Best blog post ever, just sayin. And yours all suck, no offense.

Remember about ten years ago when you could say anything horrible and insulting as long as you said "no offense" too? Yeah, that was fun. No wait, it was horrible! A bunch of self-important assholes running around spouting off any old opinion they wanted with no concern for other people's feelings and following it up with "no offense" to show that it was just a simple observation and therefor you were being over-sensitive if you did take offense. "Hey you're getting really really fat, no offense." "No offense but your mom is a giant bitch." Thank God that fad passed. Except it's back.

"Just sayin" is the new "no offense" and I hate it! I have a friend who does that all the time and it drives me nuts. She does it as a way, intentional or not, of shutting down conversation and ensuring that she has the last word. And if I try to respond anyway, she cuts in with "Hey, I'm just sayin!" It doesn't help that we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and often debate things anyway, but the "just sayin" fad in general bothers me (I see it a lot on facebook) and this is just a quick example of it that springs to mind right now. But it will be something like this, in regards to the Navy commander who made sexually charged homophobic videos "Well if you're going to punish him for morality then what about Bill Clinton sticking cigars in people under him in the Oval Office? Just sayin." Now, I see a difference there. I see that the Navy Commander did these things publicly, showed the videos to everyone else on the ship, and insulted and denigrated an entire populace, while Bill Clinton cheated on his wife privately and then got caught. I see one as a workplace issue and the other as a private moral issue (since no one ever complained that his relationship with Monica was less than consensual or that he was harassing her). But when I tried to say this she said, "Hey, I'm just sayin."

Just sayin is the new no offense. It's a way of saying argumentative things and then shutting down the response. "Starbucks is evil and so are people who go there. Just sayin." :I hate all Will Ferrell movies. Just sayin." Or, "Will Ferrell is the greatest actor of all time. Just sayin." Anyone who disagrees has basically just been told not to bother trying to get into a discourse because hey, it's just an opinion. And as we all know, in America, every person's opinion on everything is valid and sacrosanct and not to be argued with at all. And also, that there is no difference between belief and opinion, that the words are synonymous. But that's a rant for another blog post. Probably soon.