More political correctness stupidity

[fireheart17]

School in Victoria, Australia, changes the word "gay" in folk song

Now this is just plain stupid. Seriously.

The lyrics of "Kookaburra" go as follows:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree-ee,
Merry merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra,
Gay your life must be.

And the second verse (more of a schoolyard version)

Kookaburra sits on electric wire,
yelling and jumping cause his pants are on fire,
ouch, kookaburra, ouch, kookaburra,
hot your tail must be

(some versions replace "yelling and jumping" with "jumping around")

There is no offence in there, there is no way that a child is going to hear this and think "I'm going to be gay" or that the kookaburra's life is stupid.

[Anthony K. S.]

Interesting . . .

To my mind, banning the use of the word "gay" sounds more like something that a religious conservative group would do.

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum it comes from, though, it's definitely stupid.

[draco664]

Hey, it's not the first idiotic PC style of idiocy in Victoria.

On Philip Island (of the Australian GP circuit fame) there is a daily 'Penguin Parade' where the local penguins return from their daily fishing expedition to feed their young in burrows on the island. The penguins used to be called 'Fairy Penguins', but because that was deemed offensive to gays, they are now called 'Little Penguins'.

I'm offended by that, but no one cares about the feelings of straight white males...

[ZedOmega]

Wait until Christmas. Some conservative group is going to be dumb enough to try to change 'don we now our gay apparel' to 'don we now our bright apparel' or something fucking stupid like that.

[fireheart17]

Interesting . . .

To my mind, banning the use of the word "gay" sounds more like something that a religious conservative group would do.

Regardless of which side of the political spectrum it comes from, though, it's definitely stupid.

I'd actually agree on that part, but then again, some private schools are generally normal on that front and will keep to themselves.

Hey, it's not the first idiotic PC style of idiocy in Victoria.

On Philip Island (of the Australian GP circuit fame) there is a daily 'Penguin Parade' where the local penguins return from their daily fishing expedition to feed their young in burrows on the island. The penguins used to be called 'Fairy Penguins', but because that was deemed offensive to gays, they are now called 'Little Penguins'.

I'm offended by that, but no one cares about the feelings of straight white males...

I remember that. Funnily enough, the penguins are still referred to as "Fairy penguins" at both Granite Island and at Seaworld....O.o

oh and I remember a couple of years back, in Sydney, the Father Christmas's/Santas were asked to say "ha ha ha" instead of "ho ho ho" due to "ho" being an offensive term....umm....they're 5 year old kids...(I never saw that in Adelaide....)

[smileyeagle1021]

Hey, it's not the first idiotic PC style of idiocy in Victoria.

On Philip Island (of the Australian GP circuit fame) there is a daily 'Penguin Parade' where the local penguins return from their daily fishing expedition to feed their young in burrows on the island. The penguins used to be called 'Fairy Penguins', but because that was deemed offensive to gays, they are now called 'Little Penguins'.

I'm offended by that, but no one cares about the feelings of straight white males...

No one apparently cares about the feelings of a gay white male either... forgive me for saying, but are you fucking kidding me... seriously, calling them fairy penguins is insulting to gay people... so, if we can't use the word Fairy, then what the fuck do we call Tinkerbell and Thumbalena? A fairy has been a term for a magical creature of small size for much much longer than it was used as a derogatory term for a homosexual (and even then, it wasn't really derogatory, it was a way to get around outright saying someone was gay, because, well, you know, that would just be wrong).

Back to the song, once again, are you fucking kidding me?
The vast majority of people understand that historically gay has meant happy and jolly. It is only recently that it was also used to describe a sexual orientation and even more recently that it was used as a derogatory phrase.

[draggar]

Better not let them watch the Flintstones.

[Hyena Dandy]

...what.

Although this reminds me of the time a politician resigned after referring to his cheapskate opponent as 'niggardly'.

[daleduke17]

seriously, calling them fairy penguins is insulting to gay people... so, if we can't use the word Fairy, then what the fuck do we call Tinkerbell and Thumbalena?

Better tell the city of Decatur, IL to get the sign printer ready to change the name of "Fairies Parkway" (semi-major street in the eastern part of Decatur).

[HYHYBT]

Wait until Christmas. Some conservative group is going to be dumb enough to try to change 'don we now our gay apparel' to 'don we now our bright apparel' or something fucking stupid like that.

I haven't found a hymnal published in the last twenty years that includes the "real" last verse of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. They don't like the line "Father love is reigning o'er us, brother love binds man to man" for some reason. I suspect the reasons are different from church to church, but that verse is always now either rewritten (Presbyterian and Methodist, for example) or deleted entirely (Baptist).

As for the current topic, well, might as well just paste in what I wrote on another site when I heard the story the first time:

Have you ever been struck like lightning by a realization? This article set off a train of thought in my head that led to one of those.

When I was little, we didn't have a VCR. (They *existed*, we just didn't have one.) We did, though, have records for children. One I had, which I don't know the source of or how old it was when I got it, but that was around 1980, was a bunch of (pretty awful) songs about a trip to the zoo and the various animals you'd find there. But the introduction was a rewriting of "Strolling Through The Park," and a couple lines went like this:

While strolling through the zoo today,
I can guarantee you'll soon be gay.

And sure enough... well, there have been a lot of (ultimately pointless) arguments over what causes people to be gay, but now it can be known, at least for one person, that it's caused by listening to songs like "The Porcupine Is Pining For His Pork."

...or else, perhaps, by actually visiting a zoo. One or the other

[IDrinkaRum]

Tinkerbelle, according J. M. Barrie and the Disney Corporation, is a PIXIE. Which is part of the Fae "race" but they are NOT fairies. Pixies came about by the degradation of Fae blood in magical peoples and too much human blood in them.

Thumbelina was a "Flower Farie". Though sneaking suspicion probably means they were Pixies also, but the term wasn't coined until Barrie wrote "Peter Pan".

I do not like Political Correctness. I used an example using the word "niggardly". My In-Laws were agahst. They all said they'd never use it because it has the word "niggar" in it so of course it doesn't mean cheap/cheapskate/etc. It has to do with black people.

[crashhelmet]

Wait until Christmas. Some conservative group is going to be dumb enough to try to change 'don we now our gay apparel' to 'don we now our bright apparel' or something fucking stupid like that.

I'm actually surprised this hasn't been changed already. I'm even more surprised that some group (SNL, South park, etc) hasn't exploited it yet.

CH

[fireheart17]

I'm actually surprised this hasn't been changed already. I'm even more surprised that some group (SNL, South park, etc) hasn't exploited it yet.

CH

But don't you get it?! It's a Christmas song, so it's already Christian and therefore it's OK!

[KabeRinnaul]

Although this reminds me of the time a politician resigned after referring to his cheapskate opponent as 'niggardly'.

I'm more reminded of the time John Kerry used the term "Tar Baby" and the easily-offended of America (having apparently never read a Br'er Rabbit story) blew their collective tops.