Raining on My Parade

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," wishing we could sneak into Davos and eat the rich! Or at least eat what the rich are eating, which I bet are some exceptionally fine vittles.

Mr. J and I are just emerging from an epic grippe. He was hospitalized with it, and I coughed for three weeks straight. Today was the first time since the Mummers Parade that I was able to get out and even exercise a little bit.

And with everything else going on in the world, today's post is yet again about the Mummers Parade.

The city of Philadelphia is quite clearly sick of this parade. They have shortened the route and put a third of the performances indoors. But the worst enemy of the Mummers Parade are some of the participants themselves.

The use of blackface in the parade has been banned since the 1960s, and even entries with "tanned" or red skin have been called into question. All Mummers know that appearing in blackface gives the press and the city ammunition in denouncing the spectacle. It also provides reason for the city's majority population groups to hate the parade.

And yet there are always two or three pinhead cracker morons who insist on blacking their faces.

The difficulty arises in the size of some of the wench clubs. (If you think of the parade as a hierarchy, even the wenches will tell you that they are the bottom feeders.) When you have a club marching a thousand people, your leadership can't police everyone. Sadly, it appears that self-policing or group admonition is beyond these fools.

The largest and rowdiest wench brigade was disqualified this year from their division for having members in blackface. The leadership of the brigade said those offenders will not march with the group again. But the damage is done. The appearance of those two or three wannabe Nazi creepers was the only thing the various news outlets wanted to talk about in the wake of the parade. And of course this malfeasance has been seized upon by everyone who wants the parade to be seen as racist, lawless, and a blot on the spotless reputation of the City of Brotherly Love.

I know there are racist and homophobic people who march in the Mummers Parade. Those people are not in my comic club. Do I stand down and denounce the event, or do I participate?

Well, I look at it like this. You go to a party, and over in the corner there's a pinhead cracker moron with a t-shirt that shows Trump dressed like Rambo, holding a semi-automatic weapon. (No lie, I have seen such shirts. Not at the Mummers Parade.) Do I get a plate of food and sit as far away as I can from the offender, or do I leave? Do I offer myself and my friends as better examples of the average party-goer, or do I just decamp in a huff?

I have no plans to decamp from the Mummers Parade. It hurts my heart to see it showered with disrespect by groups that I like (aka Antifa), but the experience does remind me that the biggest story is always the ugliest story. "Nice Mummer Lady Poses with Crowds on Her Way Back to the El Train" would hardly be something that anyone would want to read.

For the record, my club (Comic, not Wench Division) finished third. We had over 200 members in our group. None in blackface. That. Would. Not. Fly.