Frivolous discrimination complaints make it tougher to tackle real bigotry

When exactly did everyone start becoming so hypersensitive that complaining about hurt feelings is now a cottage industry? The way things are going, pop-culture analysts are going to look back on this decade as the "woe-is-me-generation." There has been an epidemic of human-rights complaints filed against magazines, authors, cartoonists and others, alleging various forms of discrimination against Muslims.

Local radio personality Bruce Allen was the subject of an investigation by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council following numerous complaints over his hard-boiled commentary regarding immigrants seeking special treatment.

Even Canadian icon Don Cherry was censured by the CBC after a flurry of complaints for his frank assessment of European and French-Canadian hockey players.

Now some thin-skinned gays have set their sights on the advertising industry, dissecting ads for any subliminal message that may be interpreted as offensive.

First the Mars candy company pulled a TV ad for its Snickers bar after the U.S.-based civil rights group The Human Rights Campaign Foundation claimed it stereotyped gay men.

The commercial had Mr. T reprising his character from The A-Team and ridiculing a man speed walking. Mr. T pulls up alongside him and growls, "You're a disgrace to the man race . . . it's time to run like a real man." He peppers him with rounds of Snickers bars from a candy-dispensing machine gun, and the speed walker runs for cover.

Mars was accused of perpetuating "the notion that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is a group of second-class citizens and that violence against GLBT people is not only acceptable, but humorous." Incidentally, when did speed walking become an exclusively gay workout? A few days later, Nike withdrew an ad that depicted a basketball player with his face smothered in the crotch of a high-flying opposing player making a dunk.

The accompanying slogan, "That ain't right," prompted a litany of complaints that the ad for Nike's line of Hyperdunk athletic shoes was offensive.

Some alleged the ad legitimized the pervasive homophobia of heterosexual athletes.

Others probed even deeper and determined it promoted anti-gay discrimination in black communities.

But people who complain about things like the Snickers and Nike ads do their communities a disservice.

By bringing attention to silly and manufactured allegations of discrimination, they make it more difficult to respond to serious and very real instances of bigotry when they do occur.

As Mr. T would surely say: "I pity the fools."

John Martin, a criminologist at the University of the Fraser Valley, can be reached at John.Martin@ucfv.ca..

John Martin, The Province

Published: Wednesday, August 06, 2008