Offending the Creator's Own

Something is released to the public, and something in it offends a group of people, say for instance, Buddhists. Members of that group call in to complain and express their distaste, but there's a twist: the creator of the work, is also a Buddhist! Why would a Buddhist create something that offends Buddhists? Differences in opinion, most likely. Maybe this Buddhist isn't offended by certain things that offend others, and didn't realize there would be a problem. While it is a little condescending to assume that all members of the group have the same standards, it does make it more difficult to complain when it's one of your own who expresses a message you don't like.

Note that intentionally mocking your own group, particularly for comedic reasons, is Self-Deprecation (sometimes overlapping with N-Word Privileges), a different trope. Compare Stop Helping Me!, Stop Being Stereotypical.

Examples of Offending the Creator's Own include:

Artworks and Exhibitions

• Snow White and The Madness of Truth was an Swedish art-installation about suicide bombing that caused a lot of controversy. It was accused of being anti-Semitic and eventually the Israeli ambassador to Sweden personally went to vandalize the installation. The artist behind the installation is Israeli-born and Jewish.
• Cartoonist Robert "Buck" Brown did a great many cartoons for Playboy, many featuring his Granny character. Others had to do with race relations, in a humorous way. One, which featured a soul food restaurant in the inner city called "Sho 'Nuff Boss Chow", started a firestorm of protest that he was a rascist. Brown was African-American.

Comic Books

• Superman: True Brit, an Elseworld story where Kal-El lands in Weston rather than Kansas, was accused of Anglophobia given its utterly vicious Take Thats towards the culture of 2000s Britain. It was written by John Cleese, a British man.

Film

• Sex and the City 2 features a gay wedding scene. The problem? Said gay wedding scene is staged like a cross between Swan Lake and a bizarre Broadway musical number, complete with absurd, gaudy costumes. This led Salon's Andrew O'Hehir to ask: "Can a gay wedding scene staged by a gay director still be homophobic and offensive?" The answer? Yes.
• Possibly the most famous example in film is Borat, whose title character is extremely anti-Semitic, fueling a massive controversy before the movie's release. Sacha Baron Cohen is Jewish.
• Someone on the IMDB complained that the Bridge to Terabithia movie contained messages "mocking Christians, like so much of Hollywood" (not an exact quote). The messages in question are that God wouldn't go around damning people to Hell (delivered by a girl who'd never been to church before in response to a concerned, naive kindergartener's "warning"), and another character says later that this pagan girl would go to heaven after death for having been a good person, despite not being a Christian herself. The author of the book on which the movie is based is a Christian, though apparently a more moderate or liberal one than the Christians she offended with her open message. In fact, the author's parents were missionaries to China, and the author herself is married to a Presbyterian minister.
• Some Roman Catholics protested against Kevin Smith's Dogma as blasphemy. Smith is a practicing Roman Catholic himself - albeit one who may need to review his theology some.
• Some people criticized the film The Last Airbender because the good guys are played by white actors, but evil Zuko by an Indian. Which definitely wasn't like this in the series. Strange thing: Director M. Night Shyamalan is Indian himself (in case you didn't know or couldn't guess), and indeed stated in one interview that Anti-Villain Zuko was his favourite character. Presumably, this would have been lessened after Zuko's Character Development, but considering the original movie's negative reception, we're pretty much left with a world of mighty light people beating up evil dark people.
• The film Muhammad, Messenger of God was produced and directed by Moustapha Akkad, a Muslim who consulted Muslim clerics on how to avoid giving offense (for instance, any scene where Muhammad is present is shot from his point of view to avoid depicting him). That didn't prevent an extremist attack on the film's premiere.
• Skyfall‍'‍s Big Bad, Raoul Silva, was seen by many as a Biphobic stereotype of a Depraved Bisexual, and also somewhat Camp Gay (or Bi, rather). One of the co-screenwriters of Skyfall, John Logan, is himself Gay and came up with the idea for the Foe Yay Interrogation scene between Bond and Silva with Director Sam Mendes. See The Other Wiki's article for more details.
• In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Skids and Mudflap were accused of being an unflattering stereotype of African-Americans. Mudflap is voiced by African-American Reno Wilson who was said to be shocked when he heard this critique.
• Israelism was loudly accused by the state of Israel of being anti-semitic. The film was produced by Jewish-Americans.

Literature

• C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia has been alternately seen as too Christian and not Christian enough, depending on whom you're asking. (Lewis himself was a former atheist turned Christian.)
• Harry Potter is often accused of being stealth propaganda for Satanists, but J. K. Rowling herself is a Christian and in interviews has stated that the magic in her books was inspired by Narnia.

Live Action TV

• Many Torchwood fans furiously denounced Ianto being Killed Off for Real in Children Of Earth as homophobic, even though the show's creator, Russell T. Davies, is probably the highest-profile openly gay man in British TV.
• The Wire creator David Simon has gotten flak for his portrayal of the shameless Jewish drug lawyer Maurice Levy. Simon is Jewish.
• Doctor Who:
  • Barry Letts co-wrote and directed the story "Planet of the Spiders" as a deliberate parable expressing his own Buddhist beliefs. He was upset to receive letters from Buddhists protesting about the use of the "Jewel in the Lotus" mantra "Om mani padme hum" in the context of villains summoning up alien monsters, although defending himself on the grounds that the story explicitly described it as the misuse of something usually good.
  • Russell T. Davies was accused of homophobia when Rose Tyler makes the disparaging "so gay" remark in "Aliens of London". As said above, Russell T. Davies is gay.
• Hogan's Heroes has come under fire from various sides more or less for the implications of featuring the Third Reich in a comedic context. However, much like Mel Brooks' intent (see below), the Germans' roles were played by Jewish actors who had served in the U.S. armed forces and wouldn't have allowed the Nazis to be viewed in a positive light even once (one of them was a Holocaust survivor, two others had been in camps, and those three had lost family to Nazi atrocities). Despite using Politically-Correct History in many respects and fudging some of the facts for the sake of entertainment, the show does (correctly and importantly) make distinctions between POW camps and concentration camps, and between Nazis and the Germans simply caught up in the whole mess (the former being unambiguously villains when they did appear, the latter strongly embodied by Sgt. Schultz, the Minion with an F In Evil).
• An episode of Jungle Run featured a contestant of Afro-Caribbean descent being taunted by the monkeys Sid and Elvis and fed Bananas by them, which caused a degree of controversy. However, both Michael Underwood and one of the Sid and Elvis actors are also of Afro-Caribbean descent.
• When Saoirse Ronan hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live, the show got into hot water for a sketch ribbing on Aer Lingus, Ireland's flagship airline, for its name's similarity to a sexual act. Saoirse Ronan is herself Irish and had to go on Irish media to explain that it was an Affectionate Parody and was not meant to insult Aer Lingus. Which she's a frequent flier on.

Music

• Mel Brooks' Hitler Rap was widely criticized as insensitive to Jews, if not actually anti-Semitic. In an interview for 60 Minutes, Brooks stated that his life's goal was to reduce Hitler to a figure of such ridiculousness that no one would ever take his ideas seriously again (If the numerous Tonys that The Producers won are any indication, it's working) Being both Jewish and a World War II veteran, if anyone has N-Word Privileges to joke about Adolf Hitler it's him.
• The Pokemon Christmas Bash song Nobody Don't Like Christmas has a line where Meowth sings "who wants to go to all that Yom Kippurim... eh?" which many have considered insensitive to Jews. However, Meowth's then-current VA and the one who sang the song, Maddie Blaustein, was Jewish herself.

Music Video

• Michael Jackson's Thriller opens with a disclaimer that "Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult. - Michael Jackson", inspired by Jackson's then-current involvement with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
  • Parodied by Erfworld here.
• At one point, foul-mouthed proto-punk Ian Dury was accused of mocking the disabled with a song called "Spasticus Autisticus" by several disabled rights groups. Dury is himself disabled (crippled due to childhood polio) and recorded the song as a statement on society's tendency to ignore the disabled. He timed the release of the song to coincide with the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981, which he (as a disabled person himself) thought was patronising.
• The music video for Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines is often seen as sexist and misogynist due to featuring scantily clad women. The director of the music video, Diane Martel, is a woman.

Newspaper Comics

• In its early years, Pearls Before Swine was often accused of anti-Greek jokes. The author, Stephan Pastis, is a Greek-American. Though to his credit, he has dramatically lowered the amount of jokes in this regard after the initial controversies about this.

Video Games

• The original Little Big Planet has a song that had to be modified to have the lyrics removed, as it had verses from the Koran and "might offend Muslims", as many Muslim clerics and scholars agree not to make verses of the Qur'an incorporated into entertainment. The composer, however, is a Muslim himself.
• Sandy Petersen, one of the level designers for Doom, is a Mormon, and he said to John Romero, while making Doom, "I have no problems with the demons in the game. They're just cartoons. And, anyway, they're the bad guys." A stance he brings up in his classes.

Tabletop Games

• Gary Gygax was an outspoken Christian, and even included a verse from the Gospel of Matthew in his e-mail signature. Think about that one for a moment. If you still don't understand, Gary Gygax was the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, which has been the target of many Christian groups (incl. Jack Chick) due to perceived occult themes.
  • This led to rumors that a Christian children's charity had refused a donation made in Gygax's name when he died. GenCon, the donators, later released a statement saying that this was a misunderstanding on the con's part. The charity never refused to take money from the con.

Western Animation

• Butch Hartman is a very devout Christian, but this didn't stop Christian Parenting Today magazine from criticising The Fairly OddParents! for being Anti-Christian and immoral due to use of magic. The other wiki has more info here.
• Mucha Lucha was criticized by some for supposedly stereotyping Mexicans. However, the show was partially made in Mexico and Mexican band Chicos de Barrio recorded the theme song (Mostly this was Non-Mexican Americans. In Mexico itself, Mucha Lucha was very popular).
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power got accusations of queer-baiting after ND Stevenson confirmed that Scorpia and Perfuma had become a couple but this not being shown on screen. This in spite of Stevenson himself being openly queer and Adora (the series' lead character) being in an openly queer relationship.
• Some rather Hate Dumb elements of Steven Universe‍'‍s viewers accused series creator Rebecca Sugar of being a Nazi sympathizer/fascist apologist given the Diamonds' Heel Face Turn. Rebecca Sugar being a non-binary Jewish woman descended from Holocaust survivors. It was because of these experiences that Sugar made the whole point of the show be Rousseau Was Right.
• The Family Guy episode "Extra Large Medium" famously had Chris date Ellen, a girl with Down Syndrome. Ellen's mother is implied to be Sarah Palin whose son famously has Down Syndrome. Despite all the controversy this caused, the actress who voiced Ellen, Andrea Fay Friedman, has Down Syndrome and was sought out so Family Guy‍'‍s depiction could be as accurate as possible. When Friedman heard of the controversy, she told Sarah Palin to grow a sense of humor.
• There have been instances where South Park‍'‍s Hate Dumb have accused the show of normalizing antisemitism, despite the fact that series co-creator, Matt Stone, is Jewish and Eric Cartman and other antisemitic characters are clearly shown to be in the wrong.
• The first season of Harley Quinn had many critiques of antisemitism levelled against it owing to a variety of Jewish jokes and stereotypes being employed. Yet most of the production staff is Jewish themselves. To their credit though, they have lowered the amount of Jewish jokes from Season 2 onwards following these complaints.