I wasn't condoning the use of the word, just showing how extreme the responses are.
As far as offences language in old books have a look at this one by Darwin from Desceent of man. Don't think he'll be band from the bookshelves anytime soon.
If you're Irish you might be offended.
"The reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: ?The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts?and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five-sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ?struggle for existence,? it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed?and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults.?"
? Charles Robert Darwin, The Descent of Man, Great Minds Edition, 123