It's worth defending because it's criticism. Being offensive has zero relevance to whether or not it deserves to be defended. The merit of any speech is only ob

It's worth defending because it's criticism. Being offensive has zero relevance to whether or not it deserves to be defended. The merit of any speech is only obvious in hindsight and since we can't know when the merit will become obvious, all speech deserves to be defended regardless of how offensive it is. For instance, the merit of this tweet has now become more significant due to the awareness it has ended up spreading about offensive speech laws in Scotland. Similarly, individual tweets about a leader or country may be seen as offensive and meritless in our time, but perhaps in another 50 years historians look at them as a sign of changing opinions on some matter, giving them merit. Even if we drop that kind of grand view of things and just focus on smaller matters, companies pay a lot of attention to offensive speech because tracing down the cause will help them improve their product. Thus, clearly offensive speech has merit. If we determined that offensive speech was meritless, people saying offensive things wouldn't start saying things politely, they'd just say the offensive things privately, depriving society of a valuable feedback method.