LA Times To PC Thanksgiving Nitwits: Give It a Rest

We noted yesterday the absurdity of a college professor in California so consumed with rage and anger that she forced five-year-olds to miss out on a Thanksgiving tradition because of her politically correct madness. Well, much to my surprise, even the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times thinks this lunacy has gone too far.

When the LA Times thinks you're nuts, well, you are definitely cuckoo. It's a rare occasion when I'm in line with them, but let's give props where due.

Conservative commentators are no doubt blowing kisses in the direction of UC Riverside professor Michelle Raheja, whose odd interpretation of oppression has given them endless fodder for discussion and mockery. Raheja, the mother of a kindergartner at Condit Elementary School in Claremont, was outraged at the school's traditional Thanksgiving pageant, in which kids from Condit and kids from nearby Mountain View Elementary dress up as either Indians or Pilgrims and visit the other school for a feast. After Raheja wrote a letter to her daughter's teacher likening the event to "asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis)," the school board held a hearing on the issue and decided to hold the event without the costumes. On Tuesday, the day of the feast, the exchanges at Condit between parents supporting and opposing the costumes grew so heated that the parents had to be separated by police.

It's gotten to the point now where because one crackpot is "offended" we now have police intervening at a kindergarten. Yes, libs, you should really be proud at what you've accomplished with this PC madness.

As the culture wars rage on, this incident will be used by conservatives as an example of the absurd lengths to which liberals will go for the sake of political correctness, just as liberals burst a blood vessel whenever some school district in Kansas refuses to teach about evolution. Could everybody sit down for a minute, and pass the stuffing?

Damn right we'll use this as an example. Because it's absolutely insane. It would be nice if those on the left who are relatively sane would condemn this nonsense more forcefully and frequently.

As for the Claremont school board: No seconds on pumpkin pie for you. Caving to the demands of a small group of oversensitive parents is cowardly and ill serves the district's children.

Amen.

Update: Since Ace so graciously linked, I'll leave you this magnificent smackdown.

Although there are many annoying things about this monkey-like behavior, three of the top ones must be:

1) The ostentatious manner of displaying one's putative greater morality and enlightenment, never passing on a single opportunity to make a preening spectacle of oneself. Meanwhile, the rest of us just want to get through the day without being bothered, and without being forced to pay attention to the political equivalent of a flasher.

2) The eternal presumption of being an instructor in a neverending series of "teachable moments." Usually the deal is that if one wishes to be taught, one signs up for classes and chooses a teacher. Not with these people. They choose their classroom -- that would be you -- and sign themselves up as your moral and political instructor.

3) And of course the thuggish determination, arising from that ugly, worst-of-all-worlds mixture of overweening vanity and contradictory feelings of inadequacy which can only be mollified by even greater displays of egotism, to impose their will on others. And, as always, one strongly suspects the pretext for the imposition of their will, their control, is irrelevant; they would be just as happy bullying people to accept the sky is pink, so long as at the end of the day they had people knuckling under them.

Fuck them all.

And Happy Thanksgiving.

Ouch.