Warning: This column contains actual things actual liberal care about. Some readers may find the language and concepts offensive. Or weird.
How About a Good Therapist Instead? I am second to none in my appreciation of animals. (Well, I’m happily second to this guy.) Dogs, cats, debauched sloths -- I love ‘em. On the other hand, we’ve taken the sentimentalization of pets about as far as we should. If your Twitter bio includes “dog dad” or “cat mom,” you should probably try Bingo. I know, I know -- we’re all supposed to admire and be inclusive toward -- what’s the phrase? -- “Nontraditional families,” but bereavement leave for Fido?
Alternet seems to think that might be a good idea:
Most companies have separate policies for bereavement time — time away from work that is necessary to deal with the death of a loved one. But what happens if your family pet, which for many people is also family, becomes ill or dies? Should you use up your paid time off, or should there be other provisions?
Hmm. Do you work for Alpo or PetSmart? Is your last name Peebles? Then no.
But, but, but ... “The stages of grief and loss for a pet are no different than if you have lost (a human),” according to “psychotherapist Jenn Mann, host of VH1’s “Couples’ Therapy with Dr. Jenn.” A real TV shrink? It must be so then.
But the neanderthals running companies don’t care about your deep relationship with Fluffy. “When it comes to bereavement benefits,” says Alternet “it seems corporate culture has not yet caught up to the complex needs of many of their employees — and many airlines have all but ditched their bereavement fares.” Not to mention their heartless stance on emotional support peacocks. (Mmmm, emotional support peacock ...)
Across the pond they’re so much more enlightened. “Laurel Peppino, a recruiter for the data platform company, [Mparticle] told the Times: “‘We offer maternity and paternity leave and a pet is just another member of the family. We don’t discriminate just because they aren’t human.’” That would be speciesist! (Wouldn’t it?)
Moving forward, this could be an important battlefield in the war for workers rights, and one that need not be confined to the extreme of pet death. What of the single woman with seven cats? Couldn’t she use some family time? What if she’s in an ice cream coma after binge-watching The Gilmore Girls? What if she just needs to have a good cry?
And now for something completely different ...
“All right class, I want a paragraph on Paul Lynde’s groundbreaking role on Bewitched …” A bill before the Illinois Senate would require state elementary and high schools to teach a unit on “LGBT history.”
So the Land of Lincoln may soon California as the only states to mandate LGBT indoctrination for its students (if ever two states deserved one another …) Now, assigning Little Bath House on the Prairie might not rise to the level of Alt-Left insanity, except that we learned on Holocaust Remembrance Day that 66% of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz was. And 41% of them believe less than two million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. 
Teaching the cultural importance of Liberace might be okay if, say, more than a third of college graduates could identify James Madison as the author of the U.S. Constitution, or if more than half of Americans could ballpark the dates of the Civil War. But perhaps I overstate. Kids surely are learning something in history class.
Brian Johnson, CEO of the LGBT organization Equality Illinois, told the AP that.“People learn about Jane Addams, [the recognized founder of the social work profession in the United States], for example, but don't know she's a lesbian.” Just 18% of Americans know what the Emancipation Proclamation actually did, but the problem with our history curricula is that kids don’t know some social worker was a WNBA fan?
But it’s foolish to think anybody’s talking about learning history. It’s all about the feelz. "We don't think there is true justice for the LGBT community unless we can learn about our history," said Johnson. The teaching of history is another weapon in the SJW arsenal, and kids be damned.
One person, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute (“a Christian organization,” as the AP helpfully notes) was silly enough to propose that “upper level high school students can learn about LGBT issues, but only if schools also present dissenting voices and why some groups oppose what she called ‘the homosexual movement.’”
“Dissenting voices!” Oh Laurie, you are a treasure! There will be no dissenting voices. Johnson made that plain to the AP: “The legislation is meant to counteract the negativity LGBT students face on a daily basis and give them the chance to learn about their history and find role models.” Then he added some smiley-face boilerplate about [wait for it!] ‘diversity.”
Quick Take: Weirded Out In Wala-Wala
Run -- Don’t Walk -- to Miami for the Water Dance! The most important high holy day of the Church of Leftiness is almost here. No, not April 15. That’s the Feast of The Bleeding of the Productive Ones, and it is important in the Lefty liturgical calendar. But April 22 is the big one: Earth Day. Everywhere, the faithful are preparing: creating crappy wind chimes to sell to suburban moms, dying armpit hair, anointing themselves with patchouli oil, and forsaking personal hygiene in ritual mortification.
And in Miami, they’re dancing for the water! The National Water Dance is April 14 (yes, you haven’t missed it!) Blanca Mesa of the Biscayne Times writes on Alternet:
Dancers from Conchita Espinosa Academy and South Miami Community Middle School will join professional dancers, including the IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Company, on a sandbar at Crandon Beach on Key Biscayne for the dance. The music will come from an original percussion score created by Brandon Cruz, director of the South Florida Center for Percussive Arts.
But wasn’t The Water Dance the one with the swishy Irish guy? No, that was River Dance. It was entertainment. This is worship.
Dale Andree, the Water Dance’s creator “hopes to stir audience members to dance, too, as they feel the rhythm in the pulsing of the waves, the flapping of birds’ wings, and the ocean breezes on their skin. In time, these deeper connections can lead toward action, she believes.” Pulsing, flapping, percussive arts -- it sounds like the place to get some action …
And there’s poetry too! “Students from Miami and Hawaii schools [will be] contributing poems about water,” Mesa says. Other devotional activities include “a guided session of “Deep Listening” to connect the senses to the surrounding environment. Participants will be asked to create a poem or meditation, which will be woven into a collective text. There’s also a sensory forest walk.”
What does all this do for the environment? “‘You have to move people first to care, to connect people in a deeper way, and then the next steps will happen,’ Andree says.” So nothing. But hey, who am I to criticize another’s religion?
Quick Take: Wishing the Empress Had No Clothes “Lots of things are pink in the new music video for Janelle Monáe’s “PYNK.” A convertible. A strawberry milkshake. Lipstick. Bubblegum. A very suggestive grapefruit. But the pinkest thing in the musician’s latest queer masterpiece has to be a pair of poofy full-length pants fashioned to look like a vagina, complete with vulva ruffles. Forget pussyhats. This is way better.” -- Slate
Great Googly Moogly, I agree with The Root! At The Root’s The Grapevine page, Yesha Callahan is appalled, and for good reason.
Last summer, because of Facebook’s ridiculous algorithm (thanks, Zuck), a woman named Martina Big popped up on my timeline, and her before and after photos were strikingly different. She went from being a blond, with monstrosities for breast implants, to being a deep-brown woman with bigger monstrosities for breast implants, and lips that were triple their size. Big had completed her transformation into her lifelong desire to become a black woman, thanks to multiple injections of the synthetic hormone Melanotan.
Apparently Big went to Kenya to be baptized and is now Malaika Kubwa. I’ll let Callahan’s reaction speak for itself:
And y’all thought [faux black woman and local NAACP official Rachel] Dolezal was batshit. This woman wins the batshit prize of the decade, with Dolezal coming in a close second place. I wonder who braids hair better, though? Wait ... maybe Dolezal can teach Kubwa how to braid and make chicken wings?
Indeed. But there’s a nagging question … Assuming that as a liberal Callahan toes the line on the current trans zeitgeist, how is Big’s delusion any worse than Bruce Jenner’s?
