Paul Shirley, a former basketball player for Iowa State, is now also a former writer for ESPN. After a recent piece, entitled “If You Rebuild It, They Will Come” appeared on an unrelated Web site, ESPN decided to stop publishing his work.

For those of you who haven’t read it, Shirley’s writing was about why he has decided not to donate money to the relief effort in Haiti. Basically, he expresses apprehension at how well that money will be used, and questions the wisdom of constantly rebuilding over and over again in such a disaster-prone area of the world.

The way in which he does this, though, is a bit more controversial than that brief summary. For example, the part that says:

“Dear Haitians —

First of all, kudos on developing the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Your commitment to human rights, infrastructure, and birth control should be applauded.

As we prepare to assist you in this difficult time, a polite request: If it’s possible, could you not rebuild your island home in the image of its predecessor? Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?

Sincerely, The Rest of the World”

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are less than happy about this. ESPN’s official statement on the issue was, “He was a part-time freelance contributor. The views he expressed on another site of course do not at all reflect our company’s views on the Haiti relief efforts. He will no longer contribute to ESPN.”

I have no problem with ESPN’s decision to stop paying Shirley for his services. They probably assumed that if they didn’t, it would cost them because people would reflect their feelings of anger toward Shirley in the general direction of ESPN.

What I do have a problem with is that this decision was probably a good one.

There is this overwhelming feeling in America — especially in the business world, where these things can affect your pocketbook so easily — that you have to tiptoe around everyone’s feelings in order to keep from offending anyone. And it’s things like this that threaten to keep valuable discussion from happening.

Shirley’s piece was, when not taken out of context, not really that bad. It raised a lot of good points and certainly had potential to spark some good debate on many important topics. But if Shirley had written in a more politically correct way in order to pander to the masses, the masses probably never would have heard about it in the first place. By spicing it up a bit, he significantly extended his audience. Good for him.

And to be fair, Shirley stops many times to pander to the potential angry mob about how he’s not suggesting that the Haitians deserved their fate or that he’s not sympathetic. Not to say that sort of thing ever does any good. He also wrote a follow-up piece pretty much going over all that stuff again, also to no avail.

He ends his follow-up by saying, “While I will not apologize for writing my column, I do accept the repercussions associated with writing it and hope that some good may come out of those repercussions: that people will stop and think about their own motivations for giving and that someone else might be inspired to come up with a better way to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters like the one in Haiti.”

This refusal to apologize for the fact that his piece offended some people was exactly the right thing to do. By refusing to give those who perpetuate the “never say anything that anyone might consider to be mean” idea what they want, he takes away a bit of their power. And with a few more people like Shirley, maybe some day writing an unrelated piece on an unrelated Web site about an unrelated topic will no longer be enough to make someone lose their job.