The Tao of Educational Insensitivity

Recently I ruminated on whether I had done anything racially insensitive in my past. I consider myself to be a cultured man, and one that is accepting of people of all creeds, and indeed that is the case. But, if I were to choose the closest I came to doing something racially insensitive, albeit unintentionally, it would be back in Grade 9 English.

You see, in February of whatever year that might have been we were all required to perform monologues as different African American luminaries. We put into groups based on the nature of the accomplishments of the individual we were assigned to present. I watched in horror as all of the people I would have wanted to present (MLK, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali) were chosen. At that point I would have settled for any person that I could recognize by name, but alas as I watched Eli Whitney assigned to someone else all of the names on the list of presentations that I could recognize. I even missed George Washington Carver, I could have made an altogether wicked-smart peanut butter themed presentation for that guy.

Alas, when my person came to be assigned, I was actually somewhat surprised that I recognized the name: Booker T. Washington.


Booker T. Washington: Renowned African American scholar, civil rights leader, and founder of Tuskegee University

But of course the reason the name was familiar wasn't because I had a basic understanding of african american scholarship in the early-20th century, but rather because I thought I had been assigned to do a presentation on this guy:


Booker T: Pro-wrestler in the WWF

Luckily, I didnt make the mistake of doing my presentation on the wrong Booker T. No no, instead I committed a much larger blunder. Not knowing how to present Booker T. Washington, having never seen him on tv or anything of the sort I did what I thought was reasonable and presented my report on him disguised as this guy:


Mr T: Former bouncer, turned pro-wrestler, turned actor, turned fool pity-er

In retrospect probably not the best idea. I dont recall being admonished for this in class. But, really what I did was present a report on one of the most accomplished African American scholars of the past century, punctuating each sentence with "I pity the fool". The reason I recant now is if the guy that had gone on after me had presented a report on gandhi while punctuating each sentence with "thank you, come again" i'd probably be pretty offended, so I feel the need to get that out there.

The Tao of Intoxicated Screenwriting

Disclaimer: The following is probably not true

Over this summer, I had envious duty of screening a pool of potentially memory deficient geriatric newspaper subscribers for inclusion in a research study. The task was rather tedious, most of them had, amongst a host of other maladies, rather severe hearing problems, and those of them that could hear well enough became rather hostile upon making out that my last name sounded remotely Baa'thist.

The test battery these participants needed to successfully complete to be included in the larger study included a serious of tedious questions ranging from rather uncomfortable, such as repeatedly asking if the person enjoys using illegal drugs, to the bluntly insulting, such as five successive questions that with slight variation asked if the geriatric interviewee found elementary school to be too difficult for them.

To be fair, a good percentage of them were rather pleasant throughout but there was the majority that either became irritated or just didn't want the half-hour long test to end. Case in point a elderly pot smoker writing a script with the horrible contrived plot which sounds vaguely like a rip-off of the little-known, poorly-recieved "ski school" starring Jim Varney (of "Ernest goes to Camp/School/Jail/the Beach/doesn't go the to Beach" fame) but set in the world of surfing. Now for confidentiality reasons I will try to remain as vague as possible but he wants it to star the non-fat guy from "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" and the non-funny guy that plays Jiminy Glick, who...I dunno he might actually have died already, not sure. But maybe I'm being to harsh, maybe its actually really funny. But its not and because he told me the title of his script and its the following, but -Up and +Down (Hilarious! get it? Its the opposite of what its supposed to be! Ironic right?!?!)





So really quite sad, a non-starter idea, and aiming for a dream cast of washed up actors, and to think he quit a legit job for this. Hearing from people like this make me feel a little less bad about wasting my time writing blog posts as I'm currently doing.