Canada's self-styled "national newspaper", the Globe and Mail, is one of the chief practitioners of political correctness, second only (in that country) to the CBC. Recently, however, they ran an editorial -- "The threat of political correctness, real and imagined" -- commenting on an Angus Reid survey which revealed that the overwhelming majority of Canadians polled think political correctness has gone too far.
The irony of the oh-so-PC Groan & Wail questioning its goodself was not lost on the majority of those who commented. (Gotta give the Globcredit for at least allowing comments.) Someone who posts under the pseudonym "ForsterBarry" put up this rather lengthy piece, which Walt thinks deserves to be reposted in full. It's the PC version of Aesop's fable of The Grasshopper and the Ant.
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears as support on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green". ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing "We shall overcome". Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper, while he damns the ants. President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the Grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts The Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his freeloading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food, while the government house he is in -- which you may recall just happens to be the ant's old house -- crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighbourhood. The entire nation collapses, taking down the rest of the free world with it.
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