Or was he oversensitive? I think it was the latter, but then, I almost ALWAYS think that.
Last night, I hosted a pub quiz at Hurley's. It allowed me to get in front of a crowd of people and speak about whatever I wanted, to challenge the knowledge of people (although I overestimated everyone's abilities in mathematics) and to wear a flashy blazer. I didn't do as good a job as I would have liked, but if I ever get the chance again, I would hope that I could keep more than 50% of the original partipants all the way to the end. The champions Patrick, MJ and Michel (and a fourth that I cannot recall from the previous month) were ousted from first place by the team of Procrasto, Shatnerian and Kowy. Sweet. I like it when other people win if I can't.
One of my categories was "Last Month's News", and one of my questions was, "How many Canadian casualties (including both deaths AND injuries) were there in Afghanistan last month?" Answer: 18. Eight-fucking-teen. I bet that's more than in the previous nine months there. Apparently most of those were accidents.
There was a pack of American/Newfie yahoos causing trouble, being loud obnoxious, shouting out answers and so on. It was a mistake to allow them to play (although I didn't know at the time that they were like this) although I don't know that it would have made a difference anyway. After I asked that question, one of them turned to me with hate in his eyes, as though I had pissed on the grave of one of his friends that he lost in battle. "That's COLD, man. That's real cold. Using their deaths as a game! It's not a fucking game!" And so on.
Did anyone notice that there were a hell of a lot of Canadian casualities in Afghanistan last month? I sure as hell did. It was the reason that category: so that I could ask that question. As one that really doesn't like the idea of us having to do this shit (and I am far from convinced that we are there to "do the right thing and chip in"), it outrages me that we are losing lives to the chaos there. By asking this question, I wanted to make the people in the room aware that a lot of Canadian (and obviously Afghan, American and British, etc.) blood has been shed. Do we know why? I don't think so.
March was a terrible month for Canadian forces. Eighteen dead and injured. If he had lost a friend there, I think that my question honoured them and brought them to the minds of about 40 people that night. Would he have cared if I had asked the name of a murder victim? Unless he had a personal stake in it, I fucking doubt it. In any case, regardless of his feelings, I asked about news stories, which is fair game. I'm [not that] sorry, but too bad.
The yahoos mostly fucked off after the second round and went downstairs where they continued to cause trouble. The guy and his friends were bitching about my question all night. They were even belligerent to the staff. Was I insensitive? Should I NOT have asked the question? I think that these people were wrong and I wasn't. As of now, I'm not willing to swallow any wrongdoing. What do you think?
Initially I would say no, but after thinking about it, I could see where people may find it insensitive. These guys sounded like they had a chip on their shoulder though. Damn Americans.
I say people may find it insensitive only because it is dealing with people dying. And Americans like to be sensitive about things whether they should be or not. It is what we have been taught.
I would say don't sweat it. They were reaching a bit and probably would have got in a huff over anything that could be imagined to be marginnally offensive.
Wish I could have been there. There were just too many things happening that week.
It was perfectly ok to ask the question, and a good idea to raise awareness in the small group. Much better to be sensitive about people dying by being aware of the issue than by averting your eyes like those fuckers want to do. It's like the whole hubhub a while back when pictures of coffins coming back to the US were "leaked", it's not respect to forget they are dying, it's respect to know and talk about/against it.
(FYI: I see Frank commented yesterday even though the post is dated the 5th. For some reason this post showed up in my feed reader only this morning, probably "pushed out" by the latest one...)
I agree with Frank on this one. And what, were your questions only allowed to be pleasant trivia ones? Perhaps they thought you were asking the question from a "pleasant trivia" standpoint.
If you were a truly insensitive guy you wouldn't care enough to post the question here. Still, playing Devil's Advocate, I'd say a 'quiz' may not be the best place to discuss such things, the same way Awards Ceremonies aren't the best place to talk politics.
On the other hand, it wouldn't have bothered me a bit.