Last week outside the calendar office at the Linn County Courthouse, I happened to overhear a conversation between jury manager Tammy Chance and a pleasant gentleman whom I gathered was a member of the Mennonite faith.

btw, I wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping. I was just standing outside the door, waiting for one of Tammy’s colleagues to look something up for me, and I couldn’t help but catch the gist of what was being said:

Linn County Mennonites could be excused from circuit court jury duty on religious grounds if they provided a letter from their pastor.

I was moderately curious about that, so after the Mennonite chap left I asked Tammy about it, and she confirmed that what I had thought I heard was in fact true.

Reasoning that the average DH reader was unaware of the jury exemption, I decided to do a little story. I interviewed, in addition to Chance, Pastor Paul Smucker of Brownsville Mennonite Church and Presiding Judge Rick McCormick and put together this article.

As news editor Kim Jackson placed the story on the front page, he asked me about a headline.

“Try to work in ’12 angry Mennonites,’” I told him. “Something like, ’12 angry Mennonites? Not in Linn County.’ If Hasso likes it, you can take credit for it. If he doesn’t and you have to change it, you can blame me.”

Somewhat surprisingly, editor Hasso Hering did in fact sign off on the headline, which most of us here in the newsroom thought was pretty clever and highly amusing. But the next day, I fielded the first of a handful of complaints.

“Why are you picking on Mennonites?” asked the caller, a man I would guess to be in his 60s. “Why are you saying they’re angry?”

I explained the headline was simply a play on the famous jury duty movie, “12 Angry Men,” and then was fairly stunned when he said he’d never heard of the movie.

“I think you owe an apology for the story and the headline,” he said.

“I appreciate your opinion,” I said, “but we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

“OK,” he said, “but at least you heard my complaint.”

“Yes, I did.”

The next morning, I had another call that went along those same lines, only lasted about four times as long. I was just about to use my standard complaining-and-redundant-conversation ender — “Well, it appears you’ve made all the points you cared to make, so I’m going to thank you for your call and say goodbye now” — when the caller reached the same conclusion and said goodbye to me instead.

I emerged from these two phone calls, and a letter to the editor in the same general vein, with a couple of thoughts:

– Conservative Mennonites may be a fairly humorless bunch, which is of course their right.

– They aren’t all that up on movies, which is also their right.

Thus did one of my colleagues remark: “If they’re going to live in a cave and not know what’s going on, then they’re going to have to accept that they don’t know what’s going on.”

I’m inclined to agree with that. Myself, it seems like part of being a culturally literate American is to have at least a passing knowledge of famous movies, places, sports figures, songs, etc. You don’t have to know a lot about them, but you ought to know, for example, that it was Jackie Robinson who broke baseball’s color barrier.

Anyway, what do you think: Is the “12 angry Mennonites” headline funny and clever, or offensive?