To see reasonable people debating whether the Hillsborough t-shirt bloke

[Burney]

Which world was that in which no-one was deliberately offensive in public?

You can't seriously be suggesting that in - say - the 1940s or '50s anyone sane would have considered going out in an item of clothing explicitly celebrating the deaths of 96 people, can you? We have become a much more rude, solipsistic and obnoxious society and therein lies the root of the problem. As you know, I'm happy to blame PC for lots of things, but this ain't one of them. As with so many things, the Baby Boomer generation has a lot to answer for.

[Sir C]

You can't seriously be suggesting that in - say - the 1940s or '50s anyone sane would have considered going out in an item of clothing explicitly celebrating the deaths of 96 people, can you? We have become a much more rude, solipsistic and obnoxious society and therein lies the root of the problem. As you know, I'm happy to blame PC for lots of things, but this ain't one of them. As with so many things, the Baby Boomer generation has a lot to answer for.

It's all the same cultural shift, though. Was it baby-boomers of the liberal left of the 1980s which threw away religion without considering what to replace it with? Surely our Godless, soulless, ruleless society is a product of both groups.

[Burney]

I had some words with a little scrote on a train wearing a Jesus is a **** t-shirt years ago. YEARS ago, I tell you. No one arrested the little ****, though.

Yes, but you are unusual (in a nice way) and our sense of these things has become so calloused by years of seeing things like a major high street brand plaster 'FCUK' all over its clothes or by people wearing 'funny' t-shirts, that most people barely notice anything unless it's outrageously offensive these days.

[Fast Eddie]

Looks like we'll have to disagree on this, then.

You might disagree but as long as a t-shirt says different anything goes

Bet the OP and co are regretting this

[Monty92]

You can't seriously be suggesting that in - say - the 1940s or '50s anyone sane would have considered going out in an item of clothing explicitly celebrating the deaths of 96 people, can you? We have become a much more rude, solipsistic and obnoxious society and therein lies the root of the problem. As you know, I'm happy to blame PC for lots of things, but this ain't one of them. As with so many things, the Baby Boomer generation has a lot to answer for.

No, but on the flip side it was probably far easier to cause offensive in them days, when conservative values were the norm. I doubt the early campaigners for the legalisation of bumming went down too well with the gen pop in the 1950s.

[Monty92]

So the moral of the story is you can be anti-Semitic or racist so long as you don't speak the words but have them on a t-shirt.

Gotcha.

Must type the words I have on my many, many t-shirts.

People shouldn't be arrested for being racist, either.

[Burney]

It's all the same cultural shift, though. Was it baby-boomers of the liberal left of the 1980s which threw away religion without considering what to replace it with? Surely our Godless, soulless, ruleless society is a product of both groups.

Actually, I'd lay that one squarely at the door of the Baby Boomers. It was their generation who decided it was more important to mock things than to respect them. Unfortunately, once you start to regard the mockery of things others hold dear as a virtue, you by extension are mocking, deriding and denigrating not merely institutions, but the people who believe in them. Now whether that institution is the Church, the Monarchy, the military, the Government, someone else's football team, school, class or whatever, you are making a virtue of offence and, once you start down the road of saying that offence in any form is good, all bets are effectively off.

[Ash]

No, but on the flip side it was probably far easier to cause offensive in them days, when conservative values were the norm. I doubt the early campaigners for the legalisation of bumming went down too well with the gen pop in the 1950s.

And of course T-shirts had only just been invented.

[Monty92]

And of course T-shirts had only just been invented.

old-people-funny-t-shirts-13__605.jpg

Here's one of the early adopters

[Burney]

No, but on the flip side it was probably far easier to cause offensive in them days, when conservative values were the norm. I doubt the early campaigners for the legalisation of bumming went down too well with the gen pop in the 1950s.

Sure, but too many things changed too quickly and all sorts of babies went out with the bathwater. To take your example, there's a big difference between deciding that, on balance, it's probably wrong to lock up or chemically castrate people for participation in sexual acts between consenting adults and thinking that it's OK for some bloke to march up and down a high street in a t-shirt saying "I LOVE SUCKING COCK!", but unfortunately, the two things have become conflated as though they were one issue. This means that someone who objects to the latter is going to be accused of effectively objecting to the former. That is wrong, but it is a case of the baby going out with the bathwater.