The Legion of the Invincibly

The Legion of the Invincibly Sensitive - Joe Soucheray yesterday addressed a topic that's been of chuckling interest on this blog lately - the endless indignance of the terminally-oversensitive.

"The entire episode is an example of what Wordsworth might have meant when he said, 'We murder to dissect.'' The poet was onto something even before the invention of talk radio: the spontaneous combustion of overblown proportion.

Souch's column yesterday addressed the tempest in a teapot that KSTP's ron Rosenbaum invoked a while ago on the subject of retiring St. Paul Police Chief Bill Finney's political ambitions:

On the occasion of the remark, Rosenbaum and the morning show's co-host, Mark O'Connell, were interviewing Mayor Randy Kelly. O'Connell mentioned to Kelly the speculation, then still thick in the air, that Finney might be interested in the mayor's job.

Kelly summoned, out of the blue, a biblical response, saying that 'many are called and few are chosen.''

In the gab business, when the game is always afoot, silence is not necessarily golden. That's why normally civil people who find themselves on cable television news shows end up in shouting matches.

Rosenbaum jumped on Kelly's response and said, "That's another way of saying, 'Get your shine box,' Chief Finney … but thank you.''

The NAACP has, of course, reacted with indignance, in a move that reminds one of the fracas over the outraged response to the word "niggardly" among, presumably, the morally-illiterate.

Soucheray continues:

It is inconceivable that Rosenbaum was waiting to pounce on the police chief with a racially insensitive remark...But there is something else that is inconceivable. It is inconceivable to me that Finney was offended. It is odd happenstance that both Rosenbaum and Finney are big fans of Joe Pesci, who uttered the shine box line in the movie "Goodfellas.'' Not to mention that after 34 years of public service as a cop, Finney has heard much worse.

What a radical notion: common sense. Read Soucheray's entire column for more interesting insights.

Maybe we need a telethon to help treat perpetual indignance. But it'd just make someone angry.

Posted by Mitch at November 17, 2003 05:38 AM