County fair officials in Alabama are scrambling after receiving complaints that a vendor is selling an offensive product in full view of children and other impressionable citizens. The complaints revolve around a cotton candy vendor and how the shape and visual effects of the candy conjure up painful images of shirtless and whip-lashed slaves toiling in the hot, sun-baked cotton fields of the south.
Sarcasm? You bet. But take this example of real life hyper sensitivity.
https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/community-residents-outraged-over-40-ounce-water-bottle-packaging-its-offensive
Yes, an activist group “working with at-risk youth” (cause it is all about the kids, right?) are complaining about the shape of a water bottle being marketed. It is, after all a 40-ounce bottle, and the whiners complainants say that the bottle is intentionally shaped like a beer 40-ounce bottle, also known as a bomber. The group feels the shape of the bottle perpetuates negative stereotypes about black communities, as well as has the potential to promote alcoholism among children.
“That history is of high alcohol content, cheap liquors that were sold and heavily promoted through rap music and all kinds of marketing and entertainment,” community member Christine Gilliam told Yahoo Lifestyle. “It is a big part of the demise of a community that already feels it’s under attack. So that, in turn, leads to alcoholism. But their behavior is emulating that of these people that are consuming alcohol. And it’s like a precursor.”
“Ounce Water sets a daily goal to consume 80 ounces of water, so we provide 20 [ounce] and 40 [ounce] bottles to make that math simple,” McDermott told Yahoo Lifestyle. “The design of our bottle is an old-school nod, and is meant to take something that once was part of poisoning people (malt liquor) and instead fill your bottle with health and life. We are taking a negative and turning it into a positive, and we don’t market the shape of our bottle, strictly market the math and hydration benefits.”
The community, however, has argued the packaging is “detrimental” and “traumatizing.”
“We get the water, we get the count of the ounces, but we don’t like the packaging — it’s offensive,” Gilliam said.
There it is, the magic “o-word”. It’s offensive. To this person, or that small group of leftists. Therefore, whatever it is must be abolished or changed regardless of the nobility of intent, or effectiveness of result. I don’t like it. I think it is offensive to people who don’t think so, and don’t care or use the product anyway. But because I make enough noise, you will retool your plant, or the retail outlets will be pressured to not sell your product. You will do as we want or we will boycott you.
Here’s the inconvenient part that the activist group and Christine don’t want you to know or acknowledge.
It isn’t just those under privileged, vulnerable black folk who have marketed for them, bombers. Sure, the stereotype has blacks drinking Colt 45, Olde English 800, or Steel Reserve. Unfortunately, Bud Ice, Pabst, Milwaukee’s Best, Little Kings (a Cincinnati favorite of mine) and Rainier, even Coors and Miller are sold in 40s. So it isn’t just a black thing. It’s a YOU thing. You think that the shape of the bottle should be offensive to minorities, therefore it must be.
So fragile are they in their place in the world. So fortunate are they that you exist to pervert some ethnocentric perception with your presumptive arrogance so that you can speak for them and become their unneeded or wanted protectorate. Get over yourself. Go find a productive job. At the very least, shut the hell up.
This is just another in a long, endless list of examples whereby we see people rising each morning physically straining themselves to find something to be offended over. Once they find it, I can picture them actually smiling in euphoria as those bathing in the rush of the high brought on by their shot of outrage kicking in.
I recently received and read the latest Imprimis, the reader distributed by Hillsdale College, Volume 48, Number 2. In it, Roger Kimball states that at Yale University (Yale!) they recently formed two committees. The Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming, and a Committee on Art in Public Spaces. In the first committee, people scour the college grounds looking for something, anything that has a politically incorrect name. The second group monitors works of art or other images on campus making sure that none of the current favored groups (Muslims, usually) is offended.
There are two more examples of people spending the hours of their day frantically in search of something that a non-white, Christian group would find offensive. They then bring all forces to bear to have the blight cleansed.
Consider this. An infinitesimally small group of George Washington University students (538 of over 26,000, or two tenths of one percent) signed a petition calling for the name of the school mascot be changed. See, the George Washington looking life-sized muppet, is known as a Colonial. Anything doing with the Colonials or colonists is automatically bad and must be purged.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-washington-university-students-push-to-do-away-with-extremely-offensive-colonials-nickname
“The name Colonials is being stripped of its own historical meaning and wrongly treated as synonymous with ‘colonialism,” said George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley. “Not only were the colonials not a manifestation or celebration of colonialism, they were the very symbol of resistance to colonialism. They fought the British Empire to secure self-rule. In doing so, they defeated the greatest world power of its time. They are, he said, by definition the antithesis of colonialism.”
Alternative monikers that have been bandied about include “Hippos,” “Riverhorses” and “Revolutionaries.”
I can’t see them using “Hippos” with the implied fat shaming the image conjures. And if they change it to “Revolutionaries”, won’t George have to be swapped out for Che Guevara?
Amy Martin, a student government senator who sponsored the resolution to change the name, called the term “extremely offensive.”
Ding, ding, ding! There it is again. Amy feels that other people should be offended by her interpretation of “Colonials” and thus, she is going to force others to bend their will to her way.
“A ‘Colonial’ is an actor of colonialism,” she said. “Even when we hear people say colonials are just people who lived in colonies, we have to consider how those colonies were set up and who lived there before [and] who was kicked out so the colonists could move in.”
Those dastardly colonists displaced peace-loving natives from their land. Therefore NOTHING they accomplished in the decades and centuries following matters. No doubt, ole’ Amy is a northeastern white chick who hates the success her father amassed managing a group of under privileged immigrants. She probably showers only weekly and refuses to shave her armpits in solidarity with the working class of some third world, uh, well, armpit.
But she has managed to get a position of “prominence” on a school advisory board or Senate of some sort. And, by God, or Allah, as the case probably is, she is going to make her mark there as her degree in women’s studies is not going to be so marketable in the world AOC has planned for all of us.
It seems to be a wheel, and a small wheel at that. Roger Kimball described it as “a vocal minority, claiming victim status, demands the destruction, removal, or concealment of some object of which they disapprove.” These people do not consider a day complete until they find something that “should be” offensive to some minority group and feel it their personal mission (not a holy one, of course) to foist their vision of righteousness and social justice on the rest of us. Even when the group they proclaim to be fighting for feels no slight or takes no offense. The fact is, they should. They just don’t know they should.
Until these people are fought openly and vibrantly, they will continue. I look forward to doing my continued part.