One little suffix: suffragist vs. suffragette and reclaiming ‘Pocahontas’

Since I resumed writing last month, all ten posts I’ve written have — one way or another — concerned the coronavirus. Not surprising. It happens to be the big story right now and, indirectly, the reason I started blogging again in the first place. But even in the midst of a pandemic it can’t be all corona, all the time. So as Wisconsin prepares for its inexplicable decision to move forward with the Presidential primary next week, let’s revisit a curious episode from an earlier stage of the primary instead.

Back in September, Elizabeth Warren gave a speech in Washington Square Park to discuss the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. I’m not interested in rehashing its contents, but want to quickly highlight Senator Warren’s interesting choice of word (bolded below):

For Israeli Memorial Day, Bibi channeled his inner Pocahontas (pun intended)

On Israeli Memorial Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with several children whose parents were killed serving in the Israel Defense Forces. At some point in the discussion, a little girl asked Bibi how he felt when his brother was famously killed in the raid on Entebbe. Here’s the brief exchange, captioned in English:

Finally, a golden opportunity for Hamas to retaliate against Israel with my full support

Amidst the rubble that is the current conflict between Israel and Gaza, the combatants did manage to unearth one tiny gem — in the form of an internet exchange, of course, because where else?

Elizabeth Tsurkov, who works for the Israeli NGO Hotline for Refugees and Migrant Workers, made headlines last week when she tweeted at Hamas in order to correct the terrorist organization’s Hebrew grammar — and found herself in something of a dialogue:

WWII rages on: U.S. invaders continue to haunt its Axis adversaries

You might recognize the little guy you see above as a character from Pocahontas. In case you don’t remember him — and this will be important in a moment — his name is “Miko”. As it happens, Miko is also the Shinto term for “shrine maiden” — and what follows is an account of how Miko the cartoon raccoon is causing a lot of grief for shrine maidens all over Japan.

To fully understand this story, you have to go back to World War II. The roots of Nazi Germany are often traced back to the settlement terms of the Great War, which forced the defeated Central Powers to pay crippling reparations to the victorious Allies. When World War III breaks out, it will be tempting to trace its underlying cause to the damage and humiliation the United States continues to inflict upon the defeated Axis powers of World War II. I’m not talking about the U.S. military bases that still dot Germany and Japan, but about a different kind of invader — raccoons:

The most annoying thing about Dove’s “Real” Beauty Sketches

By now, you’ve seen — or at least heard about — the Dove ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ campaign that made the rounds a few weeks ago. In case you didn’t, the following video is what the rest of this post is about, so check it:

[Editor’s note: above is the full, six-minute version. There is also a three-minute version, with over ten times as many hits as of the time of this writing. I included the six-minute version for the sake of completeness.]

After watching the video for the first time last Thursday [it got lost in a sea of open tabs/general apathy], I knew something about the ad bothered me. I did a few googles to see if anyone had quite put a finger on what rubbed me the wrong way, and when they turned up nothing, I decided to write it up myself. And so, I proudly present my personal contribution to a long line of Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ campaign critics.

To get you caught up, here’s a distilled sample of what other people didn’t like about it [every word in that sentence links to a different critical article]:

Ten things I learned during my first semester of law school

I’m about half an hour away from heading to the airport at the end of my first semester of law school. Granted, first semester isn’t over — we start finals on January 7 — but while I seek to delay accomplishing anything productive, here’s a list of ten interesting things I learned while classes were in session. Some came up during assigned reading, others while researching on my own, and still others were only tangentially related to my law school experience.

My apologies in advance if these are things you already knew all about. Hopefully you’ll learn at least one new thing from the list. In no particular order:

Turns out the worst part of Pocahontas wasn’t even in the movie!

Snow White? Belle? Aurora? Cinderella? Ariel? Jasmine? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope.

My favorite Disney princess? That’s easy: Pocahontas.

This revelation hardly qualifies as a secret (even before I pressed ‘Publish’): I once spent an entire field trip belting out Just Around the Riverbend while making my way in a canoe down an actual river, and I’m fairly certain there is a video somewhere in existence that features my rendition of Colors of the Wind – performed on a kitchen counter in Nepal, on Purim.

Despite my undying love for the movie, it had been years since I last watched it. And when I finally did get a chance to turn it on, one specific part made me wonder what I ever saw in Pocahontas, anyway: