The woke patrol never fails to provide endless entertainment. While they don’t mean to be hilarious and instead take themselves very, very seriously, they still manage to make me clutch my sides with mirth when I’m not quaking with fear over what they have planned next. The outrage du jour this time is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. This work of classic literature used to be seen as representative of man’s fight with nature for survival in a violent and brutal world, but it’s now reduced to a tome that needs a trigger warning for people who might get upset at scenes of “graphic fishing.”
Good God. Where have all the cowboys gone? It reminds me of a country song my teen daughter keeps playing on repeat that goes:
Now I only date cowboys with the hat and boots
That can back up a trailer like his truck’s on cruise
Kind of cowboy with a wild west heart
If you ain’t the Marlboro man, then it’s no cigar
Take a couple moves from John Wayne
Learn a thing or two from Jesse James
‘Cause I only date cowboys
… and guys who can catch a fish without fainting. Enough with this toxic feminizing of humanity. It’s gross. My teen daughter is tougher than most of these sad university twerps with male genitalia but no other discernable male traits. I hope one day she can meet someone who’s more of a man than she is. The odds of that aren’t good lately.
The Daily Mail obtained documents through open records requests from the University of the Highlands in Scotland that show the school put a warning on Hemingway’s book. The university said that the “content warning” on the book allowed students to make informed choices.
Mary Dearborn, the author of Ernest Hemingway, A Biography, did not agree with this decision and told the Daily Mail, “This is nonsense. It blows my mind to think students might be encouraged to steer clear of the book. The world is a violent place and it is counterproductive to pretend otherwise. Much of the violence in the story is rooted in the natural world. It is the law of nature.”
But the radical woke left doesn’t understand nature in any sense and seeks instead to remake the world into the ultimate safe space utopia where no one’s fee-fees ever get hurt. The weird part is that if you were to try to put content warnings on young adult literature (drugs, sex, alcohol) in order for parents to make informed choices, the kooks at the American Library Association would call in the dogs of war. Labels, we are told, are censorship! Unless you’re trying to protect the tender sensibilities of gender studies majors who might need an extra dose of lithium to get through a hardcore fishing scene. But don’t bother warning that same student about an underage blowjob scene. They’re totally okay with that. There is no amount of graphic sex that today’s young people need warnings about. They’re all more sex-aware than debauched Roman emperors, but hunting and fishing … well, that’s a bridge too far for modern sensibilities. Why would you need to fish? Fish comes wrapped in plastic at the grocery store.
Hemingway isn’t the only author who got the woke warning. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein got one, too, along with Homer’s Iliad. Too much murder or something. It makes one wonder when there will be a trigger warning added to the front door of Planned Parenthood. Warning: death and murder inside these doors. But we all know that’s never going to happen. Abortion isn’t scary and triggering, but fishing to eat and live is.
The Daily Mail also interviewed Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter, who said, “This is particularly stupid given the dependency of the economy of the Highlands and Islands on industries such as fishing and farming. Many great works of literature have included references to farming, fishing, whaling, or hunting. Is the university seriously suggesting all this literature is ringed with warnings?” Yes, professor, “particularly stupid” is the right descriptor for the woke regressive boneheads.
Related: And Just Like That, I Figured Out Who’s to Blame for the Grotesque Reboot of ‘Sex and the City’
In 2021 Chris Cilizza wrote an article for CNN about how wokeness is a great threat to Democrats’ hopes in 2022. He wrote that “it’s actually James Carville who was the first to warn Democrats that focusing on very liberal policies — and demanding that the general public pronounce support for those issues or run the risk of being labeled ‘intolerant’ — is political poison for the party.”
Carville did indeed try to blow the alarm whistle, but no one seemed to be listening.
“Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it. It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud,” claimed Carville. Why won’t they say it out loud? “Because they’ll get clobbered or canceled,” he replied. The Democrats are afraid of the monster they created and nurtured. It’s no longer just devouring their enemies, but it’s starting to eye them with similar interest.
I am in favor of the Democrats’ continued silence in the face of this particularly stupid ideology that is pissing off everyone from Hemingway fans to Sex and the City fans who are tired of their favorite things being ruined by the woke theologians of the new puritanical order. May they destroy themselves faster so the rest of us can get back to enjoying life and culture without their permission.
