First the “politically correct” censorship of costumes, Halloween or otherwise, spread throughout U.S. colleges; then it leaped the Atlantic to England, where many universities are unbearably censorious. Now, however, it’s spread to Scotland, a land of what I thought were sensible and level-headed folk. If you go to yesterday’s Scotsman, you’ll find this story (click on the screenshot below to get to it):
What, exactly, is banned? According to the article, “offensive fancy dress costumes” as well as “Mexicans, gangsters, mental patients and ‘camp men’”. Now I don’t know what “camp men” are, but rather than look it up I’ll ask readers to enlighten me. And, as usual, the ban is imposed not by the University, but by its student union:
The Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) has previously been criticised for excessive political correctness, introduced the rules following a series of scandals involving students “blacking up”.
Students have been told: “You may not intend to hurt anyone when picking out your costume, and you may not even think there’s a problem, but it’s important to consider the impact your choices will have.
“It is also not acceptable to use props to emphasise racial characteristics in order to convey an individual or character. A good costume should be clear enough that you do not need racial or cultural additions.”
Well, of course I think it’s terribly offensive to don blackface, given the history of how that was used (though I still wouldn’t ban it), but “cultural additions”? What’s wrong with looking like Mexicans that’s not wrong with looking like geishas or samurai? And even if it’s done to satirize a culture (something I again deplore), it’s still free speech. Who decides which costumes are offensive and which are not? Will Edinburgh Uni have a student Costume Police?
Apparently this isn’t the first time Scottish universities have imposed bans on websites, newspapers, and even songs:
Edinburgh was recently ranked as one of the most “ban happy” universities in Spiked magazine’s, Free Speech University Rankings 2016.
Tom Slater, the coordinator of the rankings, said: “The university that produced David Hume is banning fancy dress.
“Edinburgh was among the worst universities we assessed nationwide. The Edinburgh Union Students’ Association, in particular, has outdone itself.”
He added: “Our research shows that in Scotland – as it is across the country – campus censorship is hitting epidemic proportions.”
Previous bans made by EUSA have included social media site UniLad, Page 3 and Robin Thicke’s hit, Blurred Lines from being played on campus.
. . . Dundee University has also faced criticism after banning Pro-life groups in 2014 – despite them having their own stall on campus for years before.
And Stirling University introduced a policy to not “share a platform with any organisation deemed to be racist or or fascist by the National Union of Students.”
And yet, as happens so often, the Edinburgh student union argues that it’s actually promoting free speech!:
EUSA President, Jonny Ross Tatam, said their policies are intended “to broaden free speech, not restrict it. We’re committed to ensuring everyone feels able to participate in debate and discussion within our venues.”
This is a classic example of Orwellian doublespeak: censorship is really free speech! But how, exactly, is banning costumes going to broaden free speech? The way to do that is to unban those costumes, and then ensure that those who oppose them are able to state their opinions. Words versus words, or words versus costumes—that is the way to go. If someone wearing a “camp man” costume somehow silences the opponents of such dress, that’s a pretty pathetic situation.
In the end, if these students really want to change the world, they should do so not by silencing their political opponents but by debating them.
Fortunately, most of the comments on the article aren’t on board with censorship. Here are two:
h/t: Su
If they can’t dress up as mental patients and/or camp men, that will completely change the look of the university’s graduation ceremony.
Especially the vice-chancellor!
What’s going to happen to International Talk Like A Pirate day?!
Belay that talk ‘ere ye swab!
Most country and rap music is ineffably boring to me, but I would never want it banned. Ever. Why? Because I do not listen to it. It is wholly innocuous.
Pretty soon every brick in the wall is going to cause offense and these people will have no where to hide.
We should ban all movies and TV shows depicting people doing stupid things, as it’s an insult to stupid people!
That would eliminate many shows with politicians!
You’re being anti-Floydist, you Cream-er!
Yeah, I was thinking that too.
Incidentally, rap music is not ‘innocuous’ if inflicted on unwilling listeners.
Nor is ‘disco’. (By that I mean the style called ‘disco’ e.g. Saturday Night Fever, not music played in discos).
In the early 80’s I was living in a beachfront house in Rarotonga, and the kids next door were practising their disco dancing. So 8a.m. every Saturday and Sunday, when I was trying to sleep in, I would hear loud disco music with that awful jerky beat coming from next door. Trying to bury my head in the pillows just reduced it to thudding ‘DAH da, de DAH dah, de DAH dah’. I used to actively fantasise about kicking down their door and giving their amplifier both barrels of the shotgun I didn’t have at point-blank range.
However… some time after I got back to NZ, one Easter, I was looking for somewhere to stay late one night, in the rain, other than my car; everywhere was full, till I came on the Tavistock Hotel in Waipukurau – one of those old run-down rambling semi-derelict country hotels that I love. I asked at the bar and the girl said “Yes, we have a room, but it’s right above the disco”. Never mind, it’ll do! So I lay in bed, in the half-empty wing, listening to the rain and the music filtering up from below and – mirabile dictu! – discos in Waipukura didn’t play ‘disco’, they played Pink Floyd and Dire Straits and the Eagles and the Beatles… I was in heaven.
cr
I won’t say ‘heaven’, but I could sleep there.
OTOH, there are few places I couldn’t sleep.
Can you dress up as a dopey Scottish University administrator?
Why?
What you need is a “idiotic sabattical year Student Union mouthpiece” costume.
Hmmm, I know a guy who owns a fancy-dress hire shop in Aberdeen. Perhaps he has one in stock?
While the Student’s Union is a part of the University structure, it is an independent organisation. The University provides it with a block grant annually, based on matriculated student numbers and normally a building and outside that it is independent. Including on occasions in the past going bankrupt, IIRC.
I am an Official Dutchie™ and I give permission to every student of Edinburgh University to dress up like the Dutch.
Yeah, I’ve never had any problem with people in clogs with Gouda cheese under their arms.
Does anyone ever try to pass you on the left hand side?
Haha, no. 😛 I have evolved. It’s the right hand side now.
Hilarious! 🙂
Well I am English.
And it occurs to me that the American rebels never obtained official permission for the use of English as their language.
So I am demanding that Prof CC shut down this website NOW since it is founded on cultural appropriation and unauthorised use of Intellectual Property, viz. English.
He may reopen it when permission has been obtained and suitable royalties paid.
The same goes for the rest of teh Intertoobz.
cr
A large part of this “cultural appropriation” thing seems to be “doing it, but not doing it properly“.
With language I suppose that would mean that you culturally appropriate a language if you speak it, but don’t speak it correctly.
So I think it’s OK for the Americans to speak English. The nazi-cultural imperialist- oppression comes when they do things like:
– using “gotten”
– drop the “U” from words like “colour”
– pronounce the last letter as Zee
and especially:
– say “could care less” instead of “couldn’t”, and
– pronounce herbs as if they were French all of a sudden.
Such aggression will not be tolerated!
Camp men – soldiers! But surely if you ARE a camp man that is offensive to tell you you cannot come as you are… so to speak!!
Oh, do they mean soldiers. I was about to dig up my uniform of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, since that seemed the only thing still allowed.
Exactly! This is just an attempt to ban mental patients, camp men and Mexicans from campus.
Seems like Edinburgh University has taken some inspiration from Donald Trump.
Are hats “racial characteristics”??? Surely not. They are cultural atefacts – in fact the sombrero is not originally Mexican according to Wikipedia…
Let’s ban clothes and all go naked to avoid causing offense!
Richard Brautigan will be turning in his grave!
There is a rude sombrero song – here is a part…
My sister Belinda
She p*ssed out the window
All over my new sombrero…
Oh these soldiers
Camp men – think Julian Clary. It’s OTT effeminate/artistic gay men. Not soldiers.
So you can’t wear a beret, sunglasses, black turtleneck, blue jeans, and Timberland boots? Or would it be OK if you were from SOHO?
You’re bound to be offending someone whatever you wear it seems.
The thing that surprises me is that Mexicans, of all people, have such a bad reputation in Edinburgh that to dress as one stereotypically might be insulting. I can think of a lot of people they dislike a lot more – how about the English? Or their fellow Scots, the Glaswegians? A lot of them aren’t too keen on people from Eastern Europe either. What’s the deal with Mexicans?
Or did they just copy this from some US university they want to emulate?
I think of a scene on the American version of The Office, when Michael asks Oscar, who had just identified himself as Mexican, “Is there something less offensive you’d prefer to be called?”
Lol. 😀
Morningsiders have no problem being rude about Weedgies. But if Edinburgh of today is anything like Aberdeen of the 80s, then fewer than 30% of the students will be from Edinburgh.
I don’t know what the situation is in the States, but for many people a large part of the point of going to university is to get AWAY from the family. I didn’t even apply to any universities less than 300 miles from home, and could not have gone to a more distant one and stayed in Britain. That’s despite being repeatedly advised to apply to Oxbridge less than two hour’s drive away.
That was the whole point of using Soldiers to emphasise the campness, comparing what are normally seen as tough Men using effeminate gestures makes the campness even more funny.
I would think Camp men, was a nice way of saying bum or homeless? But then, you would think the students of EUSA would have something more important to spend their time with than wardrobe police.
I would assume “camp men” is a more acceptable term for Gypsies or Travelers.
“Camp” in UK slang means to act gay in an exaggerated, effeminate way.
US has a similar meaning, although much broader than gay culture.
Gypsies and Travellers are almost completely unrelated groups.
“Gypsies,” a.k.a. the Dydicoi (Central England), Romani (much of Europe), tinkers (Scotland) … are long-established populations who make their living by moving from place to place working in various trades (temporary agricultural labour, ironmongery (particularly the “tinkers”), scrap reprocessing, entertainment (some of the “fairground travellers” are of Gypsy origin, but not all).
“Travellers” are a diverse group including various groups of “New Age” people who have gone on the road in preference to having a fixed abode ; there’s at least one retired farmer of my acquaintance who has sold up for a mobile and to go on the road. Some have employment (including several I know in the oil industry) ; many live on benefits.
There are a lot of groups under those headings. Some groups have overlaps, and some are antithetical. As minefields go, this is one particularly unwise to dance through.
Just to nail it down – ‘camp’ does NOT refer to gypsies or travellers, any more than e.g. ‘tall’ or ‘strange’ does. An individual gypsy could be camp, as could anyone else.
Liberace was the quintessence of camp (he’s dead so he can’t sue).
Elton John has been known to camp it up on occasion.
cr
“Camp”
Sort of stereo-typically gay, but not the “muscles and leather” stereotype.
Flamboyant. That’s not quite it, but getting there.
Ah! Liberace! Liberace was as camp as a row of tents.
Yes.
What they have succeeded in doing, so far as I can see, is to prohibit any transsexuals or those (few?) homosexuals who might want to dress that way from ‘coming out’.
Gotta love the irony.
cr
“Screaming Queens”
That might means something different in parts of Manhatten.
I hope this is helpful
Christopher Isherwood, in his 1954 novel The World in Evening, is now generally credited as the first author to attempt to codify camp . Of low camp Isherwood provides the example, “a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture had and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich”; and of high camp, “the whole emotional basis of the ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art….the ballet is camp about love”. Only in 1954 with Isherwood, then, was camp explicitly inaugurated into literature and, subsequently, academia.
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/camp/
. . . or I could have offered my friend Gordon
Very good. So the prohibition basically says you cannot dress swishy. That will go over well, I am sure.
I always thought “campy” meant sort of homely in a slightly more macho way like plaid, jeans, boots and work socks, but with a slight connotation of gauche and kitsch. Now I have to rethink it all!!
This topic was most famously explored in Susan Sontag’s celebrated 1964 essay “Notes on Camp” (which begins with a discussion of Isherwood’s novel).
Camp men are not necessarily gay, but act gay in a theatrical, ostentatious way. Think Village People and you get the idea. There is a venerable history in the UK of camp comedy and camp characters such as Kenneth Williams, Dick Emery, Larry Grayson et al. They are perpetuated in the peculiar British institution of Christmas pantomimes, starring dames such as Christopher Biggins. I’m not sure there is an obvious American equivalent. No doubt “progressive” Student Unions of this world would love to see the end of them (so to speak).
I have just set the Deranged Idiot of the entertainment box to record “Round The Horne”.
“Hello, my name is Julian and this is my friend Sandy” are classic high camp. (Not to be confused with the South Col. I wonder if Julian and Sandy were ever dragged up there?)
Burlesque shows during the height of the American vaudeville era would also usually feature a male cast member portraying characters with exaggerated effeminate characteristics. Although that cast member was never explicitly identified as homosexual, he was referred to as the “nancy” (essentially a synonym for “sissy”). The Broadway play “The Nance,” starring Nathan Lane in the title role, explores this premise.
Like much of vaudeville comedy, the nancy character made its way onto American television screens in the 1960s (again, without ever explicitly identifying the character as gay). Among its most famous practitioners there were Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Alan Sues (of “Laugh-In” fame).
Also, British pantomime, where the young male hero was always portrayed by a girl, and ‘Mother Goose’ or whoever was always a man in drag…
cr
… which I see Andrew Laycock already mentioned.
Note to self: Read the whole thread before bursting into print, doofus…
Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is a classic example. These are called breeches roles.
Not sure why the trouser role developed in opera, especially since Cherubino has very heterosexually got the hots for the Contessa.
Missed gb’s link before. Flicka was wonderful. I’ll raise you Kate Lindsey in the same role. Saw her recently in a wonderful (totally different) production at Covent Garden (on film).
I do enjoy the sound of a Mozart aria in the morning. Evening, too, for that matter!
What about men who are actually gay, and by default dress camp. Do they have to dress as something else for Halloween?
Fair chance there is at least one gay mexican at ednburgh uni.
I guess it’s ok if you provide an affirmation in lieu of oath.
Are people permitted to cross-dress?
A bunch of us guys (non-gay guys) at university used to dress in drag (with beards of course!) and go to parties … er piss-ups.
Good clean fun. Nothing like vomiting into the gutter while dressed as a woman! 🙂
I have photos from the late 1800s and early 1900s of ancestors and friends doing the same. Picnics where everyone who attended, male and female, cross-dressed.
Women are not costumes so no – micro aggression! 🙂 Women can dress up as men because that’s “punching up”.
Unless its a giant woman punching at a dwarf man!
Somewhere there are photos of the Aberdeen HHH on a pub crawl, with everyone wearing bridesmaid’s dresses.
As Joe E. Brown says to Jack Lemon, after proposing marriage to Lemon and Lemon revealing that he is actually a man rather than the women’s band member he has been portraying, in the closing line of Billy Wilder’s film Some Like It Hot:
“Nobody’s perfect.”
Classic movie, and an all-time classic ending.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYUfPTeE0DM
cr
Oops, I see you linked to it already. Silly me.
Never mind, the punters can watch it twice, it’ll stand it.
cr
How does one recognize a mental patient in such a way that it involves a costume?
Surely the rulesmakers are not perpetuating the stereotype that psychiatric patients invariably need a straighjacket or suchlike?
I’d imagine that wearing a straight-jacket to a party would pretty quickly stop being fun anyway!
You haven’t thought about how much abasement you have to do to get someone to pour drink down your neck without water-boarding you.
How did the Fragrant Poly Styrene put it?
Thrash me crash meBeat me till I fall
I want to be a victim
For you all
And for the sax solo, this link.
Ohh, I needed that!
Can you dress up as a ballerina? Dancers are not costumes you know!
On my long-ago post-college rail trip around Europe, I actually wore a Serape. I do not know what baffles me more – my past taste in clothing, or the EUSA’s antipathy towards it.
There was a time in my youth when everyone had one – in those days they were usually ugly and crocheted. They’re quite useful bits of clothing. I’ve still got one (not crocheted!), though the design couldn’t be described as Mexican – more Scandinavian really. I wonder if I’d be able to wear it if I just explained I was trying to keep warm?
Can’t the student union just be ignored?
Its rules will only apply on student union premises. The student union is not the university administration.
Yes you can ignore the student;s union. But they do tend to have the cheapest beer in town (no profit margin needed), and do other useful things like accommodation exchange services, affordable food, and when I was a student, baths.
You haven’t revised until you’ve had six people in adjoining bath cubicles, soaking and steaming away, with six pints of Guinness each on a chair on one side of the bath and a stack of igneous petrology notes on the other side. And ENDLESS hot water!
It is interesting that dressing as a certain stereotype of Mexican is bannable (while Mexican entertainers do dress that way), while dressing as a geisha or in a goofy Lederhosen costume and swigging a big pint would be ok.
Let’s hope they don’t decide to ban loud, obnoxious, self-entitled behavior on the grounds that all such acting is making fun of (us) Americans. 🙂
Jerry, you’d better check whether they ban cowboy boots before you visit there, too. Oh won’t somebody think of the poor affronted cowboys, who can’t possibly participate in the marketplace of ideas so long as non-cowboys are insultingly wearing their trademark boots!
And hats! Don’t forget hats!
I wear an ‘aussie hat’ (without corks) on the beach all the time, since my current hair status exposes me to the risk of sunburn on top of my head, how sad. To which I am not entitled (the hat, I mean).
And yesterday I noticed that walking away from the setting sun in my hat and beach towel my silhouette was *exactly* the same as The Man With No Name. Fortunately I got off the beach before anyone else noticed my cultural appropriation.
cr
If they ban Hawaiian shirts then I ain’t going there!
Me neither. I pretty much wear only Hawaiian shirts and tie-dyed t-shirts.
Are so-called Hawaiian shirts really from Hawaii?
Some are, some aren’t. I am not a purist (there are plenty of those!) and wear shirts made elsewhere of the same style.
Many still are made in the islands (and they are expensive).
Most purists I’ve met say they must be made of rayon. I much prefer the feel and comfort of cotton over rayon.
Most of the ones I’ve seen (in Rarotonga, Cook Islands – ‘Hawaiian’ may be the style but Hawaii doesn’t own it) are made in China.
Tie-dying, though, is done locally, I’ve seen it done on a back lawn in Aitutaki.
cr
So far, anyway.
Batshit crazy.
I absolutely hate all this shit thats come in, in the last ten years or so.
Social media has a lot to answer for and people pandering to the few complainers as opposed to realising that thousands do not complain, thereby reducing democracy to a dictatorship in many scenarios.
These idiots were around and self-promoting in the 1980s. There may be a few more these days, but they were definitely around in the 80s. Probably in the 70s too.
I don’t doubt it! I think the advent of social media means they are even more prominent, ready to flare up over one comment on Twitter or wherever it may be.
Sub
This seems an appropriate place to relate this true story.
At a former place of employment, an engineering manager (his org. was about 100 people), who also happened to be an ass, posted the following notice all about the area*:
“From now on, all managers will wear white shirts.”
The next day, we noticed that someone had edited each one:
“From now on, all managers will wear white shirts and black hats.”
They all came down the following day (and then on the third day …) and nothing more was heard of this new white shirt work efficiency improvement program.
(* This was a time (long, long ago) when engineering managers still wore ties and sometimes jackets or even suits to work.)
At an organization where I used to work the topic of the discussion for a “management meeting” was whether the “dress code” should be relaxed. As usual, I was trying to look as if I were paying attention while thinking of something else. The person running the meeting, for reasons opaque to me, asked me what I thought of the dress code. I said “Oh, it’s very important. How else would we tell the vice presidents from the stock room staff?” If anyone was amused, they were careful not to let on.
When casual Friday’s were introduced at the engineering firm where I worked in the 90s, a colleague wondered if we were going to have a funny hat day, too.
“The Organization Man”
Next year dress as Student Union executives — in straight jackets …
U Edinburgh linguistics dept… one of the best such departments in the world… I implemented a study & helped present data on diffusion of innovation of colour terms in Tsotzil Mayan.
The whole thing centered around the communal weaving of huipils, and our presentation necessarily involved demonstrating the wearing of the garments, as there was special significance to different patterns and images, depending on where they were located on the body.
Just sayin’.
No, no, you must have it all wrong. Kilts are mandatory and in the appropriate tartan-even if it was made up by Queen Victoria.
May we dress up as the True Scotsman™ ? 🙂
If the other students don’t have the cojones to tell the SU to go piss up a rope, they deserve their Orwellian future.
sub
My first reaction on seeing ‘camp men’ was “What-Michael Palin can’t do ‘The Lumberjack Song’ if he does a show there?”
I never realized that Mexicans were a persecuted minority in Scotland. The things you learn from the internet.
They all climbed over Hadrian’w Wall. I saw it in a Trump campaign add.
“I never realized that Mexicans were a persecuted minority in Scotland. The things you learn from the internet.”
I don’t believe they, are and this amounts to cultural appropriation from the US, which is racist.
Last month we were invited to a Bavarian themed party. We felt it advisable to respond to our friends along the following lines:
We are delighted to accept your invitation to your traditional Bavarian Christmas event.
However, we feel duty bound to advise you that this event has come to the attention of the pressure-group the Allied Superior Students Hubristically Opposed to the Libertarian Exploitation of Stereotypes [ASSHOLES for short].
Apparently they feel that this event could fall under the heading of “cultural appropriation”. As such it would be inappropriate for anyone attending to wear dirndls or lederhosen or to eat any foods culturally associated with the Bavarian people unless they are themselves Bavarian.
To this end they may picket your premises in order to subject all attendees to some basic tests to establish their Bavarian-ness before allowing them past picket lines. We believe this will include questions such as ”What do the letters BMW stand for?” and ”What is the correct response to the old Bavarian joke ‘Mein Hund hat keine Nase. Wie riecht es?’ ”
We did try to point out to them that most things associated with Bavaria were themselves originally appropriated from other cultures, so perhaps they should be flying over to Bavaria to picket some Beer Halls. Unfortunately they felt unable to do this as flying was ‘an American invention'[sic], so to use an aeroplane whilst not American would in itself be a gross act of cultural appropriation.
You might therefore like to advise all attendees that they may like to be prepared by practising some kind of half-way decent Bavarian accent, by memorising that BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke and that the answer to ‘how does my dog smell?’ is ‘schrecklich’.
Alle guten Wünsche
Um Gottes Willen – the test truly works! I’m German, but not Bavarian, and I didn’t know what BMW stands for.
BavariaMotor
Werke
Unless I’m much mistaken. I always ponder on this as I speed past a broken down Beemer on the bike.
Ah, “Bayerische”,which is German for “Bavarian.”
Most of my German friends have known this joke about BMW:
BMW stands for: Bayerische Mist Werke
For sure one of them told me about it.
‘Mist’ I believe is German for ‘manure’?
(I know because apparently Rolls were thinking of calling a model the ‘Silver Mist’ and changed their minds abruptly when they found out).
cr
Yes, it’s kind of like kids comic book swearing. :).
Look at the cartoon here…and weep.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/01/attempts-to-end-pc-culture/
That comic bears a disconcerting artistic resemblance to a Jack Chick cartoon strip (though it lacks the unintentional humor—or any humor at all).
We have this nice idea of being nice, being polite and sensitive about what we say and do.
Sometimes that’s used by people to censor and control.
Assholes who don’t like being nice, polite and sensitive use this as an excuse to dismiss it all as censorship and control. They can then reject any limits on their speech and act like assholes.
The censorship and control crowd then take the asshole’s behaviour and use it to paint all objections to censorship and control. “Look at the asshole” they say “that proves we need PC”.
“Look at the censorship and control crowd” says the asshole “that proves PC is bad”
And so on.
I put the comic and the accompanying article firmly in the “censorship and control camp”.
(And resent its implication that, for example, because I think the argument in frames 4 and 5 is utter tosh that I am to be compared to an asshole/PIC rather insulting).
In a broad sense, the cartoon promotes the idea of combating speech with speech, which I support. Some who cray “political correctness” certainly do so as an attempt to evade the consequences of their own actions.
However, like you, I resent the thinly-veiled implications in several of the panels.
What’s more, the artist trivializes legitimate concerns by ignoring very real and well-documented attempts to stifle debate through sanctions.
There are also several “illuminating” articles about cultural appropriation as well. The site leans heavily toward the “language is violence” school of thought.
Nae sir, tha’s nae serape Imma wearing.
Me kilt shrunk in the wash and I canna get it past me shoulders….
Heeheeheeee
At’s gallus
Am no sure aeb’dy else’ll oandastoon ye but
You’d have to choose your bouncer carefully, picking one who has never worn a kilt.
“. . . their policies are intended ‘to broaden free speech, not restrict it. We’re committed to ensuring everyone feels able to participate in debate and discussion within our venues.'”
We could cull this down to a simple statement: freedom is tyranny. Stephen Law would be all over this.
Can one still draw a Mexican?
No gangsters? Gangsters or gangstas? (Are the women molls or hos?)
Well, it says ‘no gangstERs’. So either the EUSA are dumber than cabbage, or they’re afraid of offending the Mafia.
cr
I am mexican, and I don’t give a rats arse if a foreigner dresses like a 1920’s mexican.
No Mexican hats allowed? Alan Guth and Andrei Linde will be in trouble.
As an Irishman I understand how Mexicans might feel about this cultural appropriation. After all the USA has demeaned the Irish for years at St Patrcik’s day, dressing as leprechauns and getting blind drunk, pissing in alleyways. On the other hand, I could just lighten up, take it in the good humour as is likely intended and have a feckin’ drink and a bit of craic. Otherwise, where in Dog’s name will it all end?
I just said much the same, as a Scotsman, but your Irish example is much better and more commonly done
Do Mexicans find that costume offensive?
I’m Scottish and if I see someone dressed in a huge kilt, wearing a “See You Jimmy” hat, carrying big fake bagpipes/haggis and shouting “Hoots man”, I crack up. I find it amusing
I know that mental health organisations have made complaints about some costumes, saying that they stigmatise mental illness, (although I think the are based more on the horror aspect, than the mental one), but I am unaware of Mexicans complaining about the sombrero, poncho and big moustache. Which obviously doesn’t mean that they haven’t
Does this mean I can’t wear my Italian suits and shirts anymore?
No. Now get back on your donkey and get after those windmills.
That’s no donkey and those are not windmills.
These twits badly need a dose of Monty Python.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oXpc-59Cdo
Walt Holberg 22 Jan 16
Just saw this on Twitter.
A dystopian SJW future:
Ok, this is my first time ever trying to post a youtube video as a link.
Let’s hope it works!
Hm.
Well, I put the URL in where ‘LinkText’ is, and it didn’t work.
Ok well, would someone please:
1) fix it for me
2) perhaps tell me what I did wrong?
If you just put the URL into google, the video will show up.
Or simply search ‘Equality”
Sorry for any inconvenience!
OK, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM-HJT8_esM
cr
What you (Cindy) did, I think was to type the Youtube address as the ‘label’ for the link, but WP substituted a WEIT URL as the underlying link.
What I did was just to take the Youtube URL and strip off the “https://” from the URL when posting it into WP’s comment box.
Wordpress then automatically reinserts an “http://” which Youtube redirects to the correct “https://” address.
I don’t try to be clever and show some wording with an underlying link, I don’t trust WP’s interpretation of HTML to match mine 😉
cr
P.S. If you hover your mouse over the link, then your browser (if it’s any good) should show the actual link address in a box at the bottom or top of the screen. Quite a good way to check you’re not being sent off to some spam/phishing site on occasion.
cr
Thank you!
Edinburgh University has a large percentage of foreign students (particularly English). I’m blaming them (with no evidence at all) for besmirching the name of my home town. In my youth dressing up as women was practically compulsory. This happened at Halloween and started as early as eight or nine (“trick or treat” or “guisin” was a Scottish/Irish tradition). It was regarded as perfectly normal to wear a mother or sisters dress and demand sweets from neighbours. Harmless, innocent pre-christian paganism.
The politically correct SJW’s are an endless source of amusement.
Here, from that excellent website Lowering the Bar, we bring you “Museum Sued for Depicting Jesus as White”
http://loweringthebar.net/2015/12/museum-sued-for-art-depicting-jesus-as-white.html
Now I myself have been known to point the finger of derision at blond blue-eyed Jesuses (Jesi?) – but suing for emotional and psychological harm? – I must say that had never occurred to me.
cr