Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Aug. 1, 2011

Huffing and puffing, or much ado about nuffing?

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There are certain news reports which are so absolutely goofy that, even years later, when folks think of them, they shake their heads and mutter. I was reminded of just such a report by a comment on TV last week concerning a January 24, 2008 UK Telegraph article on education in the United Kingdom.

I went to the Internet and found the article, by the Telegraph’s Education Editor Grace Paton. It chronicled how BECTA (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency), which is–seriously–known in the UK as a QUANGO (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organization) ... where was I? Oh yeah, this British non-governmental government agency’s awards panel had turned down a remake of “The Three Little Pigs” fairy tale, offered as a teaching aid for British schoolchildren but modified into something called ‘The Three Little Cowboy Builders.” The updated digital retelling of the old story was judged inappropriate due to subject matter which might offend Muslims and builders.

As Paton put it: “In the past, Baa Baa Black Sheep has become Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep to satisfy race relations, the Seven Dwarfs have been axed from Snow White to avoid offending the vertically challenged and the ending of Humpty Dumpty has been censored for fear of upsetting sensitive children. ... Judges said ‘retelling the [Three Little Pigs] story’ was acceptable, but it ‘should not alienate parts of the workforce,’ adding that builders should be ‘positive’ role models for young children. ‘Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?’ the judges asked.”

The Three Little Pigs version I remember had two of the three pigs getting eaten by the wolf, who then slid down the chimney of the third pig’s brick home, directly into a pot of boiling water. In that version, the third pig slapped a lid on that pot, boiled the wolf, skinned him, removed his giblets, garnished him with onions and parsley and ate him for dinner, because pigs are omnivorous. I’m sure the digital remake, offensive as it may have been, didn’t include any of that. It probably had all three of the cowboy builder piggies inviting the poor, misunderstood wolf in for a nice, vegan meal consisting of tofu and watercress salad.

There was more to the article, but that was enough to make me mutter like a motorboat. Sometimes, just wandering around the house muttering to myself is therapeutic, and when I get the muttering out of my system, I can go about my business again. There are other times, however, when I need to mutter at somebody else, somebody who will just listen and accept my litany of complaints without question or rebuttal. A sympathetic ear is what I need. Which is why God invented dogs. When it comes to sympathetic ears, they have two of them.

Our dachshund, Maggie, is a very good listener. She has deep brown eyes which seem to say “Your logic is irrefutable. I understand, and I’m here for you, Daddy.” She may not be a genius, but then again she can find pills when you drop them on the floor. She will walk directly to the pill you’ve dropped and put her nose on it, so that instead of always wondering what happened to that pill, you can retrieve it, wipe it off, and throw it into the trash due to those nagging questions about just where her nose has been lately.

So I went into the dining room, where Maggie was lying in the sunlight, seriously contemplating either a) the current world economic crisis, or b) rolling over.

“Can you believe it? The Three Little Pigs became The Three Cowboy Builders, and still didn’t pass muster. What’s next, Three Visually Impaired Rodents being pursued around the kitchen by the farmer’s wife who wants to put bows on their tails and educate them about producing low cost electrical power by running on little hamster treadmills hooked to magnetos? Offensive pigs indeed!”

Maggie raised her head and looked at me quizzically.

“Three Little Pigs,” I said. She made no response.

“PIGS! YOU KNOW, IT’S WHERE PORK CHOPS COME FROM!” The pork chops remark got her attention. She sat up and wagged her tail.

“Three pigs with hairy chinny, chin, chins and a hungry, huffing, puffing wolf!”

“WOOF!” she replied, and ran to the door to see what I was barking at. But I was on a roll.

“That’s right, you can’t have a bunch of super-sensitive Little Lord Fauntleroy British schoolchildren thinking there’s anything stupid about pigs building houses out of poor quality materials when half the world’s population has to use hay or straw or sticks or cow dung or cattails or–”

The cattail reference evoked another “WOOF!”

“I mean, all the kids I knew were raised on fairy tales about endangered bears chasing Goldilocks out of their kid’s bed and Hansel and Gretel pushing a poor senior citizen into an oven and Little Red Riding Hood and the heroic hunter who kills the grandma-eating wolf. And of course there was Chicken Little who was convinced the sky was falling because an acorn or an anvil or something fell on his head and left him a seriously brain damaged chicken–talk about reduncancy! And did any of it warp us, or turn us into sychopaths, or babbling idiots? NOOOO! We loved the old fairy tales; they were real treats, and–”

Maggie pricked up her ears, ran to the cupboard and scratched on the door. The word “treat” loomed large in her vocabulary, and she knew where we kept hers. I fetched her a dog biscuit, and she rewarded me by carrying it into the hallway, where she could eat in peace and wouldn’t have to listen to any further nonsense about political correctness run amok in the UK.

And I was about to launch into a very enlightening lecture about the sad history of educational PC in our own country. She didn’t know what she was missing.

Or maybe she did.