“Parents’ disgust as Labour council hires actor in rainbow coloured monkey costume with fake penis and nipples to appear at library event encouraging children to read”, reports the Daily Mail.
Parents have voiced their disgust after a Labour council hired an actor in a rainbow-coloured monkey costume with a fake penis and nipples to appear at a library event for children.
The Redbridge Libraries Summer Reading Challenge run by Redbridge Council in east London set up the event but the library has since apologised for the ‘inappropriate’ costume.
A full investigation has also been launched by the council to get to the bottom of how taxpayers’ money was used to hire the actors.
Labour councillor Jas Athwal has apologised and tweeted: ‘I was appalled by the incident in Redbridge Libraries on Saturday.
‘Completely inappropriate and deeply offensive performers were hired by independent contractor Vision who manage Redbridge libraries and leisure centres.
So it was just a mistake, then? The actors’ agency mixed up the booking for the children’s library with the one for the Pride parade? Not quite. Early complainers were blocked on twitter and told off for “lecturing”. It seems the same performers in the same costumes have appeared in other libraries. The Labour council can repeat the words “independent contractor” all they want but nobody is under the impression that this would be equally likely to happen under a Conservative council. The SNP, however…
I was haunted by one of the pictures in the Mail story that shows a woman in a burka walking by in the street while the rainbow monkey man moons her. He thinks performance, she thinks insult. I do not think that woman is likely to take her kid to the next Summer Reading Challenge. That is a pity: it concerns me that so many British Muslim children do not read well. However my opinions about rainbow monkey man strutting his stuff in the public street are difficult to summarise and are not the topic of this post. I talked about some of the friction that arises when groups with very different mores exert their right to parade in a post from two years ago called ‘If you want Pride you must allow the cry of “Shame!”’ which concerned events in Walthamstow, which like nearby Redbridge has a substantial Muslim population.
What I wanted to talk about this time related more to the events in the library, specifically the question asked on Twitter by Janice Turner of the Times: “I would really love a detailed breakdown of the commissioning process whereby Redbridge council commissioned the Rainbow Dildo Butt Monkey as a means to teach children to read.” How did this happen? Why did no one question it? Someone looked up Mandinga Arts on the internet and ticked the box saying yes they want that costume for an event aimed at children of primary school age. The actor got into said costume, arranged his dildo, and set off for the library. Did someone direct him to the children’s section? At the library the staff no doubt shuffled their feet a bit (the staff member at the earlier event at Exeter library seemed to have been taken aback by the full frontal) but so far as I can tell the eventual complaint came from a parent, not a librarian, despite the fact that it should have been obvious that many of the ethnic minority and working class parents and children libraries say they want to reach most would be repelled by this. No one spoke up. Why not?
My guess as to the answer is the title of this post.
Difficult to comment without throwing up. Just assume I made some trenchant points about this.
FTFT
Is the problem that many of those involved are really stupid? Many years ago we had plenty of mindless tasks for mindless people to do. They could keep the wheels of industry turning and not cause any problems. Automation has taken over most of the repetitive tasks that such people were ideally suited to so now we give them jobs on the council.
I just thought I’d add that I seek to preserve the right to free expression of both sides. The ideal solution would be less
publicgovernment-owned space. Privately owned libraries or streets could set rules forbidding both, either or neither of hellfire preachers and rainbow-furred dildo people, and customers could chose whether to frequent them accordingly. Unfortunately this is a political pipe dream.When children come into the equation it introduces new difficulties of libertarian principle: some parents must approve of this type experience for their children. Of course most parents, even woke parents, very much don’t. But, as I said in the main post, it is difficult for them to complain.
Schools and libraries have been completely overtaken by the woke. We allowed this to happen. So, just as in many USA libraries and schools where drag queens now hold pride of place, all of those involved in the planning and supervision hold to the same woke beliefs, and honestly cannot fathom how us deplorables might think differently.
But if we do think differently, they assume that continued exposure to the dildo’ed and falsie’ed will at least get our kids used to it. We demonize what we don’t know or see, the thinking goes, and so to regularize it is to make it human and normal. The deplorables cannot be saved, but perhaps their kids can.
Yes, a privately owned business would think through what their display would be and whether the parents—the paying customers—would like it. This kind of violation of parental expectation can only occur in a government-owned space because there are no customers and therefore there is no consideration of what the customers might actually want.
Exactly what kind of books does that crap encourage kids to read, the top shelf?
But, we elected these people. We are the customers. So, didn’t we, at least initially, agree with their overall philosophies? Didn’t we give them free rein to do such things? (Obviously, “we” means the demos, not you and I.)
Ultimately, complaint is futile. The next opportunity to address such happenings occurs at the next election for council seat, for school board seat, for whatever office is making these decisions. But that same “we” is going to be told that they either accept dildo’ed monkeys, or those hateful racist sexist classist conservatives. And so “we” will vote for more dildo’ed monkeys.
The biggest mistake the “gay community” (yes, I know it’s not monolithic, but anyway . . .) ever made – and the biggest coup the kink community ever pulled off – was attaching the kinks to the gays as if they were the same thing.
Acceptance of homosexuality in the western world was almost universally a done deal. (A deal I applaud, FWIW.) Convincing the world that acceptance of gays required an acceptance of kink was the coup that the kinks pulled off, to their benefit and to the ultimate harm of the gays.
Now, if we fight against dildo’ed monkeys and outrageous drag queens in our schools and libraries, we’re homophobes. But if we push for the acceptance of differing sexual preferences, we’re tacitly pushing for the acceptance of kink. How the gay community allowed this to develop is beyond me.
“But, we elected these people.”
Well, democracy is a very blunt tool and doesn’t work nearly as well as the free market. This is because of a lot of reasons, including but not limited to: (1) people don’t vote for what they’re willing to pay for, (2) representative democracy doesn’t have the instant feedback of the free market, (3) in a representative democracy you vote for a bundle of things at a time and, let’s be honest, monkey butt dildo man isn’t as important as keeping my taxes low, (4) most people don’t bother to vote for the low level politicians that make a lot of these kinds of decisions, (5) only jobsworths seem to try to get into local government, (6) it’s easy to capture government to serve vested interest groups (that’s what happening here) because usually people don’t care.
I like (1), I’ve known lots of people who seem to think that the government should pay for this and that, but don’t donate to the appropriate charities to that effect. They don’t appreciate it if you point out their lack of virtue in this regard. But, because people are shielded from thinking about the personal consequences of their votes, they are often willing to vote for things that they wouldn’t personally be willing to pay for.
The only real answer to this sort of nonsense is to limit government to essential functions only.
Can’t the council be sued?
There are laws against exposing children to pornography, aren’t there?
Amen to this. But the Woke response would be that “opening children’s eyes to diversity and equality” is The Essential Function.
“Amen to this. But the Woke response would be that “opening children’s eyes to diversity and equality” is The Essential Function.”
Well, yes, that’s a difference of opinion between them and me. I think that we should make education entirely private, because that would make it get so much closer to providing what is truly essential. Of course, parents will make mistakes when they choose schools for their children. But, they’ll be much better on average than is the government.
The way to limit the government is to limit the mandate to actual taxpayers. Do you want to know more?
Wouldn’t actual taxpayers be too busy working to notice how subversive the schools had become? Do I need to know more?
I can imagine the various groups of people, or individuals in high places, running round in circles trying to avoid responsibility for this farce. Possibly, someone will take the blame eventually, but who? A wise man once said, “Responsibility is like water. It tends to find the lowest possible level”.
The people screeching “can’t we please think of the children?” are making a moral panic of the whole thing. Young children think bums and willies are funny. They won’t be traumatised.
The real questions are, who decided that it was worth spending public money on this, and what public benefit did they think would accrue? Unless those responsible are able to answer these questions convincingly, then they shouldn’t be allowed to make such decisions in the future.
There is perhaps an unintentional public benefit – that of adding to the hilarity of the nation. Since one of the main groups protesting about this are Muslim parents, the lefties are going to have to decide whether they’re on the side of the glorious progressive forces of the Rainbow Dildo Monkey, or of the glorious progressive forces of the beard and burka crowd. Guardianista heads will explode.
Lefties are funny.
Karl Marx argued (really just assumed) that culture was the product of economic relations – Marxists in the 1920s and 1930s started to think (although they would never use such blunt language) that Karl Marx was WRONG – that rather than a culture being the “superstructure” of the “economic base”, culture was actually the foundation of the relations of production, and that if one wished to destroy “capitalism” one must first undermine this cultural foundation.
The above paragraph explains public policy in many places since the 1960s.
“Are you saying they are following a Frankfurt School influenced policy?” – yes I am, with a lot of Gramsci thrown into the mix as well.
“Are you saying that they objective is to destroy “capitalist” society” – yes I am, the ordinary officials may not know that, but the “intellectual leaders” of the movement certainly do.
The last factor is that Big Business and many “conservatives” in the Western world have gone along with this – and have done so for a long time now.
They are undermining the cultural foundations of the society upon which they gain their private wealth – they are going along with the Marxists either out of stupidity or cowardice (or both).
It is astonishing just how far this cultural attack goes – for example I was recently reminded that Saul Alinsky (the socialist mentor of Hillary Clinton and inspirer of Barack Obama) even influenced Pope Paul VI.
Saul Alinsky was an evil man (make no mistake about that) he wished to utterly destroy Western Civilisation (“capitalism”) – and there he was having friendly meetings with the man who was to become Pope Paul VI, because Saul Alinsky believed in “Social Justice” and wanted to “help the poor”.
The first paragraph of the famous Encyclical of 1891 contains statements that are just not true – for example that morality had declined (how was morality worse in 1891 than in 1791 or 1691 or 1591 or 1491?) and that the masses had been impoverished by capitalism – when, in reality, people were LESS badly off in 1891 than they had been in previous centuries. This “social teaching” was not socialist – but it was FALSE, and people such as Saul Alinsky understood that they could direct this falseness to more and more “Social Reform” leading to total Collectivism.
If you want to see the legacy of Saul Alinsky then look at Chicago and many other American cities – these Hell Holes are his monument. Traditional society utterly destroyed and replaced by welfare dependency, “anti racism” (i.e. race baiting politics), and massive levels of violent crime.
If you want to see cities where both material living standards and the standard of morality really are worse than they were 60 or even 70 years ago – then look at those cities that followed the Social and Cultural “reforms” pushed by men such as Saul Alinsky and those who cooperated with him, including both Catholic and Protestant churchmen.
It’s interesting that it’s the Muslims kicking up about this. I suspect that the new right wing party many are hoping for will be called Sharia.
Roué le Jour:
That sounds pretty naive to me.
The way i see it, if that proposal is implemented, the Establishment will immediately make sure that they are the only people paying “official” taxes; and then will gradually impose stealth taxes on the rest of us, through fees, social security contributions, regulations, conscription, etc. Or even outright serfdom or slavery.
But there is some merit in that proposal. Perhaps it can be fixed by making sure that it applies only to the Upper Chamber, which is to be the only body that can initiate legislation. After all, taxpayers have a right to decide how their money is to be used.
In the Lower Chamber, the principle of one (wo)man, one vote is to apply. The representatives cannot initiate legislation, but can block or repeal it, independently of the Upper Chamber. In this way, the ruling class could be prevented from using their power against the rest of us.
I am sure that you all realize that this is just brainstorming.
“Do you want to know more?” Is of course a quote from the film of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. In that story society was divided into citizens and civilians. Only citizens voted. This how democracy was first structured and always seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Why should people living out of the public purse decide the taxes of those who contribute? It can only Result in ever higher taxes.
I’m glad the internet is here, especially the illegal pirate-end of the internet. Sci-hub and Libgen are ways to route around the destruction of our library system, and perhaps gain an education. If you want to be educated, you’ll have to do it on your own time, because you *want* to learn, not because our savage imbecile societies will reward you for it (they won’t). If you want to read, you’ll have to find the books yourself. That we *can*, even while the physical libraries turn to trash and books are burned is a miracle.
“Young children think bums and willies are funny. They won’t be traumatised.”
I remember seeing a couple of boys of eight or nine browsing one of those stands that sell posters. They came to a poster featuring a hottie in her underwear and thought it was just hilarious that they could see her knickers.
Stonyground, You have reminded me of the tale of the five year old English boy being taken around The Louvre by his parents. They paused in front of The Judgement of Paris; his father delivered an erudite account of the mythological background and his mother then asked him which of the goddesses he regarded as the fairest. His response was: I can’t tell – they haven’t got their clothes on.
I did wonder if you were quoting from the movie, or just asking a rhetorical question. In fact that film helped me to solidify my own beliefs, called ‘Meridocracy’, about sharing power. I think if adults want to directly vote, then they should join some part-time community service (fire-fighting, militia, road patrols, rescue etc.) for eleven months of a year, and then directly vote on all existing and proposed laws for one month. That way, we could avoid career politicians. Perhaps offices like Mayor could be filled by seniority of citizenship.