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TONGUE TIED ARCHIVE
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November 12, 2005Christian Cross not Allowed as a Logo
Note the following news excerpt:"A group called "Athletes United in Christ" sparked parent complaints at a Delaware high school assembly when it tried to promote a religious concert. The presentation at Newark High School in Newark, Del., was held with the purpose of encouraging students to make the right choices in life. Two parents complained about the Christian group, which handed out fliers about the concert and displayed its logo, which has the word "Christ" and a cross on it. The school immediately apologized"Read on and you will see that the group did NOT preach Christianity. It just had a cross and the name of Christ on its literature. If a Christian group is providing a social service, why cannot it advertise itself as Christian? When big firms make charitable donations etc, they are pretty keen to let it be known who it was that did the donating! But despite all that, the fact that the very sign of a cross was "offensive" to two lulus trumped everything. I rather hope someone one day gives the lulus something real to be offended about. I think such whiners obviously need something to whine about.
Weak Excuse to Diss Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day or Armistice Day is observed in the British Commonwealth and various European countries (including France and Belgium) to commemorate World War I and other wars. As with Veteran's day in the USA, It is observed on November 11 to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918. And selling remembrance poppies on the day is part of the tradition. So why would the following have happened?
"A group of [British] war veterans has been banned from selling remembrance poppies in part of a shopping centre - after their stall was branded a fire risk. The Derby branch of the Burma Star Association has set up a stall in the city's Eagle Centre for several years. But complex bosses said the group were unable to do the same thing this year for health and safety reasons.Anything to do with the military drives the Left into hysterics -- witness their constant opposition in the USA to the ROTC and allowing military recruiters onto college campuses. So my guess is that this was just a bit of pandering to the British Left.
Only in California
U.S. thriller writer Dean Koontz has been labeled a racist for referring to a Japanese executive as "Mr. Teriyaki" and referring to Japan's surrender during World War II at a California conference of mystery writers, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Koontz was retelling a story about his efforts to have his name removed from a film version of one of his books and the letters to he wrote to the Japanese head of the studio making the movie, whom he referred to as "Mr. Teriyaki."
"My letter of 10 November has not been answered," one of the letters read. "As I am certain you are an honorable and courteous man, I would assume your silence results from the mistaken belief that World War II is still in progress and that the citizens of your country and mine are forbidden to communicate. Enclosed is a copy of the front page of the New York Times from 1945, with the headline, 'Japan Surrenders.' "
Another suggested to the Japanese executive, "We could have a few sake and reminisce about the Bataan Death March."
Wherefore Art Thou
The Liverpool Echo reports that paintings of wedding scenes have been removed from a civil registrar's office there so as to avoid offending gay couples who have registered to wed there when a new goes into effect next month.
The pictures -- one of Romeo and Juliet and other showcasing a heterosexual couple -- are being replaced with landscapes that are "less likely to offend," says Register officer Janet Taubman.
Civil partnership ceremonies will be allowed in municipal offices throughout the UK beginning December 21.
'Profiling' Redefined
Bloomberg reports that following the Katrina disaster in America, federal officials refused requests from state officials in Alabama and elsewhere to conduct background checks on evacuees out of fear that they might be considered racist.
State officials in Alabama asked the Homeland Security department to check evacuees who were moving into state- and federally-financed temporary housing.
But in an email, the department's security adviser in Birmingham said such background checks might be viewed as racist. He described the checks as a ``potentially explosive issue given the existing race/class issues.''
Somehow, Waters reasoned that doing background checks on every evacuee ``gets you into the realm of profiling.''
One Small Defeat for Political Correctness
I have mentioned here previously the heartburn that has been caused in certain breasts over the name of a Texan town called "White Settlement". Well, It looks like that heartburn will have to continue. Press excerpt:
"The biggest victory of the night went not to the Republicans or Democrats but to the proud citizens of White Settlement. Nine out of ten voters in the tiny Texan town rejected a move to "modernise" its name to West Settlement. The town was named in plainer-speaking times by a band of pioneers who wanted to show that their town was a haven from hostile American Indian attacks in the 1840s".Comments? Email John Ray
Artistic License
A college in Illinois pulled a photo exhibit featuring Muslim women after some on campus complained that it unfairly portrayed Islam and hurt the feeling of Muslims on campus, according to NBC5.
The display of photos at Harper College in Palatine by Amir Normandi, himself a Muslim, featured images of women in traditional clothing, but with a twist -- prison bars instead of a hijab, for example. Normandi said he wanted to make a statement about the conditions Muslim women live in.
Muslim students on campus complained, however, and school officials removed the exhibit. "I felt awkward when people were asking me, 'Oh, is this how you treat your wife? Is this how you treat your sisters and mother?'" said Asad Kahn, the president of Muslim Student Association.
Too Christian
An annual service held in London to honor victims of violent crime has been told that it is too Christian and must diversify in order to continue receiving state funding, according to the BBC.
The UK's Home office has been providing œ2,000 a year in funding for the service at St. Martins in the Fields church, but officials are said to have expressed concern about the venue and the Christian content (aka hymns) of the service.
"I am concerned that this service could be seen as a Christian service and could therefore exclude parts of the community that would benefit from attending a memorial service," a government official told organizers.
Every Year ...
The editors of the student paper at the University of Virginia were forced to defend themselves against charges of racism after some on campus were offended by an editorial cartoon featuring Thomas Jefferson and slaves.
The cartoon, intended as a critical comment on the origins of the school's honor code, features in the first panel two white students wondering about the origins of the code. In the second panel, Jefferson is pictured expelling a slave from his plantation for stealing tobacco.
"Of course, this is not historically accurate," the editor said. "It was not intended to be. The intent of the artist, as he has confirmed with us, was to criticize both Jefferson and the honor code. It was in no way intended to be derogatory toward black students. The outrageous claim that Jefferson created the honor code because of slavery was purposely absurd."
The paper's ombudsman said it was inundated with complaints from students who said the strip was racially insensitive.
PC or Common Sense?
Players in a 45-year-old minstrel show in Scotland have stopped painting their faces black for fear of being brought up on criminal charges for "portraying racial stereotyping," reports the Scotsman.
The Black and White Minstrels have been performing in Arbroath for 45 years. This year's show is the first time they have appeared under an alternate name, the Angus Minstrels, and without the customary black and white painted faces.
The group made the changes after being approached by the head of cultural services for the local council, who said it had a received a complaint.
Sandy McFarlane, the last production manager of the Black and White Minstrel Show shown on the BBC from 1958 to 1978, said the show represented a harmless form of entertainment which had been "hounded out of existence" by political correctness.
"I have always thought the suggestion that we, or the Arbroath group, offended black people to be a load of rubbish - it always seemed to be white people who were most vocal in complaining about us," he said.
Dreadfully Sorry
Police officials in the UK are in a heap of trouble for publishing what's being described as an offensive and sacrilegious illustration in an article about overly sensitive law enforcement, acccording to the BBC.
The illustration in the Police Federation magazine shows officers taking their shoes off outside a mosque, as a bearded man escapes clutching bags of explosives.
The cartoon was described by the editor of the magazine as an effort to mock the force's advice that officers to remove their shoes before entering Muslim properties, but some officers called it an insensitive stereotypical portrayal of Muslims.
The editor apologized.
Can't Go There
An opinion piece in the student newspaper at Winthrop University in South Carolina has prompted what's being described as deep consternation on campus and prompting debates about the nature of the free press, according to the Rock Hill Herald.
The writer apparently had the nerve to question the preferential treatment afforded African-Americans on campus and compare today's racial climate for whites to the oppression blacks faced before the Civil Rights movement.
"We no longer hose people in the streets," the column said. "I'd say if you have the freedom to sit in a classroom and state those opinions, you've got it pretty well."
Students on campus were so infuriated that they immediately called for a rally and the administration convened a forum to discuss the column.
Homolexicology
With a presumably straight face, NY Times columnist William Safire this week explains the ever-changing 'homolexicology' that editors and faithful readers of the Gray Lady must adhere to in their use of the language.
"Apparently," Safire writes. "in writing about people who are homosexual, the word gay no longer covers both men and women. It seems to me that the usage is now the specifically inclusive gay men and lesbians whether the distinction is useful or not."
Diane Anderson-Minshall, executive editor of Curve, a lesbian magazine in San Francisco, helpfully explains: "Interjecting the word lesbian into the mix is a necessary reminder that we - gay women - are not simply a subset of that larger male world but rather our own distinct community of individuals."
Safire also says that use of the term 'homosexual' as a noun is no longer acceptable. That's partly because of the prefix homo's Greek origin (in Greek it means "the same;" in Latin, it means "man"), but also because the term has in the past been associated with deviance and mental illness and therefore has a negative stereotype.
The word also has an undue emphasis on sexuality, he writes, when everyone knows that being gay is not about sex. It's about attitudes and culture, Safire says. But most certainly not "lifestyle, of course."
Core Values
The crusade against Christmas lights in the UK continues, with news from the Sunday Times that another local council has pulled the plug on holiday displays because they are too Christian.
The Waveney council in East Anglia will consider cutting its annual œ10,000 funding of festive light displays in half next year and eliminating it altogether in 2007.
Continuation of the program, according to a report prepared for the council, would "not fit well with the council's core values of equality and diversity."
A Cry of Despair
I have just received the following email. I thought people here might like to read it."I am a fifteen year old girl and I am currently attending my last year in school. I think this country/society has gone mad in what I nickname the PC world. I do not think that people realise where it went wrong. While talking to people you realise that they do not like political correctness either but are too afraid too say anthing because of the politically correct society we live in.
The society does not realise how it affects children and young people. In school it is very difficult for anyone to say a comment or express an opinion without getting accused of being racist, prejudice, homophobic etc. The political correctness issue has made other issues such as racism or any form of xenophobia escalate and become impossible to deal with. For example in school I have been called 'milky bar...white sugar etc...' but if i were to call someone 'chocolate bar...' etc I would be punished harshly, quite rightly, but the other indidvidual would not. They may be told off but I being white would face harsher punishments such as facing suspension from school.
You cannot state another person's colour or religion without being accused of being a racist. Even though I am only fifteen, I know that I am not old enough to have faced all of life's experiences, but I have seen how society has changed over the past few years. When I was younger there was never a problem, my parents, aunts, uncle and their friends (who all happen to be in there fifties) have all stated that it has never been bad as it is now and I agree. I am not a racist person and I do actually believe, whether people agree with me or not, that people no matter what their colour or religion deserve equal rights. I have many friends from different races and religious backgrounds and have never faced any controveral issue with them. I realise that because I am young people will not take notice of what I have to say but society has to realise that it has to change its ways or our way of life may become 'corrupt'. A bit extreme I know but young people are the future and if it does not change we could be stuck in this politically correct world forever."
Comments? Email John Ray
Mocking Mohammed a Deadly Sin but Mocking Mary OK
What a contrast we see below. Excerpt:"Islam is no laughing matter. The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten is being protected by security guards and several cartoonists have gone into hiding after the newspaper published a series of twelve cartoons (view them here) about the prophet Muhammad. According to the Islam it is blasphemous to make images of the prophet. Muslim fundamentalists have threatened to bomb the paper's offices and kill the cartoonists....The affair, however, has also led to a diplomatic incident. On Thursday the ambassadors of eleven Muslim countries, including Indonesia, a number of Arab states, Pakistan, Iran, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, complained about the cartoons in a letter to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. They say the publication of the cartoons is a "provocation" and demand apologies from the newspaper....
Meanwhile in Brussels a young Muslim immigrant published a poster depicting the Virgin Mary with naked breasts. Though the picture has drawn some protest from Catholics (though not from Western embassies, nor from the bishops), this artist need not fear being murdered in the street. On the contrary, he is being subsidised by the Ministry for Culture."
An infantile versus a mature attitude is what I see there.
Canadian Pro-Life Journalist Survives Ban Attempt
Even he was surprisedAll over giving out a bookmark. If he had distributed a PRO-abortion bookmark that would have been OK of course. Press excerpt follows:
"In October Kennedy was informed that he had offended some of his fellow journalists after he distributed a pro-life bookmark in their mailboxes. The bookmark featured the famous picture of the out-stretched hand of baby Samuel as doctors were performing surgery in utero. He was told by press gallery president Alan Findlay that they were considering rescinding his part-time membership and expelling him from the group... But he and Interim editor-in-chief Paul Tuns both prepared defences of Kennedy's right to represent the paper at Queen's Park. Kennedy argued that he was being expelled for his pro-life views and defended his presence at the press gallery along freedom of expression and freedom of the press lines.... Although the proceedings are confidential and it cannot be reported who said what, Kennedy told LifeSiteNews.com that the case to expel him broke down quickly as many other members of the media found the punishment heavy-handed....To satisfy Kennedy's critics, a compromise was settled upon during the one-hour meeting. Kennedy is allowed to remain as a part-time accredited journalist but will receive a written reprimand for what the gallery considered inappropriate activism on his behalf. The wording of the reprimand has yet to be decided. Furthermore, Kennedy has agreed to no longer distribute pro-life literature, including The Interim Newspaper, in the mailboxes of the members of the press gallery although he will be allowed to leave a quantity of them in a common room at the press gallery".
So pro-life journalists are second-class citizens who have to be subject to special restrictions. No free speech in Canada!
