Happy Father’s Day.
On YouTube, the first comment on this video is from someone who writes, “It’s a grate song.” Yeah, THAT guy had one hell of a father…
1. Bored with statue-toppling and honor stripping yet? Obviously the Hun and Vandals aren’t. Here in the D.C. universe, George Preston Marshall the original owner of the Washington Redskins who was the NFL’s version of Cal Griffith, lost his statue two days ago when the D.C. government pulled it down after protesters had vandalized it. Mayor Bowzer is one of the Democratic mayors who are actively enabling the protests. Of course, with statues being indiscriminately being toppled now, the gesture is increasingly less meaningful. Woodrow Wilson, the white-supremacist, racist President who spread the Spanish flu around the world by sending infected troops into Europe when he sent the U.S. into The Great War for no discernible reason, and who then planted the seed for World War II by sitting by and allowing the victorious English, French and Italians inflict devastating punitive term on Germany as long as he got his pet project, the League of Nations, into the Versailles Treaty, will have his name removed from buildings by Monmouth University and Camden, New Jersey. A private college in West Virginia announced last week that it is removing the name of the late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd from its health center. The Democratic Byrd may have been a reformed KKK member, but he also brought many millions of dollars into rural West Virginia, thus explaining the proliferation of his family’s name there. Surely you heard that protesters in Liverpool, England, want to rename Penny Lane of Beatles song fame, because a Liverpool man with the last name of Penny was a slave-trader. Was the street actually named after him? No, there’s no indication that it was, but hey, any association with the name Penny now has a “connection” to racism, so let’s see how far this goes. Penny candy! Penny arcades! Penny loafers! Penny, Sky King’s niece on the old TV show!
Meanwhile, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, the owned of Eskimo Pie, now says the name is “derogatory,” and that it will be changing the product’s name and marketing. The head of marketing told CBS News. “We are committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality, and recognize the term is derogatory.”
This is yet another example of the Niggardly Principle. The term Eskimo, according to the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, actually came from the French word esquimaux, meaning one who nets snowshoes, like what Arctic peoples do. Never mind: the rumor started that the term was racist because racist Europeans used it. I highly doubt any native Inuit people are offended by the name of the ice cream bar. In fact, many Native Alaskans still refer to themselves as Eskimos, in part because the word Inuit isn’t part of the Yupik languages of Alaska and Siberia. Is it racist when they use it?
Losing its famous brand will almost certainly eliminate the product, costing business and jobs, but apparently it’s worth it for the company to signal it’s virtue with a move that can’t possibly have any salutary effect on racial equality whatsoever.
“Madness. Madness!”
2. Res ipsa loquitur. According to a survey, only one of the top 100 universities in the United States chose a Republican to speak at its commencement address. Although there were speakers from politics, business, entertainment, and media, there is a lack of political representation in all of the choices for commencement addresses, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s scheduled address to Miami University-Ohio students was the only one representing any conservative view or diversity in speaker politics. No member of the Trump administration was invited to speak at any of these schools. Senior Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump, invited to give an address at Wichita State University Tech, was once going to be the lone exception, but she was later dropped after protests. In contrast, of dozens of commencement addresses were delivered by members of the Obama administration, including 15 in 2015 and 11 in 2016.
3. An ethics brownie point for “The Hunt.” “The Hunt” is a genre mash-up film that was spawned by “The Most Dangerous Game.” Also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff”, “The Most Dangerous Game” is a 1924 short story by Richard Connell about a big-game hunter from New York City who falls off a yacht and swims to what seems to be an abandoned and isolated island in the Caribbean, where he is hunted like a game animal by a crazy Russian aristocrat. The story became a favorite inspiration for screen writers, first as the 1932 RKO Pictures film “The Most Dangerous Game,” then an 1943 episode of the CBS Radio series “Suspense,”starring Orson Welles. Since 1932 it has been the basis of at least eleven movie adaptations set every place from the mean streets of LA to other planets, and nearly 30 TV series episodes in shows ranging from “Have Gun Will Travel” to “The Simpsons” to “Criminal Minds.”
“The Hunt” set out to use the theme to satirize the extreme polarization and mutual hatred between progressives and conservatives in the U.S. An insane social justice warrior recruits like-minded foes of “deplorables” and devises an elaborate scheme to kidnap a dozen conservatives (the talk radio host, the conspiracy theorist, the obligatory big game hunter, the combat veteran, etc.) and drop them on her rented estate in Serbia, where they are hunted using automatic weapons, grenades, land mines, drones and spies.
To the film’s great credit, both sides are mocked with equal vigor. I could detect no bias for or against either group, which except for the lone survivor, are equally ridiculous. (One of the deplorables, right before he is murdered, is told in an angry scream by his “woke” killer, “And climate change is real, YOU ASSHOLE!”
“The Hunt” had bad luck: it was pulled from Paramount’s planned opening last Fall after a spate of mass shootings, and opened in theaters just as the pandemic was shutting them down. I found it to be excellent, if bloody, satire that was non-partisan in intent and played no favorites. Imagine..unbiased political satire! What a concept!
Ethics Alarms 
“Eskimo”
I’m waiting for the shoe to drop on the American Eskimo Dog.
Happy Father’s Day to all the EA denizens (and to their significant others, without whom they would not be fathers).
This the 1st time in 65 Fathers Days that my Dear late Father OPA hasn’t been around.
No phone call to tell him the
my latest ribald joke (which he always felt a little guilty laughing at) and what time I’d be dropping off an equally ‘off-color’ card and a Special Export 30 pack.
While teaching me the value of money, he made sure I knew, in no uncertain terms, that I’d have to work for every dollar I expected to come my way.
He also made sure I knew the best reason for letting go of a dollar…was to get a better grip.
The rod (a sturdy…um…repurposed Flexible Flyer sled slat), was, early on, never spared in our household, and the Boss’ (plural) position was never to be questioned; never more than once leastways. Mercifully, we moved on from the Master-Servant relationship later on.
He was an Eat What’s Put In Front Of You’s kinda guy, and always relished whatever came from my, and my lovely and long suffering wife’s, Meals on Heels program, even offering to meet us halfway to ensure prompt delivery.
He was a career SANE (READ: Fair-Minded) Lefty, yet respected, if not embraced, the passion with which the only Conservative in his entire extended family made his cases.
He LUVED the fresh, organic produce issued from my garden, a gift he imparted early-n-often, but which took too long to take.
He was a friend when I wanted one, and a FATHER when I needed one; I’ll miss forever, but especially today!
I would like to have known him. Happy Father’s day Paul!
Thanks Paulie.
“I would like to have known him.”
You’d have had an IN; he’d have LUVED to hoist a Spotted Cow (one of his faves) with you!
OB; your being convinced my middle initial W stands for Wonderful notwithstanding, it stands for Opa’s 1st name, and that of his maternal Grandfather-n-Great-Grandfather.
Fwiw, my mother is “Omie” to my children.
And my Dear 92 1/2 year old Mother is Oma to any-n-all.
My first grandchild was born 8 months ago, and I’m still deciding if I want to go by Oma. Although it’s likely he will end up choosing my name for me.
The fun insanity of the ripple effects of the history eaters. Eventually the “Monsters, Inc” franchise will have to be erased, as protagonist “Sully” is named at the suggestion of a Texas A&M graduate who worked for Pixar and worked in the nickname affectionately given by students of the university to the statue in the middle of campus of Lawrence Sullivan Ross. This statue is currently the epicenter of A&M’s own internal argument over statue toppling.
Pixar surely doesn’t want to be associated with that evil…
As an aside, I recently had to defriend someone on Facebook. A guy I had done theater with who is an illustrator for Pixar – and rabidly progressive. His rants on Facebook were so out of control as to be almost disassociative.
It’s frustrating how the hyper left happily ends friendships because their friends happen to discover (often accidentally) that they espouse something possibly close to conservative ideals.
I see so many times when people agonizingly have to cut people out of their lives because they are hyper left and just won’t shut the hell up.
Those on the right, often quiet about their beliefs, are chucked out of left wingers lives at the slightest whiff of traditional ideas. Those on the left…? So friggin loud and obnixious and unpleasant with their opinions that finally conservative friends just can’t enjoy a simple friendship with them.
And it is so unnecessary. I have had debates with two other friends on FB recently. While both exchanges were civil, the only agreement we came to was to meet for a cocktail when all this virus crap is over. Interestingly, others commented that they not only enjoyed reading a polite debate but that they came away having learned something. * sigh *
We also recently watched The Hunt and enjoyed how it was equal in making fun of both political tribes (I can still say that word right?). Plus the big fight scene was pretty fun.
My dad died two years ago. He wasn’t around much and I have few memories of him. The last place I ever saw him at work was at a drug store and diner named Snyder’s in Minneapolis. Years ago Snyder’s became an Auto Zone. It was in fact the Auto Zone that was the first broken window and fire that started all these riots. He and I used to walk up and down Lake street and pretend to be explorers. So many of those buildings are now gone.
I wonder what he as a Southern black man would have thought of all this. I’m glad he is at peace. I won’t allow what memories I have of him to be ruined.
Happy Father’s Day to you too Jack! And also to the commentariat.
And now I have a movie to close down the day.
Cheers!
Wishing a happy Fathers Day as a “dittos Alex.”
3. My wife asked me just this morning: “How will they ‘re-name ‘brownies’?”
That stumped me. Now, at this late hour, I could think of only a few:
– Dessert Of Color?
– Africake?
– Sweets Of Power?
– Whitey Bait?
And the idiom, “b______ points,” surely will have to be replaced with something less misogynistic (and suggestive of a kiddie porn dogwhistle).