Anyone who uses a computer these days uses Google, and anyone who uses Google will have noticed that they can’t let a holiday go by without fancifully embroidering their logo. On Halloween you’ll have pumpkins and witches and spiders, on Christmas, Frosty or some other certified all-purpose generic marker. Ditto for Thanksgiving and just about every other special day that the calendar affords. I seem to recall, but can not swear, that even “earth day” got the logo make over.
Well, here we are on Memorial Day, the one day of the year we set aside to thank the men and women who served in the armed forces and whose labors helped keep those holidays coming for us Americans, including, of course, the engineers at Google who have been hauling in the cash at a stupendous rate on account of America’s institutions of free enterprise. How does Google commemorate the service, the sacrifice, of the men and women who have borne arms to protect us and our freedoms? Here it is:
In other words, they completely ignored Memorial Day. In a recent post, I quoted from Kipling’s poem “Tommy.” Google’s pointed, and disgusting, neglect of the men and women who make it possible for them to make and enjoy their millions prompts me to quote from it again:
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
Here’s a bet: that the geniuses at Google will be turning out en masse for Obama, assuming he gets the nomination. Any takers?
UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has the back story. Bottom line? “What’s the excuse this year?”
Google is just boycotting the holiday until homosexuals are also allowed to be baby killers.
Surely the most bizarre and irrational development in American politics is the surge of huge sums of money by successful cybernet and software developers into the support of politicians dedicated to changing the U.S.A. into a socialist republic. Capitalism has made them so fantastically rich that they can’t wait to destroy it. And they don’t appear to see any irony in their behavior.
I reckon that it is because they are essentially nerds, obsessed by digital science but associating only with peers in the academic world who detest Bush and all conservatives, oblivious of the fact that they have been propelled into wealth by high-risk- taking venture capitalists. They believe they are behaving morally by supporting ” social justice”. That they are contributing to the cause of those dedicated to destroying entrepreneurism at its roots never enters their narrow nerdy minds. Let’s get those right wing nuts!
Count it as a lack of direct acquaintance with life’s bitter tastes. When ‘World of Warcraft’ and other computer games are your primary reference points for combat, solemnities like Memorial Day seem as quaint and irrelevant as a church social.
Roger, Excellent post. However, “the one day of the year we set aside to thank the men and women who served in the armed forces and whose labors helped keep those holidays coming for us Americans” is Veterans’ Day.
Memorial Day commemorates those men and women who sacrificed their very lives in order to keep us free.