"What do you think of Kipling?"
"I don't know, I've never kippled!"
Now, if any semi-literate fool in high school is told about Kipling, it's some teacher "of color" saying, "Kipling? HE A RACIST." Maybe adding, "so was Francis Scott Key. STONE COLD RACIST." That's all.
If you try to explain, you might run up against facts. Against gray areas. Against the works of Kipling that champion his love of India, against the fact that Key was a lawyer who often went to court to free slaves.
Power corrupts, and when anyone gets in a position of power...it's going to be CENSORSHIP. BULLYING. MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY.
It's going to be IGNORANCE. Because it's much more fun to tear somebody down and to advance yourself as being put upon and abused.
Ha ha ha, a female photographer of color, named Sara KAHN, takes a photo of a student leader of color named FATIMA ABID, who is doing what...censoring and removing a poem by a legendary literary figure, and replacing it with meme-drivel by a pop poet.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating....
don’t give way to hating
don’t give way to hating
don’t give way to hating
don’t give way to hating
Sorry, Rudyard, but WHAT FUN IS THAT? What do you MEAN, "don't give way to hating?"
YO, HATERS GOTTA HATE.
The most people get their fun on the INTERNET from hating. They troll. They bully. They break the law any chance they get with leaking documents, writing slander, spreading lies and "fake news," and love to see upset reactions from people who "just don't get it." Hey, deprive the world of reading a Kipling poem and judging it. That's POWER!
For most people, Rudyard Kipling is just "the nice old man who wrote The Jungle Books...which have been adapted into such lovely films and things..."
For some others, Kipling is known for ONE poem, "IF," which is a bit sappy but offers more positive advice than all of the MEMES from Maya Angelou, RUMI and the great Prince Ea put together.
Surely, nobody could be hurt, and MOST people could be helped by reading Uncle Rudyard's poem "IF." That is, "IF" you have any kind of tolerance, intelligence and common sense. "IF" you are not consumed by hate and a preening sense of egotism and a wicked and perverse need for POWER.
"Let's see," Fatima says to herself, "how can I get my name in the papers, and better yet, ALL OVER THE INTERNET...how can I get MY WAY...how can I promote MYSELF and "WOMEN OF COLOR." Yes, by tearing down some OLD WHITE GUY exhibit. A dead old white guy."
Right? How safe she is, preening for the camera, posing in her little hide-out in Academia, and targeting a dead white guy. Will you find her protesting the beheading of a British soldier? Standing with the people protesting the desecration of a synagogue? Would she dare to write something against ISIS and post it as a Tweet? Would she march in a gay pride parade?
Oh, a poster of a poem. Yeah. Who is going to stop HER from showing off, and deciding for all the world, and for all the students, that Kipling doesn't belong and MAYA ANGELOU, the great MAYA ANGELOU, does.
She joins silly little Emma Watson, who went skipping around underground stations in London and subways in New York planing "gift" copies of MAYA ANGELOU books. Except Emma Watson didn't simultaneously declare that Rudyard Kipling shouldn't be read by anyone.
Is Kipling any more "racist" than Mark Twain? Since when have the majority of people in the world come to believe that THEIR RACE and THEIR RELIGION isn't superior to somebody else's? Anyone remember 9/11 or 7/7, when people OF COLOR and of a CRACKPOT RELIGION, decided to blow shit up? Because they knew THEY were superior?
It is OUTRAGEOUS that important literary figures get attacked and CENSORED...that their work is DENIED because SOME people decide they don't like it.
Is this Fatima bitch screaming at radio stations not to play Richard Wagner music? Is she telling TV networks never, EVER to play a movie or a TV show that features Kevin Spacey, Rolf Harris or Roseanne Barr? Where DO we draw the line?
People mutter than Kipling or Twain wrote something that was a little un-PC today? How about what people are doing TODAY TODAY?
There are plenty of people who think homosexuals are crazy. Who think Jews should be exterminated. Who believe in the KKK. Who only wish they could walk around wearing a swastika. Who would rage if their daughter married someone DIFFERENT. Who picket funerals for soldiers for NO sane reason and just a lot of evil intolerance.
We want to bitch about how backward Mark Twain or Rudyard Kipling or Richard Wagner was? And we ignore what is being said by the leaders of ISIS, by Le Pen in France, and by Pink Floyd's arrogant Roger Waters?
In Kipling's time, people believed masturbation would blind a person. That dinosaurs were a myth and that God made Adam & Eve and Jesus only 2,000 or so years ago. That angels were in the clouds. And that someone of a different color was BAD. That includes the Africans who would routinely slaughter white missionaries...which they still do when "Doctors without Borders" try to give out free injections against disease.
Ah, but it's only the WHITE GUY to single out. Let's go tear down a statue of a man who did a lot of good in the world. Let's replace a perfectly good poem with a shitty one because it's from "a woman of color." It's pretty sick how REVERSE RACISTS don't think they're REVERSE RACISTS, but they sure know how to point the finger elsewhere.
The White Brits were known for believing it was the "white man's burden" (a Kipling phrase) to bring civilization to savages. Well, we all know what a BAD idea THAT is. Whenever people in backward "of color" countries are in trouble, they cry out for CIVILIZATION to help them, specifically, WHITE people: "Come bring your technology, bring your wheat, bring your medication...feed us, clothe us, help us...give us the tools we need. And DON'T ask for ANYTHING in return."
It wasn't just Kipling's Brits who decided it was a good idea to colonize. The French were doing it. The Dutch were doing it. All through history, you'll also find that ANY group of people would pick a fight with any OTHER group of people. And it's still going on, or hasn't this twat named Fatima heard of BOKO HARAM? That's Nigerians fighting other Nigerians. PS, who do you think killed tens of thousands of people in Mali? Not white people. Wars over farmland, over oil, over whether to practice one brand of Islam over another...are killing and killing and killing people.
These are people that might learn a lesson about "IF..." and IF you could be a little more humane and tolerant toward others.
One of my all time favorite poems is "Gunga Din." Yes, Kipling wrote "black-faced." He wrote "of all them black faced crew, THE FINEST MAN I KNEW was our regimental bhisti Gunga Din." He showed a lot more respect than the average white couple in Manhattan who hire a maid "of color." He was a lot less....CONDESCENDING.
Kipling? Racist? What was the last line of that poem?
"You're a better man than I am, GUNGA DIN."
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