I’m not kidding.
This story has convinced me that the obsessions of the woke-infected have no limits. Hold on to your skulls…
The American Ornithological Society announced yesterday that it will remove human names from the common names for birds to create “a more inclusive environment for people of diverse backgrounds interested in bird-watching.” It is expected that around 80 birds in the U.S. and Canada will be renamed, the announcement says.
Wait, what?
It seems that this political correctness movement among bird brains began in 2018, when a college student named Robert Driver proposed renaming the McKown’s longspur, a small bird in the Central United States was named for John P. McKown, who collected the first specimen of the species in 1851. Ah, but Driver’s research revealed that McKown was insufficiently psychic about what causes would be deemed acceptable in a hundred years or so, and thus he fought Native American in the Seminole Indian in 1856, then participated in an expedition against Mormons in Utah in 1858, and worst of all, became general in the Confederate Army. Driver’s crusade was rejected at the time, because…well, it was stupid, to be blunt. The bird was named for McKown because McKown first spotted and identified it. His politics, positions on Indian relations and military exploits have exactly nothing to do with that distinction. 99.99% of people who hear the name “McKown’s longspur” don’t know or care who McKown was, or what he did in the Seminole War, nor should they. Driver—I’ll have to check to see what wokeness indoctrination factory he got his degree from—was just a bit ahead of his time. His ilk hadn’t started toppling Thomas Jefferson statues yet.
What changed since 2018? USA Today “explains” that in the spring of 2020, a white woman in Central Park called the police and falsely accused black birder Christian Cooper of threatening her after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. (I most recently wrote about this wildly inflated incident here.) After that, in Minneapolis, as the paper’s crack journalists tell us, “police killed George Floyd.” (Don’t get me started…) “By August of 2020, the society was looking at things differently,” we are told. Of course! Why wouldn’t a spat between two jackasses in Central Park over dog-walking etiquette and the cynically exploited death of an overdosing lifetime petty criminal who was resisting arrest prompt bird fans to slap themselves on their foreheads and realize, “It’s time to rename that longspur!”?
And that’s what they did: Driver’s 2018 proposal was reconsidered—Black Lives Matter, after all—, and McKown’s longspur was renamed the thick-billed longspur. (Reportedly, the birds were thrilled. Most of them are Mormons, you know. ) Then, catching feathered woke fever, other birders and ornithologists began calling for re-naming of birds whose names are “associated with past racism.”
I swear I’m not making this up.
So, to recap, because George Floyd took too many of the drugs he was addicted to and was breaking the law by having, and a brute Minneapolis cop didn’t have the sense to stop restraining him when he was in obvious distress, and a scamming Marxist organizations of anti-cop, anti-White racists made sure the police involved were tried and convicted in defiance of their due process and fair trail rights…80 birds will get new names.
Makes sense to me!
And because the society doesn’t want to get in debates over exactly what kind of irrelevant conduct, statements or opinions about matters unrelated to ornithology mandates removing the honor of having a bird named after someone, all human names are getting scratched. This makes approximately as much sense as tearing down all statues so there’s no controversy over which statues to tear down.
One hopes that the bird-watching community is rarefied enough and sufficiently isolated not to spread its insanity elsewhere, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Watch: someone will discover that British astronomer Edward Halley (1656-1752) didn’t advocate the elimination of slavery and said mean things to his gay son, so now his comet will be renamed “That Thing That Comes By Every 75 Years or So.”
Oh…regarding Scott’s oriole: Naturalist and ornithologist Kenn Kauufman told USA Today that the “vocal outcry, mostly from younger ornithologists and bird conservationists” convinced him to change his mind about the political correctness purge. Translation: he, like so many others, doesn’t have the guts and integrity to resist woke mob bullying. “At a time when the bird community was trying to become more inclusive,” Kaufman mused, the names of some of the birds might be a “barrier.” Sure. “This bird, I find after meticulous research, was named after someone who was a racist in the 18th Century, when everyone was a racist, so I guess I won’t enjoy watching birds any more.” A perfectly natural and logical reaction. “If you have a bird named for a person who was an avowed white supremacist, who preached the inferiority of Black people and it’s found mainly in the South, if people research the history, they’re going to find it offensive,” Kaufman added. USA Today then enlightens us: “One example often cited is the Scott’s oriole, named for Winfield Scott, a military general responsible for the Trail of Tears.” It’s an example that illustrates the absurdity of the whole exercise.
Scott wasn’t “responsible” for the Trail of Tears: he had no say in the matter. President Andrew Jackson was the instigator of the forced removal of the Cherokee in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court; President Van Buren executed it, and Scott was ordered to carry it out as a general being commanded by the Commander in Chief. Even the link provided by USA Today doesn’t back up the claim that Scott should be punished for The Trail of Tears. But he’s a perfect example of how unfair and deranged this re-naming policy is.
Scott served his nation in three major wars and several smaller ones. He ran for President on an anti-slavery platform, was not a slave-holder, and was the first Commanding General for the Union in the Civil War, appointed by Lincoln. Tarring him as a “white supremacist” any more than any other white male of his time is despicable: he didn’t “preach” the inferiority of black people. The ornithologist who named Scott’s oriole did it to honor an American patriot and public servant, just as Hoover Dam is named after another distinguished public servant.
One reason the woke mania is, bird-like, taking off in all directions is that journalists, fatuous and under-educated ideologues that they (mostly) are, applaud the foolishness without providing competent and balanced analysis.
Ethics Alarms 
I swear I’m not making this up.
Dave Barry’s favorite tagline.
If only this were funny.
I caught that too. (I was not sure if Jack was deliberately making a Dave Barry reference.)
However, with Dave, you knew it wasn’t true-he did make it up.
Oh for the good ol’ days.
-Jut
I’m not sure if it’s possible, but we may have to come up with a term that is beyond “The Great Stupid.”
At least the City of Los Angeles’ name should be safe from cancellation/change. It was NOT named by a White man.
Los Ángeles means the angels in Spanish. The city was originally a pueblo founded and named by the Spanish with the full name of: “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula,” which means “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola.”
“Should be safe”, but one can never be sure in today’s overhearing climate. On the other hand, the white man did steal the land from the Mexicans, so it’s been told.
Yes, but who did the Mexicans steal it from?
Nope. Spaniards mistreated indigenous peoples, stole their lands, crushed their religions, and killed them off with illnesses. Talk about colonizers. Spanish is toast.
jvb
It strikes me that so many of these crusades seem to be about soothing the insecurities and neuroses of a very small demographic – and I’m not talking about racial minorities. Take the current episode as an example: you have to be pretty extensively educated to be able to recognize a McCown’s Longspur on sight. You also need an above-average historical education to know who McCown was and what charges might be laid at his door. Birdwatching also suggested considerable leisure time and access to natural spaces. In short, it isn’t kids from Baltimore, graduating high school with 3rd-grade reading skills, dodging bullets on the street, who are likely to see McCown’s name as any sort of barrier.
Actually, the root cause of mass, uncontrolled immigration is a direct result of which drug cartel gets naming rights for newly discovered bird. It’s true. Really.
jvb
Wasn’t this organization previously named the Audubon Society and was changed for Audubon’s past misdeeds of owning slaves?
There are a lot of buildings bearing the name of serial philanderer Martin Luther King or the racist Malcolm X. As for the latter, his attitudinal change later in life cannot erase his earlier hostility against whites.
People need to be careful of the rules they want us to play by.
The national organization is still Audubon—some of the local affiliates dropped the name.
Update: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/thomas-jefferson-could-lose-his-plant-over-slave-ownership/ar-AA1jnWOF?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=ee2092ba47e44e8dea0f050f4b4f08d8&ei=18
A plant named after former President Thomas Jefferson may be renamed after the International Botanical Congress (IBC) meets in summer 2024.
The American Ornithology Society (AOS) said on Wednesday that it would rename all bird species in its jurisdiction that were named for people regardless of the name’s history. The announcement came after birdwatchers have debated bird names for years, specifically ones that commemorate historical figures who committed acts of racism. The decision comes as numerous organizations reexamine landmarks, statues and other objects named for controversial figures.
Plant name changes could be next as the members of the IBC meet in Madrid next July. Scientific plant names are governed by the International Code of Nomenclature. Rules regarding the naming of plants will be reevaluated during the congress’ meeting, which convenes every six years.
Meanwhile, various proposals have been crafted that would modify the rule system for naming plants, particularly when it comes to ones named after controversial historical figures.
Changes could impact the twinleaf, a type of flowering plant that grows in more than a dozen states in the eastern United States. The twinleaf’s scientific name is Jeffersonia diphylla, named after Jefferson, who is a controversial figure in American history known for being a slave owner. Jefferson reportedly grew the plant in his gardens at Monticello, his primary plantation in Virginia, the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported.
Me: Gee, I did not know that being a founding member of a group that created a nation that is a beacon of hope for humanity can make you controversial. Sounds damn Marxist to me.
I don’t suppose I could write in and ask them to change the Canada Goose? It’s unpoliteness is not very Canadian and just gives us poor Canucks a bad name.
Our foreign policy face needs all the help it can get.
But then what would you call all of the goose poop on the putting greens if you cant call it ‘the Canadian Air Force on a bombing run’…
The medical community tries to drop names from procedures, medical conditions, etc all the time, and I take solace in the fact that it often doesn’t stick. We can only hope that American Ornithological Society has a limited ability to force their name changes upon other authorities on the subject.
Came across an article about this maybe a year or so ago, and thought then, ‘What idiocy’. But, no need for me to get too worked up about stuff I can’t control. I got into a fairly substantial ado with a close family member a few years ago, when Obama was raising a fuss about the name ‘Redskins’. My secondary point at the time, tongue in cheek, was that there were very many teams in need of a name change. Oilers, damaging the environment, should be Houston Solar Panels, for example. Buccaneers, promoting mayhem, maybe TB Clean Waters. The Flighting Irish, promoting violence, maybe go with Drunken Irish, oops, no, that wouldn’t work, maybe 40 Shades of Green Irish. Warriors, nah, lets go with Peace Lovers, and so on. Main point — Obama went after Washington because he wasn’t getting the love and financial support from the owner. Well, that point went nowhere.
So, birds, yeah. A lot of them named for persons who do not have completely woke backgrounds, so, name those birds for something else and disregard the reason for the original name.
The headline pretty much says it all. Birders are almost all, tedious, obsessive/compulsive, earnest, boomer-aged, virtue signaling, essentially kooky, orthodox lefties, so this is not really surprising. They’ll all have to change the names in the books they register what birds they’ve seen. Or, God forbid, they’ll have to buy new books. We have lots of birds where we live, and we use Sibley’s guides. I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy new ones with the stupid names.
Four (4) years ago, the “Hurley (WI) Midgets” mascot was removed and replaced by Northstars because WOKE downstaters were triggered
Always one to champion the struggles of the dutifully offended, I humbly alerted the Iron County Miner (Published Weekly-Read Daily!) that it was high time to begin ‘review processes’ for select other Wisconsin HS mascots: The Altoona Railroaders, Ashland Oredockers, Clintonville Truckers, and the Manitowoc Shipbuilders;
Altoona Railroaders;
-Railroads are made from steel, are powered by coal/gas/oil/electricity (torn from the bosom of Mother Gaia**), and carry coal/gas/oil**. They also symbolize sprawling western expansion, and displacing Native Americans.
+: Post-modern Neo-Liberals think trains are the answer to, well, pretty much everything. (SEE: CA Bullet Train)
++: They transport critically important commodities like Brie, Chablis, Wheat Grass Tea, and bicycling accoutrement.
Ashland Oredockers;
-Ships/Tankers (see: Manitowoc Shipbuilders) are made from steel/petroleum by-products**, are powered by evil coal/gas/oil/electricity** (sometimes EVIL Nuclear) and carry coal/gas/oil**. They also can be tied to the Slave Trade & U.S. Imperialism.
+: If they’re involved in Eco-Tourism, they’re granted a pass.
++: They transport critically important commodities like Brie, Chablis, Wheat Grass Tea, and bicycling accoutrement.
Clintonville Truckers;
-Trucks are made with steel/petroleum by-products**, are powered by gas/diesel/oil/electricity**, and carry coal/gas/oil**.
+: Funny mudflap designs.
++ They transport critically important commodities like Brie, Chablis, Wheat Grass Tea, and bicycling accoutrement.
+++: They deliver the Iron County Miner!!
Manitowoc Shipbuilders;
-Ships/Tankers (see: Ashland Oredockers) are made from steel/petroleum by-products**, are powered by coal/gas/electricity**/(sometimes EVIL nuclear) and carry coal/gas/oil**, can be tied to the Slave Trade & U.S. Imperialism, and are loaded at (see: Ashland Oredockers)
+: They employ Union workers who earn a living wage and vote democrat.
++: They transport critically important commodities like Brie, Chablis, Wheat Grass Tea, and cycling accoutrement.
The woke must see these names are EVIL personified and destructive to the ENVIRONMENT.
As a pro-environment and woke citizen, these sobriquets offend me. If I’m offended, everyone else that’s as nice as I think I am must be offended as well. They must be removed and replaced with something that won’t distress tender sensibilities
Helpful alternatives include, but are not limited to:
Altoona “Save-The-Tunas.’
Ashland “No-More-Ore.”
Clintonville “Hillaries.”
Manitowoc “Ewoks.”
PWS