The right "Not to be Offended"?

    Did I miss this one in the Constitution?

A public radio station in Pagosa Springs, Colo., refused to air a local dentist’s underwriting message because it had the word "God" in it, reports the Durango Herald.
The motto of dentist Glenn Rutherford’s practice is: "Gently Restoring the Health God Created." Rutherford said it is not so much a statement of faith as "an acknowledgment that we don’t create health.
"I was called and told that there was a meeting of the [radio’s] staff and they unanimously agreed that I can’t put the word ‘God’ in our sponsorship spot," he said.
KSUT Executive Director Beth Warren declined to comment on specifics of the station’s business relationship with Rutherford. The station’s motto is, "Diverse programming for a multi-cultural world."

Changing Times
Students in Minnesota planning to perform the play Ten Little Indians based on an Agatha Christi novel were forced to change the name because it might offend Native Americans, reports the St. Cloud Times.
Administrators at Technical High School in St. Cloud asked the students to instead use the title of the Christi novel, And Then There Were None, after people involved with American Indian outreach at St. Cloud State University complained. They said the title is based on a children's counting rhyme from the early 1900s that is derogatory.
"We count objects, not people," said Principal Roger Ziemann. "The times have changed since then and we need to be more sensitive. We don't want to give the impression that we're objectifying people."

Ring of Truth?
A new historical center housing and surrounding one of the most enduring symbols of American liberty will dedicate more than half of its exhibit space to slavery and race relations in America, following complaints from African-American activists, reports The Philadelphia Enquirer.
The plans for Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia were modified last year when activists heard that no mention was going to be made of the slaves owned by George Washington when he lived and worked there.
In breathlessly laudatory tones normally reserved for opinion columns or editorials, the Enquirer tells us, "Gone from Independence Mall will be the story of the Liberty Bell as the embodiment of a universally free and unblemished America. Gone will be the idea that the Founding Fathers were as pure as their most idealistic rhetoric."
But we are assured that it will "remain an inspiring icon of liberty."
It’s just that "its symbolism will be enlarged and enriched, becoming a complex web representing freedoms achieved and freedoms denied."

Eenie, Meanie …
Two Southwest Airlines passengers are suing the carrier for racial discrimination because a flight attendant recited a version of a rhyme with a racist history, reports the Kansas City Star.
And a federal judge is actually allowing the case to proceed.
Grace Fuller and her sister Louis Sawyer say they were returning from Las Vegas two years ago when flight attendant Jennifer Cundiff, trying to get passengers to sit down, said over the intercom, "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go."
The sisters say the rhyme was directed at them and was a reference to its racist version that dates to before the civil rights era: "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; catch a n----- by his toe."
Cundiff said she had never heard the offensive version of the rhyme.

More Meanies
An honor corps at Texas A&M University has been suspended by the school administration for saying mean things to anti-war protestors during a recent protest, reports the Texas Examiner.
Administration officials chastised the Ross Volunteer Honor Corps association for allegedly harassing a group of 30 anti-war protestors carrying signs saying "Bush Is a Baby Killer" during a Feb. 3 protest on campus.
Anti-war activists accused corps members of pointing their non-firing guns at the group and singing, "Some say freedom is free, but we know Aggies who paid the price." The corps' refer to their singing as "jodying," which they use for motivation and rhythm when jogging.
Hugh Stearns, an anti-war protestor who attended the vigil said, "Some of the cadets glared [at us]."

Roused Rebels
Confederate groups in Virginia are irked about plans by the National Park Service to put up a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the heart of the former rebel capital, reports the Scripps Howard News Service.
The groups say that putting a statue of Lincoln on the grounds of the arsenal at Tredegar Iron Works would reopen old wounds and be akin to installing a statue of Usama bin Laden in downtown New York.
"There are no Lincoln statues in the South that I know of, and for good reason," said Brandon "Brag" Bowling, Virginia commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Shielding the Students
The National Association of Black Journalists is decrying a New York University professor’s intent to use William McGowan’s book about diversity in the news business. They say the book doesn't support the principal of diversity, reports the Washington Square News.
Nat Hentoff put the book, Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity has Corrupted American Journalism, on his list of required reading for a graduate level First Amendment course at NYU this fall. Hentoff says the issues it addresses are important to the study of journalism.
But Richard Prince, the head of NABJ’s media monitoring division, said the book has no place in the classroom.
"I think it’s inappropriate as a teaching tool, unless you were going to teach skewed journalism," Prince said. "The problem with the book is that it’s a polemic, and the facts are twisted to fit the argument that [McGowan] is trying to make. And that’s not journalism. It’s not objective."

Un-invitation
Officials at Mercy High School in Michigan took a lunch with Gov. Jennifer Granholm off the block of a fund-raising auction because of her pro-abortion stand, reports the Detroit Free Press.
In a memo distributed to parents and students, Sister Regina Marie Doelker, president of the Farmington Hills-based school, said Mercy did not anticipate that a handful of anti-abortion activists would be offended by the governor's offer.
"Out of sensitivity to anyone who might interpret this item as Mercy taking a pro-abortion stand, the luncheon with Gov. Granholm will no longer be an item in Mercy's auction," she wrote.
 

Sidebar Note : I'm thinking of adding this new questions and articles on the "Constitutional Right not to be Offended" send me some e-mails on what you think.  Reddragon@reddragoninc.com