Should Serving Pasta be a Felony?
There is no shortage of silliness in the left’s relentless condemnation of common words, personal preferences and behaviors as somehow “victimizing.”
That silliness is a byproduct of college liberal arts programs that turn out too many smugly-sanctimonious, condescending, social-justice-obsessed, non-introspective, self-entitled, humorless, easily-triggered grievance mongers, malcontents, and scolds who careen from one “existential” triviality to the next, don’t fit in anywhere outside the “academic” cocoons that hatched them, and are dim-witted enough to be “highly-offended” by almost anything other than their own lousy behavior.
One such triviality, “intersectionality,” is a bizarre system of inverse oppression “superiority” in which “oppressed” identity groups ranked higher on the left’s “oppression” scale, i.e., the less-oppressed, are considered oppressors of those lower in the hierarchy. Only elderly, heterosexual, white males are totally un-oppressed.
If “intersectionality” doesn’t exceed your silliness quotient, consider “microagressions,” something Wikipedia’s wokesters define as “a term for subtle, everyday slights that communicate prejudice or hostility toward marginalized groups” – in other words, anything by which anyone with hair-trigger sensitivities can – and will – be offended.
Examples of “microaggressions” include:
“The most qualified person should get the job.” (Discriminatory…somehow…)
Referring to “boys and girls” (Excludes dozens of mental disorders embedded in liberal “gender” ideology.)
You get the picture…
But, arguably, the all-time looniest triviality appeared when a group of self-righteous crusaders from 189 countries calling themselves “indigenous advocates” met as part of “a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization…, a United Nations agency.”
The group urged the UN to make “cultural appropriation” illegal world-wide.
“Cultural appropriation” is defined as the adoption or unauthorized use by one culture of another culture’s language, dress, folklore, cuisine, dance, music, traditional medicine, religious symbols and/or other traditions which activists imagine to be violations of the collective “intellectual property rights” of the originating culture.
Delegates had already been chewing it over for nearly a generation: “[T]he committee has been working on creating…international law that would expand intellectual-property regulations…” since 2001.
They were deadly serious, too: “James Anaya, of the University of Colorado, said the UN’s…document should ‘obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.’“
Got that? Criminal enforcement and civil liabilities. Ironically, by their own standards, activists “criminally” violated their proposed orthodoxy on “non-consensual taking.” The English words “culture” and “appropriate” were appropriated from Latin. So, via Old French, was “consent.”
In fact, if all the words appropriated from non-English sources were removed from this sentence, “Delegates from 189 countries…are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization,” it would read, “_____________.”
Chronically-aggrieved campus cultural militants got on board immediately. But, even more ironically, by taking the “heritage” crusaders’ proposition beyond its already-illogical conclusion, some undergraduates could go hungry, because pizza shops in every college town would necessarily close. And, since it was originally “appropriated” from China, restaurants and nobody outside the Peoples Republic would be allowed to serve or consume pasta.
However, if the UN were to apply cultural appropriation bans fairly and comprehensively, the world economy would collapse. The rest of the world could not “appropriate” uniquely American traditions and inventions, either.
The world outside the U.S. would have to give up automobiles, electricity, telephones, the transistor, microprocessors, digital and personal computing, the Internet, social media, chemotherapy and other wonder drugs, baseball, basketball, zippers, Velcro, traffic signals, microwave ovens, assembly line manufacturing, the global positioning/navigation satellite system, air traffic control, video games, washing machines, televisions, industrial robots, lasers, ice cream cones, fortune cookies (uh-huh, American), peanut butter, blue jeans, electric guitars, rock-and-roll, blues music and jazz, among many thousands of other American innovations.
Humorless social justice warriors cannot seem to grasp the reality that the cross-popularity of cultural elements, especially in America’s melting-pot, isn’t so much appropriation as is it is appreciation for the foods, traditions and practical applications of useful, pleasant, attractive products, customs, designs or ideas.
They clearly don’t understand that denying things to willing consumers simply for having the “wrong” DNA is the most moronic sort of racism.
But “cultural purity” is not their goal. In reality, otherwise-powerless left-wing culture warriors are seeking a measure of control. But, until those self-appointed no-fun nannies give up, just point at ‘em – and laugh.
https://www.pottsmerc.com/2025/11/09/jerry-shenk-should-serving-pasta-be-a-felony/
