Confessions of an Idllyic Mind

Heys...

Some of you from Malaysia might recognize this columnist. She writes for The Star newspaper. Her columns are published every Monday. You can check her columns out in The Star online. She inspires me to write like her. Her articles are sarcasism at its best. Her name, Mary Schneider. This is just one of her very comical columns. I will post another of her column soon. Enjoy the read!

Fairy folks’ happy endings
BUT THEN AGAIN
By MARY SCHNEIDER

ANYONE seen a rainbow-coloured sheep recently? And no, I’m not sipping an alcoholic cocktail as I write this. If I that were the case, I would probably be asking about pink elephants.
On the subject of multi-coloured sheep, though, it seems that a few nursery schools in England have changed the opening line of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” to “Baa, Baa, Rainbow Sheep” so as not to offend anyone.
This is just another example of political correctness (PC) taken to an extreme. Sometimes black is just a colour.
Indeed, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”, which was penned way back in the 18th century, refers to a wool tax imposed by the king at that time and has no racist elements whatsoever. The taxes collected were divided between the local lord (one for the master), the church (one for the dame), and the farmer (and one for the little boy who lives down the lane). It seems that black wool was subjected to a lower tax rate than that of white wool, thus the increase in its demand.
However, it’s not just black sheep that are being outlawed – blackboards have now become chalkboards. I wonder what the future holds for words like blackmail, blacklist, black cloud and blackberries.
I guess we could just call a spade a spade and use words like extortion, boycott list, storm clouds, etc.
But wait ... doesn’t the first syllable of boycott make the word inappropriate? Since we can’t use the word manhole anymore for fear of discriminating against women, surely we can’t use boycott for fear of discriminating against girls.
But wait ... going back a little further, isn’t the phrase “calling a spade a spade” (telling it like it is) also considered racist now?
Well, only if you want to listen to the PC police.
Although spade is a derogatory term for a person of colour, in this phrase it’s just another name for a shovel. Indeed, the phrase predates the racist usage of the word by 400 years. Of course, that hasn’t stopped certain quarters from banning it from polite conversation.
But getting back to sheep of colour, this is not the first time a nursery rhyme has fallen foul to the whims of the PC brigade. Even poor old Humpty Dumpty came under attack a while back.
It seems that Humpty’s demise was deemed a little too sad for young children to cope with, so a few quarters decide to give him a happily-ever-after ending.
Stuff and nonsense! A little bit of pain and suffering never hurt anyone, if you know what I mean. As a child I just thought of Humpty Dumpty as an over-sized egg with arms and legs, a ridiculous creature who got what he deserved.
I mean to say, if I were a large, walking egg and had great difficulty balancing myself, I would think twice about perching myself precariously atop a wall. I can’t say I was saddened in the least by Humpty’s clumsy end.
The same PC fate has befallen the old woman who lived in a shoe. The same woman “who had so many children she didn’t know what to do, so she gave them some broth without any bread, and whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
That one did scare me a little when I was child. All the more so because the old woman in my book of nursery rhymes was depicted as a wiry, witchlike character – that and the fact that mass whippings have never held any appeal. Still, I don’t think this sadistic little rhyme was any scarier than Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or Hansel and Gretel, or Jack and the Beanstalk, or The Three Little Pigs.
These days, the Seven Dwarves have been dropped from the story’s title. I’m not sure what they are called now. Possibly men of slight stature, or vertically-challenged miners, or the little folk.
And those pigs that were eaten in my old, childhood book of grim tales, don’t get gobbled up anymore. They just get blown away.
Back at the shoe, child abuse charges were obviously brought against the old woman because she now kisses her children sweetly before sending them to bed.
She still doesn’t give them bread with their soup, but I suspect her therapist is working on it. By the time my grandchildren get round to reading this nursery rhyme, the shoe children will probably be eating Lobster Bisque with foccaccia bread and living in a three-storey luxury boot, replete with swimming pool, gym and plasma TV.
At all costs, everyone must live happily ever after.