Sly Stone was right all along, we do got to live together

There is a furore on the other side of the globe caused by a bunch of foolish kids and the internet. Now cyberbullying is not new, or rather is not new this week, but this time for some reason a bunch of kids have targeted redheads. The news reports that students formed a facebook group nominating a particular day as Kick a Ginger Day. The thing I find surprising about this is not that kids can be cruel or that the internet can be used as a powerful tool for mobilizing a mob, just their use of the word ginger. I suppose this is could be a big misunderstanding and the kids had a beef with the movie star from Gilligan’s Island, or were advocating a new sport involving playing footie with spicy roots, but I doubt it. I had never heard it used as a term for a redheaded person until I came to Australia. I personally am sort of half ginger and half whatever root would be used to describe a brunette, maybe a breadfruit. My beard is reddish and my hair is brown, though that is becoming less prevalent. The hair, not the brownness. Anyway, I was blissfully ignorant of any sort of prejudice towards redheaded people, except for the prejudice the ultraviolet rays cause, or as I like to say ultraviolence rays. I was at a luncheon one day and this redheaded girl came up to me and said “oh, it is good to meet another gingie, we need to stick together.” While appeals for community and comradeship are always welcome, I was a little surprised by the comment. I actually had to get her to explain what a gingie was. I must note of course that as a member of this disadvantaged group, she wasn’t actually against me. I have heard of people being mean to albinos and in fact I recall there was a rise of complaint when the Da Vinci Code came out and the crazed monk was an albino, but I had never heard of or felt any negativity towards the redheaded crowd until I was speaking to someone about the famous Australian actress, Nicole Kidman. This woman proclaimed in a harsh voice “I hate her, she’s just a talentless ranga”. I didn’t understand what that meant, so I had to ask. Apparently it is short for orangutan. So I am now officially either a gingie or a Ranga, unless I am clean shaven in which case I am just a guy with a shiny head. Maybe it says something about my general state of empowerment, but this doesn’t bother me. I suppose if I did actually get kicked for something so arbitrary I would be upset, but the name calling doesn’t really affect me. In fact a zoo in Australia recently had a ranga day in which all redheads would get a free pass, sadly I never knew about it or myself and Ronald McDonald would have hit that zoo with a vengeance. I wonder if this Facebook incident is the first for many redheads or if they have felt much discrimination in the past? All I know is that the sun beats down on me pretty hard and so sometimes I do wish I had a darker complexion. I just hope that Reggie didn’t get the message, otherwise Archie would be looking for Big Ethel to protect him, and then Archie would feel that he owed Big Ethel so he would have to contrive some way for her to get some alone time with Jughead who would rather just be eating burgers at Pop Tate’s. Maybe Dilton can invent us out of this mess. The only question remaining is whose gag bag would it be? That’s sort of the perennial question though, isn’t it?