Fanboy

On March 10, 2019, casting announcements were made for the upcoming blockbuster film, Vasco Irkin: Cosmic Navigator. The film, which is based on the globally successful series of sci-fi novels, and which promised to be only the first in a series of films, would revolve around the exploits of protagonist Vasco Irkin, described by the character's creator as, "a sort of intergalactic freedom fighter-slash-bounty hunter, with a streak of Robin Hood in his DNA." 

Upon the announcement that the lead role, which fans had speculated would go to Chris Pratt, would actually be played by Michael B. Jordan, chaos ensued in the social media world. 

Avid fan of the Irkin Vasco novels Hank Modine took to Twitter with the following Tweets:

Total pandering to libtard agenda. Vasco Irkin is WHITE. I should know: I've won 6 ribbons at cosplay events in the last three years, with my perfect Irkin simulation.

Heart broken. Jordan is NOT the Vasco Irkin we know and love. R there no white actors, anymore? #BoycottVascoIrkinMovie #VascoAintBlack #WhiteVasco

I liked Black Panther just fine, but this is BS. Give us the Vasco Irkin we deserve #BoycottVascoIrkinMovie #WhiteActorsMatterToo 

I M NOT RACIST! Just talking about what's right. #WhiteIsRight #WhiteActorsMatterToo

If U care about Vasco Irkin, go to Rotten Tomatoes and give this movie a thumbs down. #KillThisMovie #BoycottVascoIrkinMovie #WhiteActorsMatterToo

Modine's rant garnered significant attention, and the hashtags he created trended for three days, turning Modine into an instant internet celebrity. When People Magazine picked up the story and interviewed him, the 46 year old Cable TV technician was quoted as saying, "I have nothing against black people. Nothing. This is NOT about racism, but about what's right. It's about the true and accurate history of the Vasco Irkin universe. I've read all 12 of the novels multiple times. I've been heavily involved in Irkin cosplay. I've even written Vasco Irkin fan fiction. If anyone knows this character, it's me, and Vasco Irkin is NOT black. I like Chris Pratt for the role, myself, but ANY of the Chrises would be great. What the hell is Chris Evans doing, now that the Avengers saga is about to be tied up? Did they even call him? I'm just so sick of everything being so politically correct, and EVERY role going to a black guy, even when the character is white!"

People also reached out to the notoriously reclusive author of the Vasco Irkin novels, who would also serve as Executive Producer of the film. Sylvia Montey, who cites Alexander Dumas, Octavia Bulter, Alejandro Carpentier, and Jane Austen as her main literary influences, made an exception to her 'no media contact' policy and issued the following statement:

"We auditioned a number of actors for this role, and Michael B. Jordan was the clear favorite of all involved. He's an amazing, versatile actor. He's the perfect age and build. He has the sort of screen presence we rarely see, anymore. What's more, he's a huge fan of the Vasco Irkin novels, and he understands the vision I have for this character and the universe the character inhabits. The question of race is puzzling, especially since Vasco Irkin, the character I created, hails from a planet in a ficticious, far-away star system, where there are no European or African beings. Race is a man-made construct, and Vasco Irkin is not a man or a woman, but an entirely different species of being."

Vasco Irkin: Cosmic Navigator was released in January, 2020, to rave reviews, and broke all box office records for a science fiction film. 

We Don't Need No Education

When informed, on March 6th, 2002, that he and his entire steelworking crew would be required to attend a cultural sensitivity workshop Boris Gulker called for an emergency union meeting. When union members gathered the next morning in the Keystone Steelworks staff lunch room, Boris took the lead.

"We have to stand together and demand that this new requirement of so-called 'cultural sensitivity training' be abolished," he said, "I have better things to do with a Saturday afternoon than this shit. This is the first step towards affirmative action. One day it's mandatory cultural sensitivity training, next thing you know, it's a racial quota, and after that? Say goodbye to your union job while some illegal with 10 kids, who can't even speak English takes it away from you. The LAST thing we need is cultural sensitivity training!"

South of the Border

On March 5, 2017 Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Blankenship of Laredo, Texas were returning home from their annual road trip through Mexico. In the trunk of their car, inside of a ziplock bag, stashed in an empty toiletry bag, and packed deep in his suitcase, were half a dozen guava fruit. Joseph and his wife loved this particular variety of the fruit, which were not available stateside, and he'd decided to try and propagate the seeds on his own land.When they encountered especially tight border patrols and inquisitive Customs agents, and were asked several times if they had anything to declare or surrender, Joseph was especially glad that he'd hidden the fruit so well. Still, the level of security and the number of questions he was asked irked him.

"We never had any trouble going back and forth, until the lefties elected Obama," he said to his wife, "I shouldn't have to be grilled at the border. I'm a goddamned American citizen! This is what you get when you have a guy from Kenya in the White House." 

By the end of March, Mrs. Blankenship became worried about an ongoing fruit fly problem which had developed. It started in the kitchen, but quickly spread to the rest of the house and, oddly, their small orchard, where fruit flies could be seen hovering around the fruit trees in large numbers. It got so that the Blankenships each had to walk around carrying bug spray, and Mr. Blankenship could no longer stand to even step out into the orchard, where the fruit flies were literally swarming. 

Joseph Blankenship finally gave in and called an exterminator. 

Bubba Jones, of Yellow Rose Extermination Services, surveyed the situation and broke the news to the Blankenships. "What you have here is no ordinary infestation," he said, "because these aren't ordinary fruit flies. These here are Mexican fruit flies. An invasive species. Aggressive as all hell, and tough as pig iron. Almost impossible to control. I'll do what I can to get them out of the house, but it won't be cheap and, as for your orchard?  You won't be eating fruit from those trees any time soon. Figs, nectarines, peaches, oranges? They're a wash for this year. Maybe longer, if this infestation can't be controlled. You see, these suckers lay their eggs inside the fruit and eat their way out. Everything growing on those trees is ruined. The best you can hope for is that the trees can be salvaged and you'll have a halfway decent crop next year. This spring, though? You'll have to get your peaches at the Piggly Wiggly, like the rest of us." 

Irate about the expense, and the fact that an entire crop of fruit had been as good as lost, Mr. Blankenship railed against the unfairness of it all.

"Mexican fruit flies!? I'm losing my whole crop to goddamn Mexican fruit flies? And having to pay through the nose, to boot? You see, Gladys?" he complained to his wife, "This is exactly why we need to crack down at the border, build a goddamn wall, and put a stop, once and for all, to all of this bullshit. Even their fruit flies stink to high hell. I never even heard of Mexican fruit flies when George W. Bush was president! It's just a good thing this Obama nightmare is almost over."

O-Tay

On March 4, 2014, an exhibition of new works by renowned African American painter Arvie Smith debuted at the Portland Museum of Contemporary Art. Among the pieces on display was Smith's We Be Loving It, a painting which integrates the wide-eyed, wild-haired Buckwheat trope into a setting reminiscent of Munch's The Scream. The piece is one which came about as a response to the murder of Michael Brown by Furguson, Missouri police officers, and the ongoing absence of justice, when it comes to police brutality and excessive force directed at, and total disregard for the lives of black men, women, and youth.

When asked about the painting and it's relationship to this issue, Smith was quoted as saying, "...with the killing of this young man it just all tied together. You can kill a Buckwheat. You can kill something that you have dehumanized — something that is no longer human to you — it's a lot easier to dispose of."

Longtime museum security guard Silas J. Abernathy viewed the painting while on duty, and observed museum attendees and their reactions to it. He was later heard to remark to a coworker, "Some black guy with a paint brush and a fancy degree hangs that on the wall, and it's "art." I dress up like that for a variety show at the lodge and it's "racist." That, my friend, is what you call a double standard, and it's why this country is going straight to hell."

F451

On March 3, 2014, the Baton Rouge chapter of The Oath Keepers of the Confederacy launched a campaign to ban Uncle Tom's Cabin from the public school curriculum and have all copies removed from the Louisiana Public Library System. In a manifesto mailed to every newspaper and television station in the state, they cited the overwhelmingly negative depiction of Simon LeGree and the reinforcement of widely-held stereotypes about slave-owners as their reasons for objecting so strongly to the novel. When a group of 75-100 Oath Keepers staged a book burning in front of the East Baton Rouge Public Library, librarians called the Baton Rouge Police.

Upon arriving at the site, where several dozen copies of Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel served as fuel for the bonfire set by the protestors, Officer Lafayette "Fais Do Do" Fontenot was met by the three librarians who stood several feet from the bonfire, crying and begging the protestors not to destroy any more books. Officer Fontenot calmed the hysterical women down, and told the Oath Keepers to "go on home" as he didn't want to see any of "you nice boys" end up spending the night in a jail cell.

The group dispersed, leaving the fire to burn, and all were allowed to leave without any further action taken by law enforcement. The librarians, who were confused as to why no one had been arrested, were left to put out the flames and clean up the mess of burnt paper.

The following day, a reporter from The Baton Rouge Register called Officer Fontenot and requested a response to media reports that the three librarians had filed a formal complaint against him and were demanding a full-scale investigation of his failure to make a single arrest, even though he'd witnessed a crime in progress. 

"Those little ladies need to calm the hell down," Fontenot replied, "I was there and I can tell you that what I saw was just some good ole boys having some fun. No one got hurt. It was a peaceful protest which, last I checked, was the right of every American. Matter of fact, the only ones making a fuss were those three librarians - bawling and yelling...and now they've got the papers and the news stations hassling me. My phone's been ringing all day, and there are reporters parked in front of my house. You know what that is? It's a goddamned lynch mob - that's what it is." 

After an investigation, the librarians' complaint was found to have no merit. Officer Fontenot successfully petitioned to have any mention of the incident or the investigation removed from his file. The Oath Keepers of the Confederacy went on to stage a dozen more book burnings throughout the state. Uncle Tom's Cabin was not officially removed from library shelves, but it was pulled from the public school curriculum. 

American Made

On March 2, 2020 Andrew Bland, an efficiency expert with US-based apparel firm, "Made In America," boarded a Cathay Pacific flight bound for China. The purpose of his trip was to visit the company's manufacturing division, located in the Guangxi province, to investigate a lag in production. After suffering the indignity of being forced to wear a mask upon landing and disembarking, and finding that everyone he encountered spoke English only as a second language, Bland was further disturbed to learn that, due to the especially high Coronavirus death toll in this disenfranchised region, operations at the factory had been temporarily halted. He immediately sent the following email to Made In America's CEO:

"It's bad. They've shut down the factory, completely. Something about 1/3 of the adults in the region having died from this ridiculous Chinese flu, and there not being enough healthy adults to supervise the children who work the looms. These kids have been doing this sort of work from the time they could stand up and walk, so I'm not sure what supervision could possibly be required. If you ask me, it's belly-aching from lazy people who don't want to work. I've crunched the numbers. We're obviously not paying anyone, which saves us $75-100 a day in wages and other operating expenses, but it also means not churning out the usual $6,000 - 7,000 in merchandise every day. My recommendation: raise the retail price of the hats by a 25 cents, and scout an even poorer region for labor. If we offer .75 on the dollar of what we usually pay, we'll be fully operational in a couple of days and our 2nd quarter profit margin should show an increase of 14%. Whatever you do: don't worry. I've got this. We'll get through this crisis." 

On March 3rd, Made In America introduced the "Chinese Tax" on all their products.

On June 30th, Made In America's second quarter profits broke all previous records. 

Revived

On this day in 2004, River Sizemore and his partner, Willow Barrington, formerly of Portland, Oregon, had their dreams shattered when they were forced by federal officers to abandon the shipping container house they'd built at the foot of the Cascade Mountains - a stretch of land which is within the boundaries of the Warm Springs Reservation, home of the Wasco and Paiute nations. When interviewed by The Central Oregonian about their heartbreaking ordeal, Sizemore was quoted as saying, "It's not fair. It took us three whole weekends to build our dream home. We're invested. To have our home stolen from us like this is just devastating. I can't believe something like this could happen in America."