Don't confuse me! I'm a girl!

Walt regrets not having space for a larger copy of this ad, which appeared earlier this week in Canada's National [sic] Post. Just click on the ad to enlarge it to a readable size.

This ad, already being panned by the LGBT critics, is directed at next week's election in the province of Ontario. The suggestion is that if the McGuinty Liberals are re-elected, Ontario kids will have the "OKness" of homosexuality and the LGBTQ and other perversions thrown at them as early as Grade 3, following a curriculum first proposed by former Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

Ms Wynne, a well-known fancier of sushi and sensible shoes, was shuffled into another portfolio following a public outcry over the new pro-queer curriculum. However, she is standing for re-election as Member of Provincial Parliament, and if her party gets back into power, who knows.

A press release from The Institute for Canadian Values, the sponsor of the ad, asks its 52,000 members and like-minded citizens to call on the leaders of the three main parties contesting the Ontario election to commit to removing age inappropriate gender teaching from the school curriculum.

The ICV's President, Charles McVety, said parents across Ontario are outraged children are still being taught these subjects while being forced to do gender role plays and make posters for Gay Pride parades.

If you're an outraged Ontarian, click here to read and sign the IVC's petition. And don't forget to pass it on to other like-minded -- read "straight" -- people.

"Bless you!" - not in Calilfornia!

Quick now. What do you say, without even thinking, when someone sneezes? "God bless you!" Right? No. Not right -- that is, not politically correct -- in Steve Cuckovich's classroom in Vacaville CA.

The teacher has banned his students at Will C. Woods High School from saying "bless you" -- even if God's name isn't invoked --when someone lets one rip. [You need to make it clear you're talking about a sneeze! Ed.] He has gone so far as to lower students' grades if they let a blessing slip past their lips.

And get this. Mr. Kookovich says it has nothing to do with the political correctness plaguing California even more than the rest of the once-Christian country. Here's how he explains himself.


OK, so he's a wingnut. California is full of them. There's a nation-wide network of ultra-PC teachers. [Are you talking about teachers unions? Ed.] And Mr. Cuckovich has since been forced to lift his policy. So who cares?

Well... let's not forget that, while banning "bless you" is certainly a bit extreme, "public" schools in North America and Europe have been forced to phase out religious -- read "Christian" -- artifacts and dress for years now.

France, having banned Christian symbols from its state schools over two centuries ago, outlawed Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from in 2004. In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Italy to remove all crucifixes from schools. (Italy appealed and won, so the crucifix remains, much to the dismay of the secular humanists.)

In 2002, New York prohibited Nativity scenes from its public school system, while an Ottawa school gained notoriety in 2007 for dropping the word "Christmas" from a rendition of "Silver Bells".

The campaign of the liberals and "progressive thinkers" -- exemplified by Teacher Kookovich -- continues. If this kind of thing outrages you, do what the parents of Vacaville did. Say something! Don't hold your tongue when people are being punished for expressing even a mild belief in the existence of God.

Book review: P.J. disappoints

At one time, I was a big fan of P.J. O'Rourke. His writing for National Lampoon -- particularly the 1964 High School Yearbook -- was both highly satirical and hugely funny. His earlier books, notably Holidays in Hell and All the Trouble in the World, made me LOL. They served up of humour, with a side of political commentary. Good stuff, with lots of fun poked at American society and American culture for relish.

At about that time -- the 1980s -- someone called P.J. a "Gonzo journalist", so he started trying to live up [or down? Ed.] to Hunter Stockton Thompson's image. Perhaps the person who hung the tag on P.J. was thinking of "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink", a March 1979 National Lampoon article, since republished twice. But that piece was derivative, clearly inspired by HST's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Being inspired by someone is one thing. Emulating the source of your inspiration is another.

[Get to the new book, please! Ed.] OK OK! My point is that when O'Rourke was trying to be funny, with political and social commentary a secondary goal, he usually succeeded. But when he decided to make political and economic analysis the main point, with humour used as a polemical device, he didn't fare so well.

Parliament of Whores and, more recently, On the Wealth of Nations, were neither funny nor politically effective. Sort of like when Norman Lear got the religion of political correctness. All in the Family was never the same afterwards.

Now we have Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010). I only chanced on it at my local library this week. I don't recall seeing it reviewed or even mentioned in passing in the lamestream media. Perhaps that's because there is very little to be said for or about it.

This latest opus is little more than a collection of quotes from other works on politics and economics, strung together at considerable length. O'Rourke helps himself liberally (in the sense of "freely") to the expressed thoughts of the great classical writers, such as John Locke (really!), Thomas Jefferson and Jane Austen (more really!). Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776) gets no fewer than nine citations in four pages, and that's just in one chapter.

So my first quarrel with this book is that a large part of it was written by others. P.J. must thank God that copyrights don't last forever. O'Rourke himself says, on the first page, that his book "is not too original, and I mean that in a good way. Nothing is worse than a too original political theory..." But Walt doesn't demand original thinking, only original writing.

It wasn't enough for P.J. to rehash the thoughts and words of others. Oh no. He quotes himself too, time and again, ad nauseam. To justify doing so, he quotes (will it never end?) Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Imagine the author of the excellent piece of advice, 'Know thyself', never alluding to that sentiment again." And, says O'Rourke, "I've used that before too, in The CEO of the Sofa".

So, gentle reader, if you've read Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, Eat the Rich, and/or On the Wealth of Nations, you can safely give P.J.'s latest "opus" -- and I use the word in its loosest sense -- a pass.

Don't read, let alone buy Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards. It will just encourage P.J. O'Rourke.

Saudi women, don't drive to the polls!

In case you haven't been paying attention to the news from Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah announced on the weekend that, as part of a policy of "reform and opening up", Saudi women would at last be allowed to vote...effective in 2015.

They will even be permitted to stand as candidates for election to what passes in Arabia for a parliament. Presumably their election posters won't feature photos because, errr, what would be the point?

Meanwhile, Associated Press reports today that a Saudi woman has been sentenced to ten -- count `em, ten -- lashes for driving a car, in defiance of the kingdom's ban on women drivers.

Shaima Ghassaniya was found guilty Tuesday of driving without the government's permission. No laws prohibit women from driving, but conservative religious edicts have banned it. [Sounds sensible to me. Ed.]

Who were Amos 'n' Andy?

Amos 'n' Andy was one of the first radio comedy series, written and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, two whities who had ebonics down pat! The show ran as a nightly radio serial from 1928 until 1943, as a weekly situation comedy from 1943 until 1955, and as a nightly disc-jockey program from 1954 until 1960.

A television adaptation ran on CBS-TV from 1951 until 1953, and continued in syndicated reruns from 1954 until 1966. Ed. has found a clip from the TV version.



You can find the rest of this episode on YouTube. Search "Amos 'n' Andy" and look for "Call LEhigh 4-9900".

The show was a victim of the "civil rights" movement of the 60s, but radio and TV episodes are still floating around. Since the demise of Amos 'n' Andy, African-Americans have, of course, been portrayed on TV with sensitivity and extreme political correctness, as in such shows as The Jeffersons and Good Times.

What's "ebonics"? What's an "end-man"?

Following up my first post of the morning, to save you checking with Wikipedia, here's what you need to know.

Ebonics (from the words "ebony" -- like the magazine -- and "phonics" -- like "old learning") is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from African slaves. Since 1996, Ebonics has primarily been used to refer to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a dialect distinctively different from Standard American English.

AAVE is the politically correct term for what used to be called NNE, "Nonstandard Negro English". "Ebonics" was coined in 1973 by social psychologist Robert Williams, formerly a Negro but now an African-American. His intention was to give a name to the language of African-Americans that acknowledged the linguistic consequence of the slave trade and avoided the negative connotations of other terms.

With all respect to John McWhorter -- see previous post -- ebonics or AAVE or NNE or whatever you call it is non-standard English. God help the USA if public officials must talk "jive talk" to make themselves understood to the citizenry.

Speaking of jive talk... an end-man was a character in a black-and-white minstrel show, popular in the USA, Canada, and even in the UK in the 19th and 20th centuries. Blackface minstrelsy was the first distinctly American theatrical form. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was at the core of the rise of an American music industry, and for several decades it provided the lens through which white America saw black America. The Wikipedia article says: "On the one hand, it had strong racist aspects; on the other, it afforded white Americans a singular and broad awareness of significant aspects of black-American culture."


The end-men, in the picture, are the two performers sitting at the ends of the group. Traditionally they were Mr. Tambo (who played the tambourine) and Mr. Bones (you figure it out). They, and all the characters except Mr. Interlocutor (who was white) talked like Amos 'n' Andy.

I guess what they were speaking was "ebonics". If President Al aspires to reach that level, he needs more practice. If he'd been around 50 years ago, he could have joined a minstrel show. Sadly, minstrelsy, like Amos 'n' Andy, was killed in the 1960s, another victim of political correctness.

Does the Prez really talk like a [you know what]?

You probably didn't see Al O'Bama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on Saturday. Walt couldn't make it. But you likely saw a clip on TV or read the transcript.

Associated Press quoted the Prez of the Former Most Powerful Nation on Earth as telling African-Americans to "Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. [My emphasis. Walt] We are going to press on. We have work to do."

Woah! Did the Man really drop his G's like that? Maybe not. Other outlets cleaned up the transcript, making the relevant sentences read "Stop complaining. Stop grumbling. Stop crying." That's the way a college graduate would say it, right? Not to mention a senator or a president.

So why did AP use what a linguistics expert called an "interpretive translation"? On Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, African-American author Karen Hunter called AP's version "racist". [Gee. That didn't even take 24 hours. Ed.] Walt assumes she meant that the politically correct thing to do would be to clean up Al's speech -- specifically including the dropped g's -- so he wouldn't sound like an end-man.

But noted linguistics expert John McWhorter argued the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that dialect." [Emphasis still mine. Walt]

McWhorter argued that "Black English" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- is becoming the lingua franca of American youth, and that "America, including non-black America, loves that way of speaking."

Rumour has it that all candidates for the Democractic nomination will henceforward be required to demonstrate their proficiency in the USA's other language -- ebonics. Walt thinks the last contender who spoke really well was William F. Buckley, Jr.