Famed Hat Not The Only Yellow Thing About The New Curious George
For decades, children have enjoyed the antics of that inquisitive simian Curious George. Leave it to Hollywood to think it can improve on an author’s creative genius by altering the original work to bring it in compliance with asinine politically correct assumptions.
Integral to the Curious George mythos is the character referred to as “The Man In The Yellow Hat” who takes care of George and helps him out of all the mischief the rambunctious primate happens to get into. But in this era where it is said traditional values no longer exist and the worth of one’s character is determined by what trendy progressive causes one might happen to support, the kindness he bestows upon his furry companion is no longer enough to demonstrate his compassion and understanding. Now in order to be categorized as an appropriate cinematic protagonist or figure worthy of admiration, the back story of The Man In The Yellow Hat must be altered to placate the sensitivity sentinels.
According to Georgite canon, The Man In The Yellow Hat originally captured George on behalf of a zoo. Now in the movie version, The Man In The Yellow Hat is employed as an archaeologist sent to Africa on a quest for artifacts.
The reason behind the career change, the film’s director told USA Today, is that today capturing an animal would seem harsh and amounts to stealing. While George seems quite childlike in his stories, it must be remembered he is just an animal. Therefore, how can he be stolen unless inappropriately taken from another human being?
It’s not like George ends up being used in laboratory experimentation. From what’s depicted in the storybooks, it always looked like he had a pretty good life as do many other zoo animals.
Are we to assume that all zoological gardens and wildlife preserves are places of lamentation and misery for every last animal? Even though he is known for his kindness to animals, is Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin “harsh” because he administers a zoo and, unlike the animals that boarded Noah’s ark, those under Irwin’s custodianship did not just one day show up at the doorstep of Australia Zoo as a result of some divine compulsion?
If we are to carry this perspective of Western man as world exploiter to its ultimate conclusion, isn’t it just as offensive for The Man In The Yellow Hat to be an archaeologist despoiling the material culture of spiritually enlightened primitives? After all, isn’t it inherently worse to take someone else’s property than some monkey that doesn’t even belong to anyone?
Interesting how those that get all worked up over the rights and dignity of monkeys aren’t usually all that much into the property rights of either the living or the dead.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
A Review Of The Mind Siege Project By Tim LaHaye
In proclaiming truth, Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias has suggested that the principles and concepts postulated on the level of more formalized expressions of thought must often be exhibited in a more literary or artistic manner in order to permeate the broader popular culture. Tim LaHaye attempts to accomplish this by taking the ideas he first elaborated in Mind Siege: The Battle For Truth and translating them into the novel The Mind Siege Project.
In The Mind Siege Project, a group of high school social studies students set on a boat trip on the Chesapeake Bay for a lesson in diversity and moral relativism. The class ends up learning that these ideas have dire consequences not considered in the more sedate setting of academic discussion.
Readers will be both amused and irritated at the hypocritical nature of contemporary understandings of tolerance as exposed by LaHaye and coauthor Bob Demoss. The shortcomings of this widespread ideology are laid bare in the group sessions where the facilitator sponsoring the field trip in the name of diversity upholds the rights of the individual when it comes to abortion but flat-out tells a student whose missionary parents were murdered overseas that they more or less got what they deserved.
The incoherence of the relativistic lifestyle is further brought home when a student is critically injured when she decides she is her own determinant of right and wrong by violating specific rules of safety set down ironically by the very teacher postulating rules do not exist.
Unlike LaHaye’s other literary undertakings such as Left Behind that deal with grand cosmic events pertaining to the end of the world over which the average person has little impact whatsoever one way or the other, The Mind Siege Project provides insight into the many mindsets and perspectives one is likely to encounter in an academic setting or the workplace. Furthermore, LaHaye and Demoss are to be commended for their sympathetic portrayal of the spiritual struggle the Christian faces in walking the line between desiring the acceptance of one’s peers and the obligation to take a stand for the Lord without regard for the impact upon one’s own popularity for doing so.
However, the authors do go overboard in this tale of adventure set on the high seas in insinuating it is somehow a Christian’s obligation to donate bodily organs to people little more than strangers or at best mere acquaintances. Such is not really a moral claim one can propagate as an ethical imperative to impose upon the remainder of the Christian community unless one has, shall we say, already given of themselves in this manner. How many kidneys have you given away, Dr. LaHaye?
From The Mind Siege Project, readers will take away the lesson that not everyone is always as they appear to be and that it’s not always the quiet people you have to be leery of.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
Never To Late To Learn Of The Threats Schools Pose To Property Rights
With all the coverage of grandiose tragedies as of late caused by the hurricanes, less attention has been paid this year to the regular back to school festivities. However, it is at such times of mass distraction that the abridgements of liberty pose the greatest threat and this is especially true of the mundane bureaucracies that govern much of every day life but are not very exciting in and of themselves such as the public schools.
One annual ritual that connects one generation with the next is subdued sense of joy that comes each year when parents and children go to acquire the supplies needed for the pending academic term. A less enjoyable accretion to this rite of passage is the additional practice of various schools staking a claim to this educational paraphernalia in the name of the community.
As there are as many ways to commemorate special occasions as there are families, despite the desire of radical educators to turn out students of a uniform communitarian mindset, each school goes about the homogenization of property ironically in its own individual manner.
Some such as Jennie Reed Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington are rather open about their intentions to pilfer school supplies from their students. In doing research for this annual column, I came across the school’s 2004/2005 list on the Internet with the following proviso tacked on in the bottom left corner of the page: “Also, all supplies are considered communal supplies and considered a donation to your child’s classroom.”
Thing is, such a bellicose proclamation can only be implemented is students are willing to abide by it. Thus, skilled parents could possibly get around the decree by instilling in the minds of their children that while they must be respectful towards their teachers that respect only extends so far and that their ultimate loyalty must always be towards the parents who insist that under no circumstances should little Billy or Sally turn their crayons over to school personnel.
However, some blackboard Bolsheviks have themselves found a way around the need for students to assent to having their supplies confiscated in the name of the classroom. After all, why bother asking when you can just take what you want for the alleged good of the group?
According to one blog I came across, one mother writes that her son came home the first day of second grade and told her that the teacher had rummaged through the students’ knapsacks during recess and pillaged the contents. Educrats can make all the arguments they want about the need to ransack student satchels in pursuit of drugs, weapons, or whatever other excuse they wish to invoke in the name of homeland security in order to squelch opposition to such abridgements of civil liberties, but school authorities have no right whatsoever to take items from the students possession that are in no way illegal and are necessary to fulfill normal school activities.
In the eyes of the law, which the slayers of Terri Schiavo insist must be upheld at all costs to the letter regardless of what we think about it, isn’t the taking of property without permission or awareness of the owner theft? And if students were caught taking things out of the teacher’s purse or desk, wouldn’t they be banished from the schoolhouse, remanded to the local constabulary, or both?
Why shouldn’t the same befall these pedagogues schooled in the art of five finger discount? And if those in authority are not going to be kept in line when it comes to the little things like school supplies, where will the voracious appetite of the state end? In light of the Kelo ruling, these Bolsheviks already think it’s within their purview to seize your home.
The American people had better wake up since there is little else left to take. Too bad some student didn’t have a mouse trap waiting to smack the fingers of those unable to keep their fingers from doing the walking. That would have been an interesting story on the evening news.
Reflecting upon the innate response children exhibit to having their possessions wrenched from their tiny hands, one teacher snottily remarked in the Winchester Star that “...little children often get upset when they learn that the crayons and washable markers they so carefully picked out will be shared by the whole class.” How would this old marm like to show up to work and learn from here on out all of the automobiles owned by the teachers would be placed in a common motor pool since not everyone can afford the same quality of transportation.
“Ridiculous!”, the preconditioned liberal will snap. “Car and pencil boxes are totally different.” And though the only thing the two objects have in common will be their size (if the likes of Al Gore has his way) in the mind of the adult, is not the pencil box in the mind of the child as important in teaching the lessons and pride that derive from that nearly sacred four letter word “mine”?
It takes a lot of brainwashing at the hands of educators to keep a smile on your face while your stuff is being snatched from you so everybody but you gets to use it. That is why the communalists find it imperative to begin their conspiracy of mass redistribution so early in the life of the proper member of the community.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
Makes You Almost Think Some Women Get What They Deserve
Despite nearly being killed by her boyfriend, country singer Mindy McCready insists she still loves the scumbag.
This misguided sentiment runs so deep that she became with child well after the incident of abuse. She insists this was unintentional, of course.
This must mean she became pregnant after eating a watermelon seed or something was in the water because one does not become impregnated unexpectedly unless she wants to file charges of rape. Or perhaps, her man is so oozing with testosterone that, besides his bestial rages, he can have the impact in question from clear across a room without even touching a woman.
Since she is not bound by matrimony to this human detritus, there is nothing keeping her in this situation. Given her fame and fortune, she is perfectly free to leave whenever she wants; and given her celebrity status, it is well within the scope of her resources to acquire someone else slightly used like herself with a more amicable disposition. It’s not like she is dependent upon him as her only means of support.
Maybe if people these days did not rush to play house before they barely know one another, maybe there would be fewer disturbing incidents such as the one she spilled her innards about on Oprah Winfrey since studies indicate couples shacked up and living in sin are more likely to have disputes escalating to physical violence than couples that have solemnized their love for one another before God and man through the binding act of marriage. But in this day of escalating cohabitation and out of wedlock births setting new records, I will probably find many so-called Christians and Conservatives who probably have fewer problems with this sign of obvious social decay than letting their kids go Trick-Or-Treating.
An old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Given what she knows of her beau’s temperament, should such a mishap ever again befall the couple Prince Charming should be held accountable for his crimes, but in the ultimate sense Miss McCready has no one to blame but herself and deserves not one ounce of public sympathy.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
