Free Pooh and Piglet as Jihad Meets the Hundred Acre Wood
As Pooh might say, "Oh, bother!"
I am not making this up. Pooh and Piglet have been banned from a British government office because someone complained that they were offensive to Muslims. POOH and PIGLET! Dear sweet gentle Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, those plush companions of many a nursery, those loveable characters of book and film!
Political correctness and multiculturalism have been tipping over into lunacy for a long time now, but declaring jihad on the Hundred Acre Wood is beyond satire. Here is the news story via An Englishman's Castle. The story notes that some of the office workers thought this was "political correctness gone barmy." No kidding!
The ever-readable columnist Mark Steyn has an op-ed piece on this, in which he takes on what he considers British dhimmitude. But he does have a point with this:
| Is it really a victory for "tolerance" to say that a council worker cannot have a Piglet coffee mug on her desk? And isn't an ability to turn a blind eye to animated piglets the very least the West is entitled to expect from its Muslim citizens? If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh . . . how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society? |
Well, I find the ban offensive. Free Piglet!!!
And by the way, what are you going to do if (or, more likely, when) other people complain that various artistic treasures of Western civilization are "offensive"? If you can't defend Piglet, what are you going to do when someone complains about Handel's Messiah or Michelangelo's Last Judgment? Efface them? Or, heck, what if someone complains that Saint Peter's Basilica, Westminster Abbey, or Notre Dame is "offensive"? Would you rip them down to make sure you are as appeasing as possible? Given the state of things today, I'm afraid to know the answer. Extreme political correctness has become a call for the West to to eviscerate itself.
As for me, since I'm pretty sure my constitutional right to freedom of expression includes being able to purchase and use novelty mugs, I'm rushing out right now to get a Piglet coffee cup, darn it.
UPDATE: Cox and Forkum has a most incisive political cartoon on the subject. Gateway Pundit is inspired to verse with some poetical commentary. I repeat: Free Piglet!!!