Progress and Other Abnormalties

Random thoughts.

Progess is good. Without it, we wouldn't have boom boxes, car alarms aand automated telephone answering services.
But I've got to draw the line with the latest hairbrained scheme cooked up by the folks over at Disney,
When Disney debuts its latest Winnie the Pooh series "My Friends Tigger & Pooh," on TV next month, the character Christopher Robin will be largely replaced by a girl named Darby.
Never mind that Darby sounds like a name for a leprechan. Christopher Robin was the centerpiece of A.A. Milne's charming stories around which all the characters---Pooh, Tigger, Eyeore, Rabbit, Kanga---revolved. Indeed, Chrisopher, who Milne patterned after his own son, was the only human inhabitant of the 100-acre wood where their adventures took place.
And now, some 75 years after Christopher and his friends first appeared in print, some chick suddenly barges in? Do I smell the unmistakable arorma of political correctness wafting over this whole affair?
What's next? Robin Curuso?
British author Hugh Fraser put it this way: "For a girl to intrude breaks the spell of the story. They aren't her toys."

A protest movement at Bringham Young University? It's as rare as a 50-year flood but those are the kind of hackles that Dick Cheney can raise these days.
Students and faculty at the conservative Mormon campus want the administration to withdraw an invitation for the Vice President to speak at commencement this month.
Citing his involvement in faulty intelligence before the Iraq war and his role in the CIA leak scandal, critics at the school question whether Cheney sets a good example for graduates.
But just in case you thought BYU was becoming a hotbed of radicalism, the university limited student protest to sitting on the sidewalk and carrying signs.
Then, according to one blogger, "As soon as 1:00 hit and the time for free speech expired, after an impromptu performance of the Star Spangled Banner by the BYU Democrats, men from BYU dressed in suits and sunglasses with Secret Service-style earpieces roughly rounded up all of the signage and banners. "You'll be able to use it all again. We're just going to keep it for you. So you don't carry it around campus, we'll take it to a safe place until the next designated protest."

Don Imus is an idiot. Not only did he allow his radio talk show to become a launching pad for racist, sexist stereotyping, he deeply hurt a bunch of seemingly nice kids from Rutgers who had overcome incredible odds to make the NCAA women's basketball championship.
To Imus, they were just "nappy-headed hos."
And thanks to him, their moment in the sun has forever been clouded.
Despite his characterization that he's a nice guy who did a bad thing, Imus is guy who once called basketball player Patrick Ewing a "knuckle-dragging moron," called the New York Knicks "chest-thumping pimps" and, after being asked what he had in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell and Al Sharpton, said "We all have 12-inch penises."
Nice guy, indeed.
To be fair, Iman is mouthing phraes that have been the hallmark of rap music since its inception. There has been outrage, to be sure, but not enough to clean up what is an unsavory art form, one that has morphed into an even worse life style.
And Iman's most severe critics don't posses spotless records. Al Sharpton once referred to "the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights," a disparaging reference to a Brooklyn neighborhood's Orthodox Jewish population. Jesse Jackson once called New York City "Himietown."
Maybe everybody involved needs to go off the air for two weeks. Or longer.
Iman can say whatever he wants but I have a feeling that his advertisers will continue to distance themselves from him and that his show will shortly be history.
Maybe that's not a bad thing. This country is a melting pot and its future depends on our ability to get along. One less voice that divides us won't be missed.
Iman once said, "My goal is to goad people into saying something that ruins their life."
Little did he know he was writing his own epitath.