal-that’s all. (Havel)

BTW, what is this “How” we click on to submit comments now?

..yes it is Goat, yes it is..

Oh someone 100% complained to an editor about something in his comic.

Good toon today!

Another social trend Rat will test the limits of.

Hippie? ………. Hippie??

This actually goes to the base concept of free speech: can we actually have the right not to be offended? The answer is, emphatically, no. If you’re offended by what’s said, respond with a cogent argument as to why it’s incorrect, not with a demand that the speaker be silenced. The correct response to speech is more speech.

This Great Nation was founded by Liberals, and based on Liberal principles, Liberal ideals and Liberal values. But of the original 13, 6 would not free their slaves. Women could not vote. As time went on we corrected those, and many other wrongs that needed to be made rights. I grew up with all the ethnic jokes, the ‘Long, hot summers’ in the 1960s, bra burning, the Gay Pride parades, and even the ’Italian-American Civil Rights League brought to make a better image for the Mafia.

Now comes “woke”, which is much like ‘politically correct’, and is simply showing consideration for your fellow American. The idea being that people should be aware of what insults others. conservatives try to demonize those terms. Do conservatives find it offensive to not be offensive? Why do conservatives need to retain their perceived right to use misogyny, ethnic slurs, bigoted slander, and racist hatred?

Those hippies want to leave the country now, but they don’t have enough gas money

Pfft! If you ask me, if you’re bothered by something, just ignore it and leave it be instead of ruining it for everybody!

People should grow a spine.

the ones who complain about “trigger warnings” will also complain that kids [insert old people complaint about the kids today here]

The rat is a fascist.

I do not respect trigger warnings. It’s censorship.

The far left, and the far right have very sensitive trigger warnings. It’s a lose, lose

I never knew Rat was a snowflake. I may have had a hint that George was, but he does have a point. I think the loonies on the left and the loonies on the right just love to be offended because they both keep overreacting and insulting each other which they know is a never ending circle. Unless, of course, they are too dumb to realize that they will get the insults right back.

I wish they would go away and have intimate relations with themselves and leave the rest of us alone.

Until I read the past few days’ comics, I had no idea that trigger warnings were even a thing. I am kind of with Rat on this one.

I seem to remember this all started when someone decided to say it was us against them. But who are they. Just us.