Whoopi makes an oopsie

B-list Hollywood has-been and current MSNBC regular Whoopi Goldberg made quite a slip of the tongue the other day, something to the effect the holocaust not being a biggie, because after all, it was just white folks killing other white folks.

Seems it slipped Whoopi's mind for an unfortunate moment that one of those two groups of people happens to own the media-entertainment space. That's the space that butters Whoopi's bread.

Now that's an oopsie! If you're looking for Whoopi next week, check the C-list...

Having said that, I must say she has a point. While she herself has claimed to be Jewish, we, and obviously she, generally consider Jews to be white. Sure, there's a few who look like the racist caricature of a stereotypical Jew, but generally not. 

You can't go by the name, either. Look at my name, for example. Neumann is most often a Lutheran name, but there's plenty of Catholics and Jews with the same handle.

As for the "white" thing, that's a very malleable concept. There was a time when mainstream opinion, which was then Anglo-Saxon opinion, held that Greeks and Italians weren't white.

Even the Irish were suspect, at least the Catholic ones, which was always a real head-scratcher to me. How could those Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants spend decades, even centuries, at one another's throats, when they all love Jesus?

Not only that, but, at least to my eye, they were all white!

Whoopi will soon enough see the error of her ways, and provide us a grovelling walk-back.

Turtle time

I'm sitting on the stoop tapping away on my laptop. Once in a while I'll hear a car. There's one coming down the Burgess side-road right now.

Most of the time all I hear is the birds. Frogs too. A mourning dove has been particularly vocal this evening. Probably a pair of them, talking back and forth. Various hummingbirds visit the feeder hanging over my head. A pair of sandhill cranes sound pissed off and fly away.

What you never hear is turtles. You sometimes get to see them though. Here at Falling Downs it's turtle time, when the mamma turtles come out of the marsh to lay their eggs in the gravel shoulder of the road.

This morning when I walked the hounds there were three in a row on the south shoulder of the road. Tonight the raccoons will dig up what they can. Only once have I met a newborn - about the size of a toonie and completely soft to the touch. The birds must have a field-day with them.

Picked up a book today that I've had lying on the kitchen table for a few weeks. The Farm Manager's dear mother lent it to me; Elizabeth Bettina's It Happened in Italy: The Untold Story of how the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust.

It's quite the story. Lots of Italian Catholics chose not to say something when they saw something during the Nazi era, often at considerable risk to their own well-being. As a result many Jewish lives were saved. At a time when Canada closed her borders to Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, they could still get into Italy without a visa.

I want to believe that there are many people of all faiths who would chose not to rat out the vulnerable in their midst. In fact, I think it's an innately human drive to help your fellow humans, but it's become ensnared in the miasma of contemporary me-firstism.

Heard a news story a year or two ago about the funeral of a much loved priest who worked most of his career in indigenous communities in Saskatchewan. Ya right! A much loved priest on a native reservation? Get outta here! But no, dozens of car-loads of folks from those reservations drove hours to pay their respects. He must have been one of those people who still had that inner light that drove him to do good rather than ill, a light we well know was not universally shared among his kind.

As we all know whenever we open a paper or turn on the news, it's a fucked up world. There are pressures on all sides that push us into being nasty rather than kind. We don't have to go that way.


My neighbour has a theory about those three mamma turtles. She figures they've got a Moms Support Group happening. Hey girls, let's climb that embankment and lay those eggs! Then we can go for lunch...

Will 2016 be the year Hitler finally gets some respect?

Maybe. Things look promising on this first day of the new year. Our erstwhile NATO ally the wily Erdogan has gone on the record as being an Adolf admirer.

And the late and much lamented Lemmy seems to have been a fan as well, although in his case the attraction seems to have been more sartorial than ideological. It's hard to argue with that; I mean those SS dudes did sport some snazzy uniforms.

Hitler's legacy has for too long been besmirched by that unfortunate Holocaust business, which seems manifestly unfair. It's a bit like remembering Michael Vick only for his hobby instead of his prowess as an athlete. But no less an authority than Israel's PM Mr. Netanyahu has done yeoman's work in erasing that particular stigma by revealing the fact that the Holocaust wasn't even Hitler's idea.

So maybe 2016 will be more than the Year of the Monkey; it may also be the year of Hitler's rehabilitation.

Merkel says "nein danke" to Netanyahu's rewriting of holocaust history

Any reasonable observer acquainted with the history of Netanyahu, let alone the history of the holocaust, will immediately recognize the farcical attempt to pin the Final Solution on the Palestinians for what it is; pathetic hate-mongering against Israel's Arab population.

The German government's response is essentially "don't blame the Palestinians; we take full responsibility."

By taking that responsibility, the Germans have inadvertently made another point; relationships between peoples can, no matter how dysfunctional and hateful, be mended within a couple of generations. Seventy years ago it was official policy in Germany to exterminate the Jews. Today young Jewish Israelis are emigrating to Germany in droves.

Obviously things have changed.

They can change between Arabs and Jews in Israel too.

Winnipeg gets $300 million Museum for Human Rights

Now you'd think somewhere along the chain of command somebody would have second thoughts about plunking down a Museum for Human Rights in the child poverty capital of Canada. And the urban native poverty capital. And the gang capital. You'd be wrong. I've been watching this stuff for fifty years and I'm not the least surprised by the sheer chutzpah of our leaders.

Nor am I surprised that the project is already bogged down by feuding among the various groups wanting to be represented in the Museum. When you build a 300 million dollar temple to human rights and the lack thereof, there's a lot of players want in on the action.

The Chosen People, laying claim to the Holocaust, want to have their own separate exhibit. The Armenians claim they suffered a holocaust too, so why should the other guys get special treatment. The Ukrainians want in too. Their holocaust is called the Holodomor. I think that's Ukrainian for holocaust. Then there were the Japanese who were interned during the war, the Chinese who were brought here to build a railroad, the Palestinians who claim they're still getting the dirty end of their little middle-east holocaust, and on and on and on. Believe it or not even the German-Canadian Congress has some beef they need the Museum to address. Last but not least, the First Nations, the guys who were nice enough to move to the reservations to make room for all these whiners, want the sorry record of their history included.

Since all these folks are now Canadians, they are finding beautiful Canadian solutions to their differences. Well, solutions may be too strong a word. But they are having meetings. Study sessions. Focus groups. They are striking committees. Having more meetings. Forming sub-committees...

Things almost came to a head last week at the 27th sitting of the Standing Ad Hoc Inclusivity Committee. Shlomo Weintraub, assistant counsel to the Canadian Jewish Congress, challenged Grand Chief Wilber Manytroubles of the Manitoba Chief's Congress to fisticuffs right there in the boardroom. Apparently Chief Manytroubles, having sat through 26 previous disputations, finally reached his breaking point, rose to his feet and shouted, " ad hoc this you moron" while making a gesture that could be considered either obscene or long overdue, depending on your point of view.

Fortunately the delegation from the Gay Ugandan Refugees (who have yet to have a holocaust but are expecting one imminently and therefore have observer status on the Committee) were able to intervene and an all out brawl was averted. The meeting was adjourned and the 28th sitting of the Standing Committee will convene tomorrow to continue discussions.

I remain optimistic that in the fullness of time all these disparate positions about who suffered the most and who deserves the most floor space will be resolved. For 300 million bucks at least Winnipeg's poor and unemployed can go see that they don't have it so bad after all.