Radio Derb Transcript Up For October 7: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar (White) Children, Etc.
10/12/2016
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The October 7 Radio Derb transcript is up—go here to read or listen.
Just a brief comment on the fuss over director Tim Burton's new movie. Steve already covered this at more length, but I'll put my two cents in.

The movie is titled Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. The eponymous home is on a Welsh island during WW2.

What's the fuss about? Well, all the children in the home are white. That's what the fuss is about. No, really.

It's not, please understand, that all the people in the movie are white. Listed third in the billing at movie database IMBd.com is Samuel L. Jackson. No, it's just all the kids in this home on a Welsh island during WW2.

That has got the Los Angeles Times honking, more in fake sorrow than in phony anger, that, honk: "Burton's hallmark as a director is, and always has been, his imagination, his vision. It is sad to discover that, in this regard, he has neither." End honk.

The L.A. Times hit piece includes one of the nastiest bits of journalistic malfeasance I've seen in a while. Justifying the notion that a place in 1940s Wales should show some blacks present there, the Times writes that, quote:

The population of the United Kingdom at that time … boasted millions of people born abroad, from places like India, Jamaica, Pakistan and various African countries. Not a huge percentage of the population, mind you — according to a 1951 census, 4.2 percent of the total U.K. population — but enough.

As Steve shows, by the kind of quantitative analysis not nowadays taught at — in fact probably banned from — schools of journalism, the correct percentage for colored minorities is less than 0.2 percent. Even that tiny number would have been located wellnigh exclusively in big old seaports like London, Liverpool, and, if it's Wales you're interested in, Cardiff. I was born right at the end of WW2 and grew up in an average English town. I didn't see a colored person in the flesh until I was in my teens.

I'm not normally a fan of fantasy movies, but I shall make a point of seeing Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, just to put a few cents in Tim Burton's pocket, and to vex the preening, sneering, lying fake journalists at the L.A. Times.

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