Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Phoenix Feathers

W&M, pluckedHere’s brief follow-up to my earlier report about the removal of the feathers — a ptilonectomy, perhaps? — from the logo of William and Mary’s sports teams.

The alumni were not the only people who were upset by the College’s decision to appease the forces of PC and ban the feathers. I’ve been corresponding with a W&M senior — I’ll call him “Bob” — who is also a campus libertarian. He says that a large number of students were unhappy about the situation.

So Bob decided to do more than bitch about it; he took action. He and his associates first obtained 25,000 feathers. Then on Saturday, October 28th, at William and Mary’s Homecoming football game, they handed the feathers out to spectators as they entered the stadium, with instructions to throw them up in the air whenever the Tribe scored.

His efforts even made the local TV news. Unfortunately, there are no photos available yet of the phoenix feathers rising. None of the game photos available on the internet shows the crowd at the moment of touchdown.

But Bob says that people followed his instructions, and it my warms my heart to think of all those naughty politically incorrect feathers flying up into the air at the same time.

2 comments:

Vasarahammer said...

This kind of PC madness is getting all the more common everywhere in the Western World.

In Finland, they changed the name of traditional children's card game Musta Pekka (Black Pete) that has been there for decades to Pekka-peli (Pete game) to reduce any racist implications that might be involved. The skin colour of Pekka character was not changed though.

More recently a traditional chocolate delicacy called Neekerin suukko (Negro's kiss) changed its name to a more politically correct Suukko (Kiss). The package still contains two kissing Africans but their appearance was also adjusted to comply with PC multiculti standards.

There is no widespread movement to force these changes. In fact, people like the traditional products as they are, but it only takes one overly zealous civil servant to highlight the imaginary problem and force companies or individuals to adopt a more politically correct stand.

There is nobody who seriously opposes the politically correct ideology, because if someone would he or she would immediately be labeled racist or xenophobic or whatever.

Vasarahammer said...

There are some who seriously consider the old product labels and images racist. And, of course, EU has its dirty hands in it.

You can see the "controversial" pictures contained in the products in the following article

Racist images
http://www.translocal.net/ground/progress/laku/laku1.html