Throughout history, clowns, jesters, and court fools have had a valuable role in mocking what others are afraid to mock. But, among the new puritans of Seattle, some things are just too sacred to be mocked -- like the civil rights movement of the '60s. As some student clowns at Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts found out:
"In their clown characters, the three portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as "half-witted simpletons," said the offended students. In one scene, King begins his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, then admits to having forgotten the rest before he is shot. But it was the performers' depiction of the 1960 sit-in at Greensboro that proved most offensive.
In the historic incident, four black students forced the issue of segregation by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter in a Woolworth's store and attempting to order sodas, coffee and doughnuts. In the Cornish rendition, the students who saw it said the performers greeted each other with "Homey G, whaddup?," ordered fried chicken, chitterlings, black-eyed peas, watermelon and fruit salad, and declared, "We're not goin' 'til we git some.""
Source
You can guess the sequel -- "The entire theater department also met and later participated in a diversity-training session" etc. Christians routinely put up with all sorts of mockery and abuse, of course -- much of it coming from exactly the same sort of people as those who were "offended" in this case.
Another report of the matter here
"Racist" Billboards
The Missouri Corn Growers Association wants to plug ethanol as a substitute for gasoline. So it put up some billboards that depicted a farmer next to the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia accompanied by the question: "Who would you rather buy your gas from?"
Muslim organizations claim that the billboards are anti-Arab and hence racist. The farmers are not taking the billboards down. More here.
Depicting Vietnam Offensive
Members of the fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha at the College of William and Mary are having a party. And, as in previous years, its theme will be the Vietnam War. It is of course a fancy-dress party and features bamboo huts, camouflage costumes and 1970s rock music -- all things that were in fact present during the war.
So what's the problem? The "sensitive" brigade think the party is making fun of Vietnamese culture:
"William and Mary senior Nam Ly, who is Vietnamese-American, said she and other students were upset when they heard about the March party from fliers that told communists to stay away. "They decorate their unit with a bamboo hut and things like that, and then they deem it the 'Vietnam Party,' " she said. The party equates her heritage to a bamboo hut, she said.
Source
And the killjoys have won. The fraternity is going to "re-theme" its party.
French Manners and Asian Customs Clash
I am not going to say a lot about this as it is only marginally a free-expression issue but I thought it might be interesting nonetheless:
Few Americans are probably aware of it, but traditional British and American ideas about table manners clash in some ways. What is right in one country is wrong in the other (how and when you eat your salad, for instance). And the Chinese consider us all to be barbarians for not using chopsticks. And Indians of course think we miss half the pleasure of a meal by not eating with our hands. So it does not do to be too dogmatic about what it "right" at the table.
They seem not to to have learnt that lesson in Montreal, however. Filipinos also have their own way of eating. They use a spoon a lot more. And some poor little Filipino kid got told by the invigilators at his school canteen that he ate "like a pig" for eating that way and got disciplined for it. He was made to eat on his own, which upset him.
This has of course caused a huge uproar, with the Philippines ambassador being involved and the matter all over the newspapers in the Philippines. The school is trying to spin their way out of it but the fact is that a little kindness would have helped the kid a lot more than the authoritarian treatment he actually got. Details here
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