Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
Quote:
Staff at the high school in Inuvik, N.W.T., banned a student from performing a comedic song about a lonely "gay Eskimo" at a recent school fundraiser, claiming that the lyrics are culturally insensitive.
Crystal Saunders wanted to sing the song "Eskimo" with some friends at a fundraiser last week at Samuel Hearne Secondary School. Staff there turned down her request to perform the song on the basis that the word "Eskimo" might be considered offensive — a point that Saunders, who is Inuvialuit, disagrees with.
"It shouldn't be," she told CBC News. "[For] some people it would be, but those people might need to build up a little bit more humour and take it easy."
The song, which is attributed to the Canadian comedy group Corky and the Juice Pigs from its 1993 debut album, includes the lyrics: "I go out seal hunting with my best friend Tarka, but all I want to do is get into his parka. I'm the only gay Eskimo in my tribe."
[...]
Vice-principal Lorne Guy said Inuvialuit elders have told him using the word "Eskimo" is unacceptable, adding that the song's references to homosexuality may also have played a part in the school's decision.
"I don't know if the sexual nature of the song weighed into it heavily," Guy said. "I would say that the combination of both the cultural sensitivity and the sexual preference — the combination of that and the conversations that we've had with our elders and people of the community … that was just someplace we weren't willing to go."
Gee... "the song's references to homosexuality may also have played a part in the school's decision"... ya *think*??? 
Quote:
Eskimo
(from the album "Corky and the Juice Pigs")
I'm the only gay Eskimo
I'm the only one I know
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe
I go out seal hunting with my best friend Tarka
But all want to do is get into his parka
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe
Well me and Muk-Fluk-Chuk-Buk
We both like blubber
But me I've got this crazy fetish for rubber
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe
I make a wish on the Northern Lights
That I can find a decent pair of whaleskin tights
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe
And the seals they sing now...
These cold winter nights
Are taking their toll
I even get excited when I see the North Pole
See the North Pole...
I'm the only gay Eskimo
Only gay Eskimo
I'm the only one I know
The only one I know-oh-oh-oh
I'm the only gay Eskimo
In my tribe.
Being as C&TJP are neither Inuit nor queer, nor -- which is in my estimation the worst sin for alleged "comedians" -- very funny at all*, I find it not all that surprising that this alleged bit of "humour" traffics in several layers of offensive stereotype. However, were I a school administrator, I would have told Ms. Saunders that I was putting the proverbial kibosh on the performance purely on the grounds of doing my part as an educator to combat rampant stupidity...
* Sean Cullen makes me re-examine my opposition to torture, as he has committed enough of it himself, via the public airwaves, over the past few years. It is a rather damning indictment of the man that none other than Jay "the huge asshat" Leno finds him to be outrageously funny (as does a legion of drunken frat boys at post-secondary institutions across the land.) |
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