Even LAT Annoyed By Latest PC Posturing Over Kindergarden Thankgiving Pageant

As Shatner said, "Get a life."

The Shat is wise in all things.

Conservative commentators are no doubt blowing kisses in the direction of UC Riverside professor Michelle Raheja, whose odd interpretation of oppression has given them endless fodder for discussion and mockery. Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School in Claremont, was outraged at the school's traditional Thanksgiving pageant, in which kids from Condit and kids from nearby Mountain View Elementary dress up as either Indians or Pilgrims and visit the other school for a feast. After Raheja wrote a letter to her daughter's teacher likening the event to "asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis)," the school board held a hearing on the issue and decided to hold the event without the costumes. On Tuesday, the day of the feast, the exchanges at Condit between parents supporting and opposing the costumes grew so heated that the parents had to be separated by police.

These people do outrage like gorillas do hostility displays. Hoot a lot, punch the ground, puff out your chest, bare your fangs. Dance about like a retarded monkey.

Although there are many annoying things about this monkey-like behavior, three of the top ones must be:

1) The ostentatious manner of displaying one's putative greater morality and enlightenment, never passing on a single opportunity to make a preening spectacle of oneself. Meanwhile, the rest of us just want to get through the day without being bothered, and without being forced to pay attention to the political equivalent of a flasher.

2) The eternal presumption of being an instructor in a neverending series of "teachable moments." Usually the deal is that if one wishes to be taught, one signs up for classes and chooses a teacher. Not with these people. They choose their classroom -- that would be you -- and sign themselves up as your moral and political instructor.

3) And of course the thuggish determination, arising from that ugly, worst-of-all-worlds mixture of overweening vanity and contradictory feelings of inadequacy which can only be mollified by even greater displays of egotism, to impose their will on others. And, as always, one strongly suspects the pretext for the imposition of their will, their control, is irrelevant; they would be just as happy bullying people to accept the sky is pink, so long as at the end of the day they had people knuckling under them.

Fuck them all.

And Happy Thanksgiving.

More Like This: A Canadian student association has voted to drop cystic fibrosis research as a charity. On the grounds that the disease isn't "inclusive" enough, as it mainly affects whites, and men.

Which, by the way, they're wrong about.

But let's assume it was true: Shall non-gay non-minorities stop donating for AIDS causes? And go a step further and start demanding the government stop funding such research? After all, doesn't help us.

This is truly vile -- deciding some victims of serious diseases are better off being left to their fates because of their unfortunate skin color or gender.

posted by Ace at 04:03 PM

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