Trout Republic - Is your ox being gored?

To cope with today’s world, it is important to remember the adage, “it depends on whose ox is being gored.”
The meaning of said phrase is that offense or injury to one’s person is more real when it concerns that person personally.
I agree that it is easy to minimize things when you are not the recipient of said injury. However, of late, there seems to be a lot of oxen being gored by the smallest of offense.
In my family, we were taught to let any offense roll of like the proverbial “water off a duck’s back.” Having a dad who has been a pastor for some 67 years will do that to you. If anyone out there wants to be in an occupation where you want to be offended, try being a pastor. It won’t take long before the trolls comes calling, I assure you.
As the Good Book tells us, “offenses will come” but, now, more than ever it seems that the way to heal the wound is not through forgiveness but through monetary settlements.
The rush to sue someone over words is at a never seen before crescendo of Mount Everest proportions. Just last week some Hollywood celeb type was paid over $3 million because a newspaper in Australia had written an article saying that while the celeb claimed to be related to Walt Disney, the newspaper could not find evidence for that.
The celeb sued saying the newspaper had defamed her name and a jury agreed awarding $3+ million in damages. Who knew being related to old Walt was worth that much? They say we are related in 6 degrees. I guess I should figure out if dear Old Walt is my uncle, too.
Back when Ol’ Dutch was a kid we were told to toughen up as the world was not going to go easy on us after we left home. And we did and learned that words didn’t hurt us one bit.
One of the funniest things I saw lately that supposedly caused a lot of hurt feelings was the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models photo shoot in the Caribbean after Hurricane Irma.
It seems that the politically correct idiots saw fit to complain about them doing the photo shoot after the devastation there, as if not doing a photo shoot would somehow make a difference.
And, for the record, Ol’ Dutch is for bikinis just about anywhere except the Biloxi Old Manor Nursing home and he would be the last to complain about scantily clad women supporting a local economy.
You see, instead of packing up their clothing in a hand clasp and exiting the islands they stayed on in less than ideal conditions renting rooms, eating lettuce and leaving tips -- all important to the recovery to the people who live there.
And they sure didn’t take away from the clothing supplies sent to help out the needy as all of them combined only use enough material for one average sized Caribbean person.
However, someone – probably sitting with a roof over their heads, a full belly and too much time on their hands -- had to complain. I wonder if they hope that by complaining they’d get a news article published or some kind of fame for seeing a hurt where there was none.
Not too long ago Ol’ Dutch had a similar experience. He made the mistake of getting involved in a conversation about the local vermin that carry “The Plague.”
This disease is prevalent all over Colorado in mice, chipmunks, prairie dogs and other animals that are bitten by the fleas carried by these cute little critters.
Of course I was “wrong” about that and several people got all upset that anyone would dare warn them not to let their grandchildren handle such things.
The funniest part about the entire thing is one article that was referenced by the “vermin huggers” said that The Plaque, no typo here, was deadly.
Ol’ Dutch has been told by his dentist to watch the plaque for sure but I didn’t know it was deadly. And if he can treat it I am thinking maybe we can start a program to treat all the infested vermin with a short trip to the local dentist thereby preventing another round of the wretched Black Death.

Kevin Kirkpatrick and his Yorkie, Cooper, fish, hunt, ATV or hike daily. His email is [email protected]. Additional news can be found at www.troutrepublic.com or on Twitter at TroutRepublic.