And The Stupidity Continues - Now Peanut Butter Is Racist

My grandson is allergic to nuts; violently allergic as it turns out and that necessitates being very careful when he’s around. When he comes to visit, everything with which he might come in contact must be sanitized before he arrives in case it came in contact with someone who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich for example. It is a serious allergy but a minor inconvenience for the delight of having him visit.

My grandson’s allergy has made me aware of the need for caution in places like schools and I don’t criticize schools for being careful and even banning peanut butter where there is a possibility of a child going into anaphylactic shock. It can be terminal.

Where I draw the line, however, is when the politically correct step in and decide something like a peanut butter and jam sandwich is a subtle example of white racism in language. 

And that is exactly what they did in Portland, Oregon.

In keeping with recent ‘equity training’, one principal has decided that peanut butter and jam sandwiches are an example of white privilege. It’s part of a training program known as "Courageous Conversations" that has been introduced into Portland schools over the past few years. Staff members at this particular principal’s school have been going through sensitivity training and various classroom exercises which include reading current articles in the news and then discussing them as an issue of “white privilege."

White privilege? It's a statement that takes my breath away. Only a politically correct mind, uncluttered by any semblance of rational thought would think to characterize something that was developed by an Afro-American as a symbol of white privilege. It's stupidity on a scale that threatens to make your head explode.

The idea that the children of some immigrant families to the United States might not eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches, or even sandwiches for that matter, is hardly a racial issue. It’s a simple cultural difference. The problem with wingnuts like these educators (and I use that term loosely) is that they never look beyond their own sanctimonious bias at the bigger picture. They're in too big a hurry to demonstrate their sensitivity and moral superiority.

They have way too much time on their hands!

What’s next, Kraft Dinner? This lunacy ranks right up there with those who accuse as racist, anyone who has the temerity to question President Obama's record before deciding whether or not to vote for him. There is no room for common sense when it comes to accusations of racism these days.

I don’t know what’s happening to education but it is overrun by idiots who shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions, carry scissors while they walk from one classroom to the next lest they hurt themselves and definitely not be allowed to come anywhere near our children.

What I really don't understand is why we continue to allow it to happen.

When they’re not marching in Canadian and American streets demanding outrageous salary increases (but only for the benefit of the children of course), teachers, and the education departments for which they work, are hard at work, developing the most bizarre and contradictory policies and programs possible. 

Some schools in Canada have banned Halloween while others have changed the name to Black and Orange Day. Some have banned costumers at Halloween while others have decreed that students can dress up but must wear costumes related to public service or public safety occupations. So much for the true spirit and heritage of Halloween.

Most schools in both countries now ban Christmas concerts, Christmas trees, Christmas cards, even the mention of Christmas although both Christians and non-Christians alike still actually know that the holiday is called Christmas.

In New York City, the Department of Education has banned words like dinosaur, dancing, evolution, divorce and, my particular favourite, bodily functions. Now there was a phrase that was threatening the fabric of society.

In Texas, the State Board of Education has decided to place Senator Joe McCarthy, a man who made witch hunts more than just fashionable, in a more favourable historical light while downplaying the contribution of people like Senator Ted Kennedy. Clearly there is no political bias there, only the best interests of students are being considered.

It is an animal show of stupidity by stupid people and it knows no national borders. It is spreading as easily as peanut butter on a piece of white bread (another symbol of white privilege and racism no doubt).

The educational system seeks to protect children from words like dinosaur but introduce them to adult concepts like sexual knowledge before they’ve learned tie their shoes, or for that matter, discovered the joys of puberty.

In this 21st Century, one would have thought that the ability to think would have been a criterion for teaching and administrating education, or at the very least, there would be a requirement for a modicum of common sense. Apparently not! No idea is too outrageous it seems. In fact, it appears that only the outrageous is even being considered. 

Fortunately, the morally superior educators in Portland have overlooked peanut butter cookies and Reeses Pieces.....for now (apparently they aren't racist) but they should be warned. I have drawn a line in the sand. I've had enough of this absurd nonsense and I am prepared to rally the troops and go to the barricades if they try to ban Kraft Dinner.

As for Ben, we’re concerned about his allergy to all nuts when he starts attending school full-time. I appreciate that there are still some good and committed teachers out there (pray God) but considering the growing number of nuts at the front of the classroom these days, Ben's health may be in serious jeopardy. 

There is already no doubt that his education will be.

RELATED POSTS

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Stupid

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/just-when-you-thought-it-couldnt-get.html

How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/sheep.html

Teaching Children To Achieve Mediocrity

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/05/stupidity-virus-is-spreading.html

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

Follow The Bear on Twitter: @maggsbear or connect on Facebook: Maggie's Bear

The Charter Of Common Sense

I have invited people in the past to write a post for this blog with great result. Each brought a unique point of view and sometimes certain poignancy to a topic that made each post well worth reading. I’ve invited a well-respected man to provide posthumously today’s post because I think what he said and wrote encapsulated the entire conversation in every area in which we are all participating.

It's a very short post but then he was a very thoughtful writer who was able to say in only a few words what most of us struggle to say in many. Ronald Regan referred to these 10 points as 'The American Charter' but I think of them more as simply a Charter of Common Sense.

Slaughter Of The Innocent

In the space of five days, Canada and the United States each  experienced terrible mass shootings rampages of senseless violence that are virtually impossible to comprehend.

In Toronto, Canada twenty-one people, including a three-month old baby, were shot at a barbeque in an inner-city neighbourhood. Two people were killed. In 1989, Marc Lepine entered École Polytechnique in Montreal and shot twenty-four people, killing fourteen women.

Yesterday, seventy-one people were shot in a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado; twelve were killed and memories of Columbine and Virginia Tech rush back with all their weight of needless death and horror.

These are moments that go beyond mere tragedy. They are horrific events that tear the hearts out of survivors and the families of those who were wounded or killed. Nobody touched by these moments of callous violence will ever be the same again nor will our societies.

You Didn't Build That - Somebody Else Did

Throughout the centuries there have been men and women who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own creativity, imagination and determination. They had access to all of the same things to which others had access but it was their vision determination to do something that set them apart.

Others saw the opportunities that presented themselves as a result and built on those original ideas or added complimentary services and products to what others had developed while the rest just stood by and watched.

It started when someone got tired of dragging heavy things around and started to develop an idea to make it easier. Nothing motivates innovation like inconvenience.

The Politically Correct, Multicultural Rocky Picture Show

I am part of a multicultural family. We are Caucasian, Asian and Black. We live in North America, Asia and Europe and we are Christian, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic. We are gay and we are heterosexual, young and old, liberal, conservative and apolitical. Our nationalities are varied. We are Dutch, Canadian, Japanese, Chinese, British, Nigerian, American and Pakistani. We are united as a family.

It works for us because we share the same values as people.

Some countries have tried with varying degrees of success to accommodate a similar approach to multiculturalism. Increasingly, those attempts are failing and the reasons why are fairly easy to figure out.

This Canada Day......perhaps.

Canada Day fireworks over the
parliament buildings

July 1^st is Canada Day and Canadians everywhere will celebrate it in fine style. Some will have already headed to the cottage to spend time with family and friends; others will be attending Canada Day celebrations that will be held in every city, village and dell across the country.

There will be bands, stage shows and crowds; barbeques, parties and fireworks. The Prime Minister and every politician in the country will show up somewhere to be seen, to be photographed and to be ignored by most people. The mayor of our city, who will go to the opening of an envelope if you invite him, will somehow manage to show up at dozens of events.

There Is Not Much That Is Progressive On The Left These Days

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child,
I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became an adult, I put away childish things.“

– 1 Corinthians 13:11

I am conservative by nature but not always by how I vote and throughout my life I have voted for both Conservatives and for Liberals. I tend to vote for whomever I believe demonstrates the most common sense at the time or failing that being an available option, whoever I believe will do the least damage to the country, the province or the city in which I live.

In my experience, both the right and the left have had their share of corruption, dishonesty, lack of vision and vested self-interest but lately it seems that it is the left that has become more disengaged from reality.

It has become fashionable, especially on the left, to declare that labels like right and left are dead. Whether that is true or not, a rose by any other name is still a rose and so is a pig. Part of the right in the United States now likes to call itself the Tea Party and in Canada, the right fled the Progressive Conservative label opting for Reform Party then the Canadian Alliance only to finally settle, just a few years ago, on a new name, The Conservative Party of Canada. It seems like an awful lot of effort to me just to basically arrive back where you started.

For their part, the left has sub-divided into a variety of labels including Labour Party, Liberal, New Democratic Party and Democrats but regardless of the various political party labels, the left has tried, by and large, to brand itself with the word ‘progressives’.

Teaching Children To Achieve Mediocrity

The most depraved type of human being is the man
without a purpose.

- Ayn Rand

I get up every morning and embrace hope. Honestly I do. I wake up, slowly I admit, but filled with the hope that this new day, I will not stumble over more stupidity beyond government stupidity to which I am pretty much resigned.

I woke up this morning with cautious optimism. I say cautious because I knew Occupy would be on the loose today and who knows what stupidity they’re capable of implementing.

My caution was well placed and my hope was dashed on the rocks of idiocy. No….it wasn’t Occupy, as hard as that is to believe. In fact, it wasn’t even government. It was amateur soccer.

What Ever Happened To Integrity?

(photo: defense.pk)

In Canada, there is a furor unleashing over the recent Auditor General’s report on the purchase of F-35 fighter jets. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been exposed for misrepresenting the true costs of the purchase while bureaucrats and military leaders have been exposed for outright misrepresentation and manipulation of ,and during, the procurement process.

This is nothing new. The previous Liberal government under Jean Chretien lied to get elected and worked overtime to hide the true facts of Adscam which saw millions stolen from taxpayers to line the pockets of Liberal bag men and supporters. People went to prison for that one.

Trayvon Martin - The Silence Of Selective Racism

For weeks, the mainstream media and the social media lynch mob have been all over the shooting of Trayvon Martin with accusations of racism. The narrative was that Trayvon Martin was the victim of a racial bias in America that saw blacks disproportionately victimized by whites. That narrative has been unraveling as more details are released by law enforcement.

Watch this video and then we’ll talk about interracial crime.

Sheep! How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

Merriam Webster defines stupid as: 1) slow of mind 2) given to unintelligent decisions or acts. Wikipedia’s definition agrees and adds a temporary state of daze or slow-mindedness and The Oxford Concise Dictionary adds to that, lacking intelligence or common sense.

And there you have it, the complete definition of democratically elected representatives and their appointees in day-to-day action.

I wrote a few days ago about the NYC Department of Education’s list of 50 words and phrases they are banning from tests which include such dangerous words as dancing, dinosaur and my particular favourite, bodily functions. It takes such a singular and focused stupidity to come up with a policy like this that I thought it was unique to NYC but I was wrong.

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Stupid

In a world filled with great and terrible challenges, there are still those in authority who are so bereft of common sense that it is a wonder they can dress themselves in order to go to work. We're drowning in a sea  of bureaucratic and government stupidity. Some days  I think my head is not only going to explode but it is a signal of the end of civilization as we know it. I thought, however, we had pretty much reached the highest level of stupidity possible and it really couldn't get any worse than it is now......

,,,....but I was wrong.

Happy All Inclusive, Politically Correct Halloween

"A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore." -Terry Brooks

When I was a kid, life was full of magic. Santa Claus was a mysterious but benevolent being that was actually able to travel world-wide in less than one night. He brought us toys and really was able to climb down chimneys even when we didn’t have a chimney in our house. Pragmatism was never allowed to get in the way of magic.

But as magical as Christmas was with its bright lights, music and general spirit of good will, nothing said magic like Halloween.

Halloween was the stuff of legends.

Ghosts and goblins came out on Halloween. At school, our classrooms were decorated with cutouts of witches and pumpkins and ghosts. We got to dress up in costumes that we thought made us look heroic or scary. We went door-to-door in our disguises to get treats from our neighbours believing in our hearts that they didn’t recognize us. Always on the edge of where we trick or treated, in the shadows near the bushes were the “for real” ghosts and goblins. It was magical and we reveled in it.

Today is Halloween and it should be full of that same magic, that same fun and mystery that we all experienced as kids but it isn’t. Like so many other things, it has been captured by the politically correct and beaten into a pale imitation of what it once was.

I live in Canada, home of the free, the brave and the ridiculous.

In some schools, children are not allowed to wear costumes even as some retailers and even some banks are encouraging their employees to dress up. In one particular school, the children will be allowed to wear costumes but they must wear costumes that represent some form of caring. Ghosts and goblins and witches are banned. Only costume that are indicative of caring will be allowed. It makes me wonder how the politically correct will deal with a kid who shows up dressed as a hooker.

Another school has banned costumes but is encouraging its students to wear orange and black. It discourages the word Halloween and would like children to consider today “black and orange day”.

There is a small but oh so very sincere movement in the country to move Halloween to Saturday night regardless of the date. (It’s more convenient apparently). Isn’t that sort of like celebrating Christmas when the mood strikes you?

We live in a world gone mad but it isn’t those who protest, terrorize or criminalize our society that are the biggest threat, it’s the politically correct and their ridiculous ideas. They aren’t improving our societies; they are taking the fun and the magic from them.

Who cares if there is a little mystery and spookiness in Halloween? It’s All Hallows Eve, the night when the spirits of the dead come back according to legend. Pumpkins are carved to keep the spirits from our door and to keep us safe. Sure it’s legend and sure we’re civilized now but so what. It’s still magic and what is life without a little magic?

I’ll tell you what it is. It’s politically correct, pigeonholed ideas and it’s boring. It’s as boring as sitting in a human rights tribunal watching them agonize over how to penalize someone for saying something that hurt someone else’s feelings. It’s a boring as listening to a Canadian senator make a complete ass of herself by proposing to change Canada’s symbol from the beaver to the polar bear. It’s a boring as reading a PETA document and even more boring than filling out your income tax form. At least that has an element of danger to it.

We don’t need saving from the world by the politically correct, we need saving from the politically correct who have no magic in their lives.  We need to defend our institutions, our traditions and our language from those who see everything as a threat. Perhaps we should take a page from the current protest movement and Occupy Halloween or better yet, Occupy The Politically Correct.  We’ll camp on their lawns and chant terribly rude phrases until they give up and go away.

Until that time, Happy Halloween or as the politically correct would say: “Happy All Inclusive Black & Orange Celebration Day” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?


© 2011 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others.

More Politically Correct Language

We continue, as a society, to try and sanitize our language until it is virtually meaningless. We disguise the serious nature of an issue behind softer language designed to moderate the intensity of the issue it describes. I find it amusing and ironic that at precisely the same time that we are using more and more politically correct language to hide the truth, we are using what used to be considered distasteful language more frequently and more casually than ever; language once thought too rude for general use.

Schyzophrenic Language

I'm tired of writing about the Ontario Provincial Election (I'm actually tired of thinking about it if you want to know the whole truth). I need a break from it so I'm not going to write about it until after the leader's debates. Instead, I'm going to write about Jasper.

I've mentioned my dog Jasper more than once in this blog and if you have read my previous posts, you will know by now that Jasper is an 8-year old Springer Spaniel with way more energy than I have and more than a modicum of common sense. He doesn't speak much having a limited vocabulary that is comprised of a few barks, growls and the occasional woof but despite the minimalist language, he can communicate quite effectively, especially with his eyes.

Language I Won't Be Using Here

I love words. They're a passion of mine and I admire the great writers who use words like a painter uses colour. Leonard Cohen and Harper Lee are two of those writers. Margaret Atwood is another. They're understanding of the value of a single word is incredible. It's almost embarrassing that we could take a language that gave us Shakespeare and T.S.Elliott along with so many others...and demean it until it is virtually meaningless.