A Rabbit By Any Other Name
In Rhode Island a school superintendent has banned the use of the term Easter Bunny at a local event, saying that it is a Christian symbol and therefore exclusionary. He suggested using Peter Rabbit instead. Political Correctness doesn't get much more insane. Somehow this bonehead has missed the whole point. Easter is Christian and therefore exclusionary. But my problem with it is that this numbskull gives Political Correctness an even worse black eye than it already has, and I think that's unfortunate. There's always a bigger picture than the parochial, myopic one most people see, and in this case it's the simple fact that PC forces us to take a look at the myriad ways society adopts terms and customs that just happen to be exclusionary, and that often do make some minority groups and individuals uncomfortable. It would be nice if it led to some collective consciousness raising about the ways people celebrate themselves while trampling on the feelings of others, and a willingness to take a hard look at certain practices, but that rarely happens, and part of the fault lies with the lunatics who go too far. What's next, some nut case who wants to ban the Fourth of July barbecue because eating hot weiners sends the wrong message to our children?
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:37 AM
6 Comments:
>>What's next, some nut case who wants to ban the Fourth of July barbecue because eating hot weiners sends the wrong message to our children?<<
And right they would be! Eating weiners has a decided homo-erotic connotation, whereas the bunny is a symbol of uncontrolled fecundity. While we are at it, I think it’s time to examine other suspicious communist-inspired national holidays: Mother’s Day is a feminist plot to discriminate against men; Arbor Day is propaganda for tree-huggers; Ground Hog Day celebrates a rodent who is given license to come out of a hole and return to an indolent life should he not see his shadow. Surely no decent Judeo-Christian or peaceable Muslim would want to send such a message to impressionable teenagers. God Bless America!
Okay, so what about Veterans' Day? A slap in the face to Rosie the Riveter and all those ladies who stayed home and kept the factory fires burning. And since you mentioned in, prof, my mother adamantly refused to allow us to recognize Mother's Day. "You're supposed to be nice to your mother every day," she said.
>>Okay, so what about Veterans' Day? A slap in the face to Rosie the Riveter and all those ladies who stayed home and kept the factory fires burning. <<
John,
What you may have forgotten is that when the Great War was over Rosie the Riveter and her sisters put out the home fire and willingly let men return to their jobs. Did Marilyn Monroe, who worked at the Lockheed aircraft plant, insist on staying on, displacing a well-deserving veteran? No, MM moved on to become a starlet, even a star; she married Joe DiMaggio and the man who wrote “Death of a Salesman,” whatever his name was.
American women of our generation have forgotten the great lessons of their mothers, grand-mothers and great grand-mothers.
“Don’t stay on in the factory, marry a sports star or an artist.”
While this may well be an example of PC ad absurdum (Too bad the Easter Bunny couldn't be the genesis of a lively lesson on vernal equinox fecundity symbols and fertility myths, for example.)I nevertheless tend to defend a superintendant's or anyone else's right to identify their anthropormorph by whatever name they desire. Call him Englebert Rabbit for all I care.
An even greater absurdity is the politician from that district who consequently authored a bill banning the nominal secularization of any traditional Christian symbol, such as holiday tree in lieu of Christmas tree. An utterly unenforceable and frivolous law! If I have a severed shrub in my house at any time of year, I reserve the right to call it any damn thing I wish. Gladys has a nice ring to it, I think.
All of this took me back to one of my earliest thespian gigs, portraying the Easter Chicken at a shopping mall. The fraying plastic-feathered suit was oppressively hot and afforded little clear vision of my surrouindings. After a few hours of sitting for pictures with the kiddies and explaining to them that the Easter Rabbit was, regrettably, otherwise engaged, I stumbled to the Orange Julius stand for an emegency infusion of liquids. Unfortunately, a nearby three-year-old observed Mr. Chicken strutting about with his head under his arm, and the resultant screams resonated with the likelihood of permanent emotional scarring. Even at the then respectable compensation of $20 per shift, I declined to return for day two.
>>Call him Englebert Rabbit for all I care.<<
Or Harvey? At 6 foot that rabbit was unseen to everyone in the world but Elwood P. Dowd. A perfect symbolic Lagomorph for these troubled times.
Oh you guys are too funny! Interesting that the general public is immune to the absurdities in our traditional, (and evolving) festivities. What a nutty world we live in...
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