By Jesse Dunsmore

Senior Reporter

I want to say right up front, this isn’t a belated “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays” column. 

But as a jumping-off point for what I do want to talk about (fat people and Puerto Ricans), I should share an observation I recently made about the now- infamous Yuletide controversy.

One slow news day in December, a major news network read the following comment left on their Web site: “You can tell me Merry Christmas, and I’ll just tell you I’m an atheist. It works both ways. I don’t want to hear you any more than you want to hear me.” 

I like to think that when people comment to that guy on how nice the weather is, he replies with a cheery, “Cancer rates are up among people in your age group.” 

I’m a Christian. When someone wishes me Happy Holidays, I say, “Thanks, and Merry Christmas.” 

And everybody walks away happy, as far as I can tell. I wanted to know who in the world these people are that were offended by a pleasant Christmas greeting. 

After checking the whole Internet for these hypersensitive humbugs, I realized: nobody is actually offended.

But you have not looked into the gaping maw of groupthink until you’ve been on a message board with 10,000 posts, all rallying against … nobody. 

And they are all very angry at nobody, as well as Wal-Mart. Because this is a war, and on the hypothetical enemy’s front lines are geriatric door-greeters who don’t use the door greeting the “MC-ers” want. 

The argument: anybody who is offended by “Merry Christmas” is being stupid, because it’s just a greeting wishing goodwill, unlike “Happy Holidays,” which is code for “I hate American Jesus.”

To me, this is one example of American Christians believing themselves to be persecuted, while Chinese Christians worship from prison cells, and Middle Eastern Christians get the fast track to Heaven. 

But that might be symptomatic of a larger American trend: total wussification.

According to an AOL news article, Starbucks’ new “skinny” platform was a real “venti” problem for an employee. She wrote a five-page letter to the corporate office, citing several issues the new menu option would cause, such as confusion among staff and customers and the offense it would give to gravitationally challenged patrons.

Personally, I find certain flavors of coffee offensive, like the “cream” flavor, the “sugar” flavor and the “iced” flavor. 

I’m also offended that the Starbucks logo adds $15 to the price of a thermos. 

But I’m trying to understand how the mere mention of the word “skinny” would ever be taken as an insult by anyone — of any weight — who frequently uses American English. 

Are these same people bothered when it comes up in conversations? 

It seems if this was a real problem, it might have been mentioned before now, since we are the most overweight nation on Earth. You know that childhood idea that if you could get everyone in China to jump up and down at once, it’d throw the Earth out of orbit? Give me half the Midwest, and I will move the world. 

Just because some weigh more than they should does not mean we should avoid using words that describe things that are less … um … Rubenesque.

Avoiding an obvious paragraph transition, a Philadelphia baseball team called the Ironpigs (the area is known for its iron-mining industry) managed to piss off a minority group in a way that can only be described as “nostalgically offensive.”

The Ironpigs’ mascot is a pig, because it’s part of the team name. The pig’s name is Porkchop, because that’s a food item made out of pig meat. Stop me if I’m going too fast.

Well, did you know that “Porkchop” is an old-school derogatory term for Puerto Ricans? 

Don’t feel dumb; neither did anyone else — except the ones who complained. Porkchop is now known as Ferrous, from “ferrum,” the Latin word for iron, which is why “Fe” is the symbol for iron on the periodic table. This makes perfect sense; that’s why every few years, someone tries to get the Pittsburgh Steelers renamed the Fe3C-ers.

“If my parents were alive, they’d be having fits,” said local Guillermo Lopez to CBS News. “It meant much more to them than it does to Puerto Ricans now.”

Good point, but do you know what really pissed people off in my parents’ day? Interracial marriage. I like to think  we’ve gotten over that.

“If [the name] offended a few, it’s a few too many,” the team manager said.

I can’t say I agree. Somewhere along the line, people got this idea in their heads that they had a right to not be offended. It’s like the First-and-a-half Amendment: Freedom of Not Letting You Say Things I Don’t Like.

Well, bad news. Tact in semantics is a purely practical principle, used to avoid making a scene. No one is entitled to such courtesy, especially when the reasoning is moronic. 

Maybe some words deserve such attention (though I seriously doubt it), but “Happy Holidays,” “skinny” and “Porkchop” aren’t these words. 

Why concentrate on making a big deal out of silly words, when it’s much simpler to ignore them, accept them, or embrace them (“geek” comes to mind) all of which require nothing more than your free will?

You’d think that the world’s fattest nation would have some thicker skin.