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| A modern-day Balaam wouldn't ride an ass; he'd take a taxi. |
Ted Hughes wrote Crow between 1966 and 1969 and published it in 1970. It includes these lines.
To hatch a crow, a black rainbowBent in emptinessover emptinessBut flying
The year 1969 also saw the foundation of the first of several black-led "diversity" organizations to use the name Rainbow Coalition. Jim Crow laws had been abolished a few years before the Rainbow Coalition, but founder Fred Hampton had earlier been a leader of the movement against them.
In 1975, Paul Simon referenced the Hughes poem in the lyrics to "My Little Town."
And after it rains, there's a rainbowAnd all of the colors are blackIt's not that the colors aren't thereIt's just imagination they lack
In 1978, the gay pride Rainbow Flag made its debut in San Francisco. While the colors officially represented various things (red for life, orange for healing, that kind of crap), in practice the rainbow stands for the spectrum of sexual neuroses and perversions, with the whole explicitly representing the cardinal sin of pride. Spiritually speaking, "all of the colors are black."
In 1995, the "Dark Side of the Rainbow" phenomenon -- pairing the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon with the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz -- was discovered. One of the main characters in The Wizard of Oz is the Scarecrow.
In 2020, the birdemic arrived and was named for the crow -- Corvus corone, a member of the corvid family -- because a scarecrow may scare crows, but in 2020 (as in Soviet Russia), crow scares you!
I am told that in the UK, the rainbow has been (somewhat to the consternation of the LPGABBQ community) coopted as a symbol of the need to "save the National Health Service" by, um, wearing masks and clapping or something. (In Soviet Russia, on the other hand -- and this is one of the few ways in which that much-maligned country was not back-to-front -- medical professionals save you!)
I do apologize for all the "Russian reversals." They're part of my heritage as a Ukrainian-American, but that's no excuse. We all know how annoying it is when someone keeps repeating the same tired jokes -- and (you knew this was coming) in Soviet Russia, the same tired jokes keeps repeating "you"!
7 comments:
I, for one, am deeply troubled by the Ladies Professional Golf Association Barbecue community's consternation concerning the coopting of its rainbow symbol. Ugh!
The fact that (apparently) no one else on the whole wide Internet is using the term "LPGABBQ" has deeply shaken my faith in humanity.
(You I can understand, though. In my experience, the people-named-Frank-Berger community tends not to be real big on barbecue puns.)
It's true! I wrote a post about that! If only I'd been born in France; my name would have been Francois Berger (pronounced Bershay). Think about it. I could have become a famous fashion designer or a brooding existential philosopher with a name like that.
Unfortunately, my parents didn't think through my poor sister's name either. The named her Anita.
All kidding aside, I wonder if any meaningful connections can be made between this post and the post in which you explore various bow analogies via Robin Hood/the Bidens. If I remember correctly, that one also featured Russel Crowe.
And don't tell me you have a brother named Angus, too!
When I was a kid, I remember hearing about Sandy Berger (an advisor to Bill Clinton) on the radio and thinking he sounded like a beach barbecue mishap.
But I'm sure you've already heard every possible burger pun a gazillion times.
Yes, I noticed that bow connection, too. We'll see if it ramifies enough to become a post. Also curious about the ark/arc connection in the story of Noah.
Ah! How did I miss the Joan of Arc connection? Arc = rainbow, and d’Arc = dark. The black rainbow!
Brilliant!
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