Social protesters take swim upstream
Can everyone please put down their lassos, pickaxes and spray cans for one second?
Now, I have not read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” If I’m going to waste time with fairy tales, I’ll read my collection of old programs from Leafs games. Where have you gone, Miroslav Frycer?
You were supposed to be our King Triton.
But I have watched Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” about 85 times. And you know what? I do not recall the scenes in which Ariel used her white privilege underseas or chewed out Flotsam and Jetsam in a bigoted rage or disparaged Ursula over her lavender skin. There was no chapter of KKK crustaceans in Atlantica.
So a wire story that moved out of Denmark on Friday was confusing.
According to Reuters, “The Little Mermaid” sculpture in Copenhagen was defaced with graffiti. The suspect remains at large. But it seems he or she concluded the Little Mermaid was, in fact, a “Racist Fish.”
OK. It’s not for me to tell anyone how or what to protest. The other night, I was glancing at my cable and internet bill and had to fight the urge to break quarantine and go topple a Ted Rogers statue: “How dare you subjugate my pocketbook during lockdown with a $400 monthly charge so that my bored kids can obsessively rewatch a YouTube clip of Dominic Monaghan pranking Elijah Wood?”
This is not unlimited data — it’s unlimited highway robbery.
But let’s get back to that hateful little ginger of a racist fish. For the sake of the noble social protests that are unfolding around the world and tipping the needle toward change, I am praying Danish police make an arrest and discover this anti-mermaid scumbag was simply trolling to discredit legitimate grievances.
You know what I mean? It’s as if vegans took to the streets to protest the consumption of animals. And then I, a sirloin aficionado, got annoyed. So I pretend to be a vegan activist and torch a cabbage stand.
CP24 shows a farmer running for his life and viewers are like, “These vegans are out of their minds!”
If the Little Mermaid is a racist, does this not mean Belle is into bestiality and Rapunzel is guilty of bald-shaming? What about Simba? Huh? Treating poor Zazu like he was an inferior red-billed hornbill. Or Tinker Bell, fluttering around and playing coy with her unattainable beauty standards. And don’t get me started on that monster Elsa, destroying the environment with her ice-making mood swings.
(Man, having two daughters who were into Disney is really paying off today.)
Yes. It’s all ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as actually scrawling “Racist Fish” on a 107-yearold sculpture of “The Little Mermaid” that has already endured attacks over the last century, including two decapitations. The danger for any social movement is overreach. The art of persuasion involves appealing to decency while not putting common sense in a headlock. If I want to call attention to, say, the insanely high cost of prescription glasses — stop discriminating against myopia — I would commit self-sabotage by attempting to achieve my goals by running around and suckerpunching blind people.
Have you noticed how Donald Trump is now pinning his fading re-election hopes to straight-up racism? It would be comical if it weren’t so pathetic. Yeah. This guy won’t say boo about the pandemic he bungled that has plunged America into surging waves of death and chaos. He says Black Lives Matter is “a symbol of hate,” as he vows to protect Confederate monuments, actual symbols of hate.
At this point, if Trump were informed the job of U.S. president suddenly involved saving breakfast cereal, he’d instinctively order a drone strike on Tony the Tiger.
The only ammo this guy has left for his bazooka of division is mini-marshmallows and not the multicoloured ones. And that is precisely why protesters who are fighting for equality must not fall face-first into the trap of overreach, whether that’s trying to cancel the Little Mermaid, or painting “murderer” and “colonizer” on the statue of Matthias Baldwin in Philadelphia.
He was an abolitionist, you lunatics. As an enlightened inventor and machinist, he fought against slavery long before the Civil War. He was your spiritual “ally.” Spraypainting his face makes you look like a clown. Egalitarianism won’t be found on a gravel road of historical ignorance. Defacing Baldwin is like abortion rights groups storming a Henry Morgentaler shrine with blowtorches and chants of “Shame!”
And the aggravating part is that this new Armageddon against statues, monuments and names should not be complicated. Should the Washington Redskins adopt a new moniker? Absolutely. Should Confederate symbols be removed from public spaces? Yes. They should have never gone up in the first place. These weren’t American heroes — they were traitors with mutton chops and muskets who tried to overthrow the government because the idea of not having slaves was too painful to contemplate.
You want to keep that dark truth afloat in the gnashing whirlpool of possible change?
Don’t muddy the waters by calling the Little Mermaid a racist fish.
The art of persuasion involves appealing to decency while not putting common sense in a headlock