Silly Little Fairy!

The title of this post is a line that is—or was—in a Dodge Caliber commercial that has been hitting the airwaves for a couple of months. Apparently, the tiny but vocal “gay lobby” and their much more extensive knee-jerk contingent once again have been offended by “hateful words,” prompting at least one network to air a censored version of the commercial with the spoken line “silly little fairy” chopped out of it. While on the surface it might appear that they have a point, in context this phrase is innocuous. Let me describe the uncut commercial first, after which I’ll add some bombast about how it was chopped, why it was chopped, and how I feel about the butchery.

The original commercial opens with a tiny, Tinkerbell-like fairy with cute little wings and a magic wand—played by a rather hot-looking strawberry blonde—flying around waving her wand. She waves it at a tough, grimy train and turns it into a cute little toy train all decked out in multiple primary colors. Then, she encounters our hero, a Dodge Caliber. She tries to zap it with fairy dust, presumably to turn it into something cute, but it doesn’t work. The stunt backfires and the recoil generated by the failed zapping hurls the little fairy against a masonry wall. She slides down to the sidewalk, dazed, just as a big, tough guy is walking his big, tough dog nearby. He sees her go splat and exclaims, “Silly little fairy!” She quickly recovers her magical abilities and angrily zaps the guy, transforming him into a preppy dude and changing his tough dog into four little ankle biting, furry little lap dogs. I suppose that the moral of the story is that fairy magic can make a big, tough train into a cute toy and it can turn a big, tough guy and his dog into cute preppies, but it doesn’t work on the big, tough Dodge Caliber. OK, it’s dumb and doesn’t make much of a point, but it is cute. And the fairy is hot.

The gay detractors don’t think it’s cute. Their flimsy, contrived, anti-gay interpretation gave them yet another subcause with which to bash the mainstream (yeah, I’ll take the liberty of calling 97% the mainstream). So, gay activists got involved and made noise with Daimler-Chrysler. I don’t know exactly what happened there, but now there are two versions of the commercial. The original is still airing. I saw it on our local Warner Brothers channel tonight. Later, during the Stanley Cup Finals game on NBC, I saw the “politically correct” version. Pissed me off, too. Well, NBC pisses me off, as you well know if you’ve read some of my other posts. After all, they’re the network of “Law & Odor,” which never fails to blow left-wing hot air in each of its incarnations, spin-offs, and whatever Dick Wolf touches. It is hard to believe that NBC is part of a company, General Electric Company, that was once regarded as the best managed in the world, at least when Jack Welch was running it. But I digress (as usual). I’m being unfair in that I don’t know that NBC is the only network where the censored version of the commercial can be seen. In this “politically correct” version, we still have the fairy, but the word “fairy” is never uttered. The splat the fairy makes when she hits the wall is muted, so that it’s a dainty, little click, as opposed to the dropping a bullfrog from a 10-story building SPLAT she made in the original. Finally, the big guy and the big dog are transformed into metrosexual parodies, but they appear almost subliminally. Their transmogrified images are on the screen for mere milliseconds. The resulting commercial is disjointed and doesn’t leave a strong impression. The only remaining vestige of cuteness is the little fairy herself.

What’s next? Where the hell is this all going? Now, the word “fairy,” even when applied to a mythical, obviously female (she’s hot, too—have I said that?) parody of a fairy, is “hateful”? The combative moonbats apparently think so. So, what are we going to do about the Brothers Grimm? Will we have to call fairy tales something else, just because these pseudo-sensitivities are inflamed? (Come on—you know that they’re just making noise about something as stupid and inconsequential as this because they can—much as I’m making backlash noise about them because I can.) Yeah, so what’s next? Will the “hateful” word “fruit” be banned in all contexts, including a discussion the food pyramid on the Food Network?

I’m just not sensitive enough, I suppose. When I was working at a state university here, my dean nominated me to participate in a sensitivity training seminar. It didn’t work—yet another attempted conversion gone awry!

OK, so the word “fairy” was the first issue with the detractors of this commercial. The second issue apparently was transforming the macho man and his dogcho dog into what the offended non-multitude described as an effeminate stereotype of a gay male, right down to the four pomeranians on pink leashes. Hell, I never even noticed the color of the leashes or the breed of dog until I read some of the commentary about the “hatefulness”. I thought that the point was that the fairy (I said it—fairy, fairy, fairy) was making everything cute. I said “cute,” not gay. The gay connection never crossed my mind until I read some of the overreactive comments on gay blogs. Just as I didn’t think of “fairy” as a colloquial synonym for homosexual male in the context of this commercial, I didn’t see anything particularly disparaging of homosexuals in the fairy zapping trains, dogs, and automobiles. Why is this fairy dust transformation an object of attempted (and partially achieved) gay censorship? Carson Kressley and the other members of the “Fab Five,” who pointedly polish their prissy image of the effeminate, sissified gay male to a high gloss on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, remake regular, unkempt guys into style conscious, cologne wearing, tanning parlor visiting metrosexuals. They haven’t as yet—as far as I know—accessorized anyone with four pomeranians on pink leashes, but I wouldn’t put it past them. The point here is that it is OK for these five gay guys to make money from temporarily suspending the rules of political correctness, calling themselves “queer,” behaving like the stereotypes they ostensibly loathe, and transforming guys into images of them, but God help us if the rest of us should use a “hate word” like “fairy” or change a tough guy into a sensitive ’70s male.

What I would like to believe is that Carson and his cohorts are comfortable in their skins and their behavioral roles, whereas the activist segment of the gay community that is making all the noise is overreacting, just to make their loud mouths heard. The Fab Five make their point much more cogently, just by being at ease and natural. They curry a lot more favor for homosexuals than the tongue wagging, censorship promoting “gay lobby” ever will with their negative approach.

So, anyhow, I can figure out the “fairy” thing and the transmogrification kerfuffle, but what’s the deal with the censorship of the splat? I’m obviously too insensitive and too lacking in abstract cognitive function to glean the negative symbolism of the splat. I really did like my bullfrog falling from a 10-story building analogy. Will animal rights activists pick up on that?

OK, so call me a homophobe. First of all, who the hell coined that terminology? Those who actually do disparage homosexuality don’t fear homosexuals—they loathe them. That’s not me, either. I’m fine with peaceful coexistence and the notion that what goes on behind closed doors is none of my damn business. I feel free to despise people on the basis of their obnoxious actions or to like people on the basis of their benificent actions, without regard to their sexual proclivities. I neither fear nor dislike homosexuals in general. Like any other segment of society, some are likeable to me, some are not, and about the vast majority of them, I know nothing and care not. I might be a miscreant, a misanthrope, and a big bombastic boor, but I’m not a homophobe. I’m not a homophile, either. Everyone gets equal treatment from me—I’m always a dork!

(Self-deprecation serves to defuse the flames this post will ignite. Hell, those who know me know that I’m a crazy sumbitch!)

The only thing that bowing to pressure from a very small subset of a very small segment of society begets is more bowing and scraping to both this and any other self-declared downtrodden minority that comes along. The Wheel of Pernicious Political Correctness is spinning. Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.

Let’s make everything dull and uninteresting, lest we step on somebody’s hypersensitive toes!