Tolerance. Our society has us learning more about other cultures, religions, people and their way of living but despite all our best efforts, tolerance seems to be at an all time low. It's the strangest thing really.
Im sure most of my readers dont know that Jay Briscoe is the reigning heavy weight champion at Ring of Honor, a small US based wrestling company. Jay and his brother Mark have been with the company since the beginning and their characters are that of hard hitting redneck Americans (which seems to be pretty close to reality) that arent afraid of speaking their mind. Things really got out of hand recently, when Jay took to Twitter to write about gay marriage and his thoughts on the subject.
Do a lot of Americans (not just Americans mind you) feel just the same way but are afraid to speak their mind given the politically correct times we live in? Definitely yes. Was it offensive? To a lot of people, yes (to the extent that fans have said that they will not buy Ring of Honor shows as long as Jay is the champion despite him having been a fan favourite for so many years). Was he playing his character or was it the real Jay Briscoe speaking his mind? One will never know.
Of course, Ring of Honor did what any company would do and wrote a long apologetic post on Twitter and decided to fine Jay Briscoe his earnings from the next few shows. He probably will lose the title soon as punishment as well. But it begs the question - where do we draw the line when it comes to being politically correct? Do we allow anyone to get away with saying anything they want to just because they have the freedom of speech? Or do we just throw a blanket censor of what we actually feel because we are so concerned about what other people will think?
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