Housekeeping

TongueTied will be on hiatus through September 7. Enjoy the waning days of summer.

Whaqi in Wildwood

The Associated Press reports that an arcade game which encourages participants to shoot paintballs at Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein has come under fire because it might also encourage violence against other Muslims.

The game, on a boardwalk in Wildwood, N.J., is called “Whaq the Iraq.” Participants get to shoot at runners dressed like the former Iraqi leader and terror figurehead.

But Arab groups are complaining that the message sent by the game is not one to be encouraged in this day and age.

"We don't need any more games that would encourage people to hate Arabs or kill them," said Aref Assaf, president of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Troublesome Noose

A golf course in Oklahoma that has had a noose hanging from a tree on the 16th green as a jibe to frustrated golfers is being told to take it down because it represents “segregation and racism, intimidation and intolerance,” writes The Oklahoman.

The noose, hanging from a tree at the Oak Tree Golf Club in Edmond, Okla. has become the course's unofficial icon. The club says it’s there "presumably for anyone who by this time is ready to commit suicide."

With the 2006 Senior PGA Championship coming up at the course, columnist Jenni Carlson says the noose reflects poorly on the entire state and must come down. People watching the tournament will “think Oklahoma an intolerant place, a hateful state, a backward land” otherwise, she says.

The H-Word

Two Louisiana lawyers nearly came to blows recently because one of them called the other “homosexual,” reports the Times-Picayune. The offended party said the ‘H-word’ was derogatory and that he prefers to be called “gay.”

The altercation came during a hearing over a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages. John Rawls, representing gay groups, labelled Mike Johnson, representing conservative religious groups, a homophobe for using the term.

"Just as I would expect no African-American to sit silently when he or she is insulted, nor would I expect any woman to stand by silently while she is insulted, nor any other group that traditionally has been denigrated by language," Rawls said in defense of his courtroom outburst.

Johnson said he was somewhat taken aback. “I thought that was an appropriate term, I didn't know it was derogatory," he said.

(hat tip to Bumper)

Stringbeans on the Warpath

Ananova says there’s a group in Holland that wants to ban the word 'thin' from the dictionary because it's insulting to underweight people.

The group, called Small Intestines Anonymous, claims to represent people who struggle to put on weight. It says the word 'thin' is a term of abuse used by 'fat over-rulers' to put down slender people.

The organization wrote to a Dutch dictionary publisher demanding that it omit the word from reference books and plans to present a 3,000-name petition on the topic to the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Sciences.

Anti-orphan Bias at the ACLU

An Ohio children’s services agency that wants to hold a gospel concert as part of an effort to find homes for orphans is being told by the ACLU that the concert is an illegal endorsement of religion by a government agency, reports WBNS-TV.

The Franklin County Children Services agency got a grant from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to bring in gospel stars Vanessa Bell Armstrong and Karen Clark-Sheard for the concert. The agency hopes that foster families attending the concert will be encouraged to help house homeless children.

But the ACLU says a government agency shouldn’t be sponsoring such an event. "You have what appears to be a government sponsor of an event. That crosses the line of neutrality when it comes to religion," the ACLU says.

'Pixelated Minstrel Shows'

More fretting from the New York Times (it’s August, after all), this time about the dangerous stereotyping of minorities in American video games.

Offender No. 1 is the latest version of Grand Theft Auto, which is said to be set on the streets of gangland Los Angeles and to be infused with all sorts of insidious racial stereotypes that can damage the minds of young players.

Other culprits include Def Jam Fight for NY, a hip-hop wrestling game; 25 to Life, with images of young, gun-toting black gangsters; and Notorious: Die to Drive, which features “gangsta-style car combat.”

The Times is even shocked that sports games include, of all things, African-American players. NBA Ballers features stars of the National Basketball Association (“most of them black”) in one-on-one matches and also “encourages players to experience a millionaire lifestyle off the court - accumulating virtual cash that can buy mansions, Cadillac Escalades, yachts and attractive ‘friends.’ The style of play emphasizes a street-edged aggression, sizzling with swagger and showboating moves on the court.”

The paper tracked down one Joe Morgan, a telecom executive in New York, who called the games “nothing more than pixelated minstrel shows” that are “dangerously reinforcing stereotypes.

No More Prior Restraint

The Associated Press reports that the University of New Orleans has settled a lawsuit brought against it for prohibiting a Messianic Jew from distributing leaflets on campus because they were deemed offensive.

Michelle Beadle filed the lawsuit along with the American Center for Law and Justice after the school forbid her from handing out the leaflet because it contained the sentence "Jews should believe in Jesus."

As part of the settlement, UNO agreed to revise a policy that previously required all religious literature distributed on campus to be reviewed by a member of the university administration.

ACLJ senior counsel Stuart Roth said some people might have found Beadle's tract offensive, but "that's exactly why we have the First Amendment, so people can speak on issues that might be controversial.”

Hate Speech

Gay activists in North Ireland say a Baptist preacher’s assertions that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and his complaints about a gay agenda in popular and political culture amount to incitement of hatred that should be punished by law, reports the Belfast Telegraph.

Pastor Mark Bradfield of Ulster took issue with a planned gay pride parade, saying "There is an agenda to let this very small homosexual minority gain a huge foothold within society and get laws changed to suit themselves.”

In response, the Rainbow Project in Belfast accused the pastor of stoking the flames of homophobia and spitting venom at the gay community.

Rainbow spokesman Gary McKeever said, "I look forward to the day when we can take action against such individuals for incitement to hatred, as for too long they have hid behind religious beliefs to uphold the kind of narrow bigotry that sees gay people persecuted."

Only in America

An arbitration panel consulted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has concluded that a $65-per-year fee being charged to international students is unfair and should be eliminated, reports The Republican.

Graduate students and the United Auto Workers Union officials working with them claimed the fee, imposed in 2004 to help defray the costs of post-9/11 federally mandated security measures, was racist and discriminatory. The bulk of the fee ($55 of the $65), went to help pay for the International Programs Office.

So foreign students, most of them graduate students on the public university (read: taxpayer-funded) payroll with no intentions of settling in America, refused to pay a little bit more a year than the rest of the students to help offset the cost of keeping tabs on them and contribute to the budget of an office that exists largely to support and counsel them.

Worried in Midtown

The New York Times is fretting out loud about an upcoming movie focused on the Crusades, wondering whether the theme is inappropriate in this day and age and whether the movie might cause offense to Muslims.

The paper went to the trouble of sending the script for Ridley Scott’s upcoming epic, Kingdom of Heaven, to scholars and “interfaith activists” to see if they got worked up. The movie is set in the 12th century and focuses on the fights between Muslims and Jews over Jerusalem.

Laila al-Qatami of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington is worried.

"I feel like there's a lot of rhetoric, a lot of words flying around, with prominent figures talking about Islam being incompatible with Christianity and American values,” she said. “This kind of movie might reinforce that theme in the discourse."

Khaled Abu el-Fadl, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, went even further. He called the film a replay of historic Hollywood stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.

"I believe this movie teaches people to hate Muslims," he said.