I saw an article about football fans

Context
The Washington Redskins are not having a good season. They're in no danger of breaking the Detroit Lions' futility record, but as I read in this article today, their fans are unhappy. The article refers to a fan briefly holding up a sign saying "Black Sunday," which refers to this Bruce Dern movie, until security personnel took it away.

Commentary
Ah yes, time for another football post! Eight previous ones right here, so enjoy! In this case, though, I don't want to talk about sports. I want to talk about the right to be offensive. My husband read the part of the Redskins article to me about the Black Sunday poster and we both agreed that it's pretty darn tacky to invoke a terrorist attack just because your team's 2-4. On the other hand, we both enjoy some forms of offensive humor (we often think South Park is a stitch and a half, for example), and as comic book readers we often know that what we consider highly creative is considered irredeemable trash by others.

So is it just a matter of taste, or do some people have more of a right to be offensive than others? I don't mean a legal right, but rather an ethical entitlement, someone I'm less likely to accuse of crossing a line of decency, even if I disagree with her/him. In discussing this over dinner, my husband and I came up with three factors that contribute to our acceptance of outrageous speech or behavior:

1) Artistic license. Although this occasionally drives conservatives up the wall, art is expected to be "out there." It's hard to consider a work creative if it follows convention, and unconventional can sometimes shade over into offensive. "Black Sunday" gets some points for creatively expressing just how bad she thought her team was.

2) Putting your name on it. Anonymity when being offensive makes it seem less like you're making a cogent social statement and more like you're surreptitiously tossing spitballs from the back of the classroom. Our Redskins fan falls about in the middle on this one. She didn't put a bag on her head at the stadium, but neither did she hold up a sign that said "I'm Mary Smith and this is what I believe." A Robert Mapplethorpe photograph says "Robert Mapplethorpe" right on it, so you know who to complain to. Or about, since he died 20 years ago.

3) The social contract. If I go to a Lenny Bruce concert and get offended by the cuss words, I'm not really keeping up my end of the bargain. After all, Bruce himself said he wasn't there to get laughs. This is where the lady at the Redskins' game's justification falls completely apart. NFL football is, as they say, "sports entertainment." Invoking terrorism in a place where people generally go to forget the troubles of the real world is not only offensive, it's also kind of mean.

What did you see today?