My Oh My

What a wonderful day.

At least, that's what Uncle Remus would tell you. For those of you unfamiliar with the Disney classic "Song of the South", that's him with Br'er Rabbit.

Unfortunately, if you've never seen this then you probably never will, at least if you live in America. Perhaps I'm overstating things; if you're a believer in torrent sites, you can find a not-too-crappy video transfer version there. And if you live close to me, you can borrow my remastered DVD when it arrives. It's a bootleg version; I usually don't go in for those (in fact it's the only bootleg I own, other than "The Star Wars Christmas Special"), but in this case I think an exception is warranted.

Why this is widely unavailable is sadly obvious: the politically correct machine got ahold of it and never let go. As a result, Disney said it would "never" release this commercially on DVD (despite that, a few DVD versions exist, mostly in England, and it was released in America previously on laserdisc and VHS).

The compilation on which this was based is also largely unavailable in unabridged format. Joel Chandler Harris, an American author born in Georgia in the mid-1800's, took the folklore of the slaves and ex-slaves, wrote them down in dialect, and released them as periodicals in a popular magazine of the time. They were very popular and were for a time considered American classics.

More recently, of course, they've been attacked as offensive, similar to "Song of the South". And, just like with "Song of the South" the attackers are shooting themselves in the foot. Harris wrote down the stories because he thought they were creative, colorful, and a good way preserve some of the folk tales he remembered from his youth (also, to make money).

In the Disney film, all the black people are kind-hearted, friendly, and smarter than the white people in all the ways that count, whereas all the bad, ignorant, silly people are all Whities. Not that the movie is some kind of anti-southern screed; there are several well-meaning southern white folk, and one wise old white grandmother who, like Uncle Remus, is always right. In both cases respect and admiration for colored people was pretty much the point: it was made obvious that "the stories you are now enjoying come courtesy of good black people".

It seems the bias today comes from two different camps: those who adopt the social insanity doctrine that says we should never notice when different people are . . . you know, different; the other from a segment of the black population that insists these stories are awash in racist history: Harris stole the stories and made all the money, the dialectical writing denegrates and makes fun of the largely uneducated slaves, the unabridged tales contribute to white misunderstanding of black culture, blah blah blah.

Seriously, if I thought all black people were like Uncle Remus I'd move to Harlem. As it stands, I think my views on race are pretty accurate: the black race, like the white race, can claim its fair share of overly-sensitive wusses who ruin it for the rest of us.

It's the truth. It's actual. Everything is . . . wait a minute, is "satisfactual" even a word?