Letters to the Editor
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Moral licenses
Ralph, I see what you mean, but that's not the way the strip was going (I thought it was too.) I hope we see more on this topic, and see the Moral Licenses office more often. But one of the things this was riffing on involved the way an in-group claims the right to use certain words to each other that non-members aren't allowed (which came up with Don Imus recently.)
This is actually one SERIOUSLY annoying aspect of our society. Not even talking about the n-word, I dislike women referring to each other as "bitch" and then being offended my men using it. Yes, I can see it's different, but don't we have several affectionate words for women friends without worrying about that one? Maybe some words should just disappear from the langauge (by consensus, not by banning.)
Anyway, I guess I traveled some there, but the idea of getting a moral license and proving your cred just to be able to use racially-charged words...made sense to me, and trivialized the self-categorization that does indeed cause problems in modern society. Then the inane reason he wanted to keep his White license hammered the message home.