Oddities of Cultural and Historical Correctness.

King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, two Spanish monarchs whose regal motto was Tanto monta, Isabel como Fernando, or They amount to the same, Isabella and Ferdinand, symbolizing their equality as monarchs, something further cemented by a prenuptial agreement to that effect. Among the successes of their unification of the Spanish crown and the accompanying unification of most of the Iberian peninsula under a single, Spanish, crown, was the launching of the Spanish Empire through the sponsorship of Christopher Columbus' endeavor.  Did we note that they were Spanish?

Denver has renamed Columbus Park "La Raza Park".

Because, as we know, Christopher Columbus was a racist colonizer.

La Raza, we're informed, is a name that has all positive connotations for Hispanics of all ethnicities.

It translates as "the race".

Now, in using that term, we need to be careful.  Many people if they called themselves "the race" would be using a term that would be, after all, racist.  Particularly if you were using a term associated with a racist colonial endeavor.

Christopher Columbus, as we know, was a racist colonizer.

He was working for the King and Queen of Spain. . . who were Hispanics. . . and whose Spanish conquest created . . . well. . . "the race".

So, Denver, in an effort to be culturally pure has taken away from a park the name of an Italian contractor with the Hispanic crown and renamed the park for the results of his work, in actual terms.

Things get complicated when you seek to be woke.

Corporate virtue signaling and parliament.

New Mexican ranchers making ice cream, 1940s.  I wonder if this is cigarette flavor, given the smoking?

Quite frankly, I'm sick of corporate virtue signalling.

By the time any corporation expresses an opinion on something, most of the time, that's because the topic has jumped the shark and they want to pretend they were with you all the time.  For the most part, the same corporations that are all in favor of some progressive issue today, would be all in favor of some retrograde issue if that was current.  In other words, when some big corporation expresses its solidarity with some group today, you can generally figure they'd be in favor of oppressing the same group if that was the current trend.

Indeed, history amply proves that.  Look through any 1940s vintage magazine and you'll see that every company going was hard backing the war effort.  That was popular and good business.  You'd be hard pressed to find most manufacturer's today, save for Jeep which has a close association with a military product, noting that.

There are some exceptions, and Vermont's Ben and Jerry's, the ice cream maker, is one.  They're consistently left wing and have been all along.  It's probably largely safe for them however, and it doesn't take away the logical question of why on earth would anyone care what an ice cream peddler thinks about social issues unless its directly tied to milk products in some strongly demonstrative fashion.

Well, that hasn't kept B&J from spouting off, just like other businesses do as well, which lead to an interesting recent B&J exchange with the British administration.

The UK, of course, has a parliamentary system of government to any one administration reflects its parliament.  And British Parliamentarians are notoriously witty and blunt in verbal exchanges.  Anyone who has never heard The Prime Ministers Question Time has really missed a real treat.  They make Congress look really pathetic in terms or oration, to say the lease.

Twitter isn't oration, but a feature of British Parliamentary oration is the witty snappy, and often condescending and rude, retort.

Recently the British government imposed a travel ban on illegal entrants into the country on the basis of the pandemic.  It is an odd thought as illegal entrants have no right to be in a country anyway you look at it. So it may have been a bit of a pretext. At any rate, they did it.

This prompted a tweet from Ben and Jerry's, which stated:

Hey @PritiPatel we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture. 

The frozen sugary milk product vender added to that with an additional series of tweets and concluded, in regard to the use of the term, which is frankly an honest and correct term, "illegal aliens" with

PEOPLE CANNOT BE ILLEGAL

That last item is frankly namby pamby bullshit.  People can't be illegal, but they can certainly commit illegal acts and there's nothing wrong with noting that.   That doesn't mean that illegal aliens anywhere don't deserve sympathy, but the entire "undocumented worker" or "undocumented migrant" term favored these days by the press is camouflage for the fact that the demographic in question, wherever it is, violated a sovereign nation's immigration laws to enter a country, illegally.  It also camouflages the fact that fact that most illegal aliens are economic migrants, and are pursuing a higher wage and standard of living.  You can't really blame them for that, but that's quite a bit different from suggesting that right behind each one is a member of the Syrian secret police.

Because B&J was dealing with the British government, and not the American one, they were hit with a snappy retort. noting that it was "working day and night to bring an end to these small boat crossing and then noting that it was not concerned with

upsetting the social media team for a brand of overpriced junk food.

Ouch.

Following this, a Conservative Parliamentarian added:

Can I have a large scoop of statistically inaccurate virtue signalling with my grossly overpriced ice cream please.

Ouch again.

But a good point. 

All Ben & Jerry's is, is an ice cream maker.  Their opinions on social matters are completely irrelevant as an entity.

And it's worth noting that in terms of left wing virtue signalling, an ice cream maker doesn't have a lot of room to maneuver when traveling with the hard left, which trucks with those opposed to just about everything, including the keeping of cows, from which milk comes, and keeping the besotted public from eating sugary foods.

I'll just have some Blue Bunny.

Virtue Signaling: "A New York restaurant owner set fire to a table where Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein used to sit"

Oh yeah. . . .that'll show 'em.