What we’re risking here is a nation of vanilla automatons, particularly in larger culture and the media. A place where no public figure dare say anything remotely controversial for fear of backlash. We’ll become a nation where every utterance is the equivalent of football halftime interview with the coach: The interviewee can’t say anything of worth for fear of backlash. So they all sound the same save a few proper nouns.

Have you ever complained about politicians’ generic speech? Well, can you blame them? Biden’s “big f—ing deal” hot mic comment? Outrage! Romney’s “off camera” 47% comment? Outrage! And those were times when we knew they thought they were speaking to a closed-door, specific audience. Politicians speak the way they do because we’ve created an atmosphere where they can’t do anything but sound the same.

Or look at celebrities or sports stars. How often have we heard about apologies being offered for “offensive” statements? We’ve basically reduced them to generic sound bites.