Retraction (updated)

Many of you may not realize it, but this site is fully licensed.  Now, some bloggers out there just rant and say whatever comes into their tiny little heads -- not us:  we have an Official Junior Blogger’s License from the FCC.

Such an honor does not come without obligations.   There are certain words you may not say, certain opinions you may not express, certain thoughts you may not entertain.  (Not that we would ever dream of entertaining any!)

Well, we just had a call from the FCC, and apparently we at some point inadvertently offended someone, somewhere, at some time, in violation of paragraph 986b of Addendum D.  Our infraction, it seems, was to have posted a link to the following sexistracist abomination,

Bill Haley sings "Ten Little [ethnonym deleted]"

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oor8fvAMUIE

which we hereby duly abominate.

So in accordance with regulation 544-10-f, we are now required to post something impeccably politically Correct. 

Here you go:

One little, two little, three little Native-Americans;

Four little, five little, six little Native-Americans;

Seven little size-challenged, eight size-challenged Native Americans of unspecified height and weight, nine [modifiers redacted] Native-Americans;

Ten [XXX little Indian boys XXX]  =>
underage Native-Americans,
size unspecified,
equally divided among males, females, hermaphrodites,
and the transgendered.

[Update Oct 2012]   I may have completely misremembered the urtext -- as a count-up, rather than a countdown.  Reading Theodor Reik’s memoir, The Search Within (1956), I was met with different version, which begins  “Ten little” and winds up “Four little, three little, two little Indians / One little Indian boy”.  This last, one of his patients was suffering as an earworm.  Reik comments (in his dirty-uncle psychoanalytic way)

A few minutes before, the patient had spoken of his brothers and sisters.  It was easy to guess that the unconscious desire to remove his siblings and to have the position of an only child  had found its expression in that ditty.

The things one reads …

[Update]  Turns out there is an even less salonfähig urtext-behind-the-urtext, which, after several launderings, appears as And Then There Were None (the best-selling mystery novel of all time).    Wikipedia tells you all about it;  but to this, upon pain of the wrath of the regulators, we dare not even link.

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~ For a theo-philosophical fantasia, try this:

Murphy and the Magic Pawnshop

[Kindle] [Nook]

~

Under the terms of our consent agreement with the FCC, we shall refrain on commenting on the articles in this morning’s newspapers:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most-births-occur-outside-marriage.html?_r=1&hpw

The article makes a fascinating observation:  In some ways, unwed mothers are just smart shoppers:  “Explanations for marital decline start with home economics.”  With the decline in union jobs, “men are worth less than they used to  be.”

In that perspective, developments like the following may be not unrelated:  as marriage is cheapened, people think  why bother defending it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/same-sex-marriage-bill-passes-maryland-house-of-delegates/2012/02/17/gIQARk7XKR_story.html

(We …  are …  doomed ……..    )

[Update 5 Sept 2015]   George Will -- shooting fish in a barrel, but doing it amusingly:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/cleaning-up-history-one-name-at-a-time/2015/09/04/21ead5d4-525b-11e5-8c19-0b6825aa4a3a_story.html 

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