A couple of noteworthy quotes from over the weekend.

“The country’s 24-hour
[news cycle] did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them
that much harder. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and Theocrats. But those are
titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to
distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan
Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people, but to the
racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.” – Daily Show host Jon Stewart at Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity

“I believe in sensitivity but not censorship,” director Ron Howard explaining why he’s decided not to remove a rather innocuous “gay” joke from his new film The Dilemma (due out Jan. 14).

Both men speak to the importance of common sense and discernment.

To Stewart’s point, we’d all do well to chill and stop labeling everyone we disagree with as evil. It’s only a distraction from confronting actual evil.

To Howard’s point, we’d also all do well (whether gay, straight, black, white, Muslim, Jewish or Catholic) to learn to recognize the difference between a harmless joke and one that is truly meant in a mean way. There’s also a difference between standing up to defend yourself from an attack and becoming a bully yourself.