Captain Me Planet

This is so over the top ridiculous that I’m not sure I can even say anything about it. Oh. I can. And I’m going to paragraph by paragraph, phrase by phrase.

P.C. rhyme turns sheep colors
Black wool out at British nurseries
Shelley Emling - For the Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

London — Has anyone ever actually seen a rainbow-colored sheep?
Um, no. Of course NOT. Unless maybe one was painted up for a Gay Pride Day, or something.

Teachers at nursery schools in Oxfordshire have asked children to change the words of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” to “Baa, Baa, Rainbow Sheep” to avoid the possibility of offending anyone.
Are they freaking serious! What person of any color would ever be offended at mentioning a typical color of any animal? I’m offended that anyone would mention the White Tiger. Stop it. Stop it right now. I’m calling the ACLU. Help. I’m being offended. Call it a RAINBOW Tiger. And what about the Red Ruffed whatever-this-is (that doesn’t actually seem to have any red on it)…Should any person of Indian, oops, Native American descent be hurt? Feel slapped in the face? I’m sure they should. And someone should tell them they should if they don’t.

“This type of thing is definitely happening in all parts of the country,” said Laura Midgley, co-founder of Britain’s Campaign Against Political Correctness. “This makes an issue about the color black when there should not be one.
Um, DUUUUH.

“It’s just a color at the end of the day,” she said.
Another big DUUUUUUUUH.

As in the United States, the removal of alienating or potentially offensive words is part of a political correctness drive that has gained momentum in recent years across British society.
If you want a society that allows you to be who and what you are, then learn to take the lumps if someone disagrees. Some one will always disagree. What is that famous quote, “you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.” Get over it. Live.

Many argue that the power of words is underestimated and are pleased that more people seem to be showing sensitivity toward ethnicity and sexuality.
This is NOT sensitivity. It is lunacy. Now, if there were an old rhyme, or song that included slurs against a race, those that have been used to refer to black people, or at one time in our history Japanese, Chinese, Irish, you name it…that may be different. A word that is associated directly with hatred, prejudice and pain is different. A color is a COLOR.

But others wonder whether the desire not to offend anyone has gone too far.
Um, YES.

This isn’t the first time nursery rhymes have fallen victim here to the P.C. campaign. In 2003, the Mothercare store chain here began selling cassette tapes and CDs featuring a new version of Humpty Dumpty in which there was a happy ending.
Now, I may actually be speechless. Nope. I’m not. Who the heck is offended by Humpty Dumpty never being put back together again? Should Old Yeller be rewritten? A vet races in at the last minute with an emergency rabies serum, and the boy and the dog play ball into the sunset together? Or God forbid we let Dumbo actually be separted from his mother when she goes all nuts and spanks that boy with her…WAIT! She spanked a boy! Well, that’s just plain old child abuse. It should be re-written out entirely! Disney should be ashaaaaamed (dark, condemning tone, here). So we’ll need to think of another reason they were separated, and then do something like co-confinement, so the heartache of 2 cartoon characters won’t warp the sensitivities of toddlers and young children across the world. Oh. My. G*d. In that movie, the crows have a black African American dialect and sing jazzy tunes. Write that out, for sure. And the little mouse that helps Dumbo is short, call the Association of Little People. Or Dwarves. I don’t even know what’s PC here. This entire movie is just an abomination.

The new version said that “Humpty Dumpty opened his eyes, falling down was such a surprise, Humpty Dumpty counted to 10, then Humpty Dumpty got up again.”
He. did. not. get. up. and count to ten. Because, now brace yourself all you little sensitive children, or young people, or adults-in-training, whatever you should be called, he couldn’t be put back together again. I know, I know, it’s so hard. You’re traumatized now. Some self-esteem building and role play or drawing young person therapy is now in order.

“The political correctness campaign has been going on for some time, but we are seeing more of it these days than we have in the past,” Midgley said.
She and others say this latest desire to not offend by getting rid of “black sheep” is ludicrous.
THANK YOU, one smart and reasonable person out there. What’s your phone number, I think there are only about 11 of us left.

The nursery rhyme dates back to the mid-1700s and is related to a tax imposed on wool by the king that divided receipts equally among the local lord (the master), the church (the dame), and the farmer (the little boy). Black wool was apparently taxed at a lower rate than white wool.
Well of course, it referenced an inferior race of people (insert hugely sarcastic voice). It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that most likely, white wool was used more often, therefore, more in demand, therefore MORE expensive. So we definitely need to get that (I’m not even going to type it here) color OUT of the Baa Baa Blacksheep picture. Now.

The charity group that runs the nurseries in Oxfordshire, Parents and Children Together, said the changes to the nursery rhyme have nothing to do with race.
So then, whyyyyyy are we changing it?

In a statement, the group said it has established that the children at the nurseries would now sing a variety of descriptive words so that the rhyme becomes an active one.
And just singing different rhymes and songs isn’t interactive enough? At least they can fess up to the stupidity if they’re going to be it.

The children will be asked to sing “sad,” “blue,” “pink,” “black,” “white,” “happy,” “hopping,” and “bouncing” when describing the sheep in order to encourage the children to extend their vocabulary and use up some energy.
What if depressed people feel uncomfortable hearing about some sheep being happy? Or happy people feel unnecessarily pointed out? Or depressed people feel even more depressed when the word ’sad’ is used? I’m personally offended by the reference to white, being a white (or Euro American) person myself. Now where’s the ACLU when you need’em? The Easter Bunny might get mift over that ‘hopping’ thing, and I KNOW all baby boys around the world are going to wail at the mention of ‘bouncing’. And the ‘pink’? Not only a sure offense to the musician Pink, but most certainly some sort of identity theft. I’d call a lawyer.

Thank the good Lord that people are thinking and acting on just the right areas of thinking that will serve our very young persons for the future. Whew. I feel safer all the time. And to think of the pain Humpty could have caused millions of adults-in-training all around the world. Can we find and sue that wreckless poet? Oh. He’s dead? Then for sure we can go after his descendants. Some body get Alan Dershowitz on the line.