Monday, October 17, 2005

Charlie Daniels and more pig nonsense

For goodness sakes, let’s stop being so uptight. Via The Monroe Doctrine – I see that someone has complained about a high school band playing the song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” because it might violate the separation between church and state. Read more at the Washington Post.

I happen to like that song, somewhat, and my mind is just boggling at a high school band interpretation of the piece. (Do they do a little skit? Do the majorettes use their batons and saw away at imaginary fiddles? What on earth would it sound like?) And I’m all for the separation of church and state, but I don’t see how playing the Charlie Daniel’s Band classic would encourage anything more than chewing on a straw.

And today one of my colleagues suggested that I remove the little squeezy pink pig that sits atop my PC during the period of Ramadan. Lots of people have these squeezy pigs on their PCs, they were handed out by a company advertising www.pigsback.com (see now I’ve helped them out). She was inspired to put her own little piggy in her desk drawer during by the recent dictat by Dudley Council to remove all the porcine paraphernalia from their desks (e.g. Piglet tissue boxes and calendars).

Of course, my devout Muslim colleague, who sits right across from me, thinks the Dudley ban is insane. "That's over the top," she said. And she doesn’t think I need to remove my pig. So I won’t.

I'd be tempted to keep the pig regardless in solidarity with the Piglet fans of Dudley. But the truth is, although I’m not a big fan of Islam (or religion generally), I actually like my colleague personally and I have to work with her and I wouldn’t want to offend her. And if I really were offending her, then I would remove the pig. But I’m not about to presume that I’m causing offense to my colleague nor am I going to change anything about the way I do because it violates the tenets of a religion I don’t even value.

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