First it was an innocent piece of ice cream packaging, now it’s plastic containers for loose change.
Not very long ago, Mr Evil Pundit bought us news of the “sacrelicious”, when “The fast-food chain, Burger King,[was] withdrawing its ice-cream cones after the lid of the dessert offended a Muslim.” Notice the “a Muslim” as in: one, single, solitary, lone, solo.
Now the banks in
This move was hailed by one Muslim spokesperson as “simply being courteous”, while an opposing Reverend squawked that “next thing we will be banning Christmas trees and cribs”. Ah, actually, Reverend, you’re way too late; many a school and town has already “banned” the nativity scene. Indeed, our own Melbourne Council, this year, is reintroducing “the crib”, with much fan fare, after some years of absence.
But getting back to the pig “problem”: Muslims do not eat pork. Okay, that’s fine. I don't eat brains, or liver, or prawns, or broccoli, or prunes, or glace cherries, but I don’t throw a hissy fit every time I walk into the fruit and veggie market and catch sight of a lush display of broccoli, and I don’t call the local priest, or the police, when I see someone buying a piece of icky liver, which they clearly intend to cook and eat.
Another spokesman trots out the cliché of - "We should learn to celebrate our difference, not be fearful of them." Which is mind-numbing in its silliness. Celebrate not eating pork? How do we do that, exactly? Celebrate piggy banks? Well, some of them are quite cute, sure, but I don’t know that I’d break out in celebration at the site of an especially cute pig. This has nothing to do with celebrating differences.
This is the thin edge of the wedge. This is the envelope being pushed with gusto.
We are being toyed with, tested, pushed, poked, prodded, to see how gullible we are, how stupid, how idiotic we will be in our acts of appeasement and accommodation.
I don’t believe for one second that Muslims walk into a bank and are outraged or offended – for days, weeks, months – because they caught a glimpse of a plastic pig with a slit in its back. I really don’t.
I think we are being made to look like fools; fools who will give up previously normal and unremarkable bits of our everyday and mundane lives because we are being brow-beaten by a minority - sometimes a minority as small as one. Some day we’ll be able to explain to our grandchildren the past shame of the existence of – gasp – piggy banks. This is ludicrous. Someone out there is having a never-ending laugh - at us.
I saw some lovely, soft and cuddly, pigs at the “Be Be Boutique” the other day – should they be banned too? New born babes, no longer the recipients of cute little pig’s to hug, and their cots furnished with farm yard mobiles with all food groups represented, except the pig?
What next, people being fined for causing offence for using the old-fashioned expression “bringing home the bacon”? No more references to being “pigs in a poke”? No more nursery rhymes about little piggies going to market, and no little piggies going wee, wee, wee, all the way home?
Enough already. This is not about tolerance. This is not about consideration for other cultures or religions. This has nothing to do with being politically correct – which was, and still is, a euphemism for castrating our intellects and our language; neutralizing words, so that when strung together, they only ever come out in a homogeneous shade of beige. Yes, this great brown land is being beiged into nothingness, and it has been going on for a couple of decades now. Soon all we’ll be able to hear is the soft unified nodding of our empty submissive heads. This is tosh; total tosh! There is nothing to celebrate here.
Damn it – no one is forcing anyone to EAT piggy banks!
Will type for food, hey? NO! We should be typing for bacon and ham, and pickled trotters.
Now time for my dinner, sweet and sour pork, with a bit of not at all special, in fact remarkably average, fried rice. And if you're off there eating broccoli and liver, I don't mind at all, and I will never show even a modicum of outrage; nor should I - it's your body, your stomach, your tastebuds, your choice - eat up, enjoy!
In the meantime, Mr Evil Pundit draws our attention to a far more serious and dangerous example of this encroachment of double standards and cowardice in the face of any would be terrorist, harboring deep and committed hated of all infidels Muslim.