A performance of the Village People's disco classic "YMCA" by the Bennett Elementary School First Grade class has been canceled because ...oh, go on, guess.
Wrong. It's racist. The Fargo & Moorhead Forum reports:
A Fargo first-grade class won't be participating in the school's talent show after a concerned parent called a planned act "racist."
The students were supposed to be performing the song "Y.M.C.A." during Bennett Elementary School's May talent show.
For the show, a first-grade teacher asked parents to have their kids wear clothes like the Village People, the group that recorded the hit song in the 1970s. Some would come dressed as a policeman, a cowboy, a biker dude, a construction worker or a Native American.
But one mom, Elaine Bolman, said asking her daughter and her classmates to dress up like an Indian is offensive.
So those kids are out, like Donald Sterling. They've learned an important life lesson, that you can't stereotype gays while simultaneously stereotyping Native Americans, or something.
~Meanwhile, a Minnesota university has canceled a "Hump Day" event featuring a real camel because, like everything else in America, that too is racist:
Students at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota have cancelled an event to celebrate the end of the year after complaints that bringing a camel on campus could offend those of Middle Eastern cultures.
The "Hump Day" event, put on by the Residence Hall Association (RHA), was supposed to be "a petting zoo type of atmosphere" in which students could hang out and take photos with a live camel.
But now the RHA has folded like a cheap Bedouin tent and canceled "Hump Day". Really, it would be best if everyone in American education from K through Sandra Fluke's Grade 26 at Georgetown just stayed home curled in a fetal position. But that's probably grossly offensive to pro-choice women.
In other news, in a village in Cameroon, Take Your Nigerian Child Sex Slave To Work Day passed off without incident.
~Why exactly would the presence of a camel "offend those of Middle Eastern cultures"? I assumed at first, even by the standards of privilege-checking self-neutering American college students, they must be, as they say in Britain, "taking the piss". Well, it turns out they are:
While camels are clearly a major part of the MERS story, which the majority were found infected with a strain genetically almost identical to the strain that's infecting people, yet questions arise if the transmission occurs through the drinking of unpasteurized camel milk, consumption of cheese made from it, or is it the drinking of camel urine?
That's the invaluable Walid Shoebat on the root causes of MERS, which, lethal-disease-wise, is this year's SARS. If you've spent any time in Araby, you'll know that camel urine is as vital to the economy as oil:
Western health experts are unfamiliar with litany of Muslim products that are produced from Camel's urine...
Even CNN Arabic promoted under its "Health and Technology" column an article titled "A mouthful a day" and even in capsule form – just like you would with fish oil, massage it into your hair or apply it directly to your face. For best results, the CNN report recommends "to take mouthfuls of camel urine daily for an entire year" and to make sure the camel be a female virgin. Surveys are even done to conclude from patients that, the urine of a virgin camel has a "preferable distinct flavor and aroma."
Westerners are not accustomed to how camel urine is an essential aphrodisiac to many Muslims as Ginseng is to Chinese.
So you can see why the University of St Thomas' camel might "offend those of Middle Eastern cultures". It's like a four-legged Viagra dispenser, and nobody will let you put in your quarters.
~Rather than cancel the event, I wish the organizers had simply replaced it with a local version of Riyadh's Most Beautiful Goat competition, the Miss America of Saudi beauty pageants. My favorite in recent years is the lovely Qahr, pictured above, the 2008 winner.
~Thank you for your kind words about the new eBook edition of Mark Steyn's Passing Parade.
