Jonah Goldberg on the Redskins kerfuffle: Words become offensive when we choose to be offended by them

You should, as always, read the whole thing.  Excerpts:

The fight over attempts to scrub all offensive language from society will never end.

That’s my problem with Costas’s crusade. He — and the editors of Slate — are simply deciding to be offended about something they don’t need to be. According to various accounts, “redskin” actually has quite innocuous origins. It was probably adopted from Native Americans themselves. And though it obviously took on nastier connotations over time and in some contexts, it strains credulity to believe that the team name was intentionally pejorative or that the fans or the ownership see it that way today.