Javert Was Not an African Black Man

     Well, unfortunately, it was not a quiet week here at Bloody Nib Manor. As happens too frequently the local hoi polloi got frisky and decided to fire their pistols at one another on Thursday night. Fortunately there were no deaths, nor even injuries. The actual result of said shooting was frightened children and barking dogs. The local constabulary spent a lot of time making fools of themselves with their dark lanterns looking for shell casing that mean nothing at all. But that's  live in the shire.
     Having said the foregoing, this writer asks you, dear reader, what exactly is "cultural appropriation?"
     You may remember a couple of incidences within the past eighteen months in which a person, usually a person of European heritage, was accused of "cultural appropriation." Said examples would be a a southern American blonde teen-age girl wearing a cheong-sam dress to her prom, women who are not of Latin American heritage wearing hoop earrings, or whitey-birds wearing their hair in some sort of dreadlock style. There are many more examples.
     It is, of course, silly and stupid and the purview of the perpetually aggrieved. A person of European or English (and they are really two different things historically despite the claims of the modern European Unionist) heritage could just as well and justifiably claim that the wearing of trousers by men or women, the wearing of neckties, the playing of the valve trumpet or pipe, or the Hammond, organ, the musical chromatic scale, or even the usage of an Indo-European language by people who are not English, European or Indo-European are forms of cultural appropriation.
     If a person of European heritage comes up with a new form of balut or ramen, jerk chicken or hummus, that person is called a "cultural appropriator." But if a person of African, Asian or Latin American origin comes up with a new twist on the hot dog, biscuits and gravy, or meat loaf that is considered an addition to the European culture. It's a one way street.
     The same goes for television programs and moving pictures.
     The BBC has recently run a a dramatization of Victor Hugo's novel Le Miserables. In the BBC version the detective Javert is played by a black man. The BBC has also produced a series in which the Greek hero Achilles is a black man, as well as an animated series about Roman Britain in which there are black African centurions and prefects, as well as black African Anglo-Saxon warriors and priests in 100 A.D.
      These things are all silly and stupid and just plain not historical. Hugo did not see Javert as a black man. Hugo portrayed Javert as a European Frenchman. Achilles was not a black African man and any black actor who portrayed Achilles as a black African man should be ashamed of himself, as should any Chinese or Vietnamese man should have been so ashamed. Achilles was a Greek sporting blonde hair. The likelihood of a Sub-Saharan African being a Roman soldier on Britain is about as likely as a Mayan being involved in the American Revolutionary War. There were more Chinese involved in the Revolution than there were sons of Aztlan, and there were no Africans, Asians or Latinos at the Battle of Hastings. The legend of Robin Hood had no Moors (even wise ones) and was, in fact, an anti-Norman legend because those Frenchies are really a pretty awful bunch. But all these things have been portrayed in popular media; Robin Hood has an all-wise Moor adviser, Mexicans fought against the British in 1776, Achilles was the son of an African demi-goddess, and Javert somehow became a French policeman despite escaping from Haiti or the Congo.
      But if a writer decides to write a story or moving picture, perhaps a fantasy story, based on the stories of Shaka Zulu, Ching Shih or Antapualpah  (sp?) with a third or quarter or the cast, and perhaps even the stars or main characters, as whitey-birds the politically correct crowd would pitch a bitch that would throw the earth off it's axis with claims of cultural appropriation while the Anglo-European crowd would, except for film critics (and that bunch is really pretty awful because they realize that film criticism is not a real job but a gag), would pretty much shrug its shoulders and say, "Who cares? This isn't my story. I have my story ans know my story. That's another culture's story and I really don't give a damn about their story."
      And that's the thing that the elites don't really realize.