12-30-2010, 08:05 AM
I immediately recognized Tom's joke for what it was, a really bad joke and a jab at political correctness. It is consistent with my original opinion of him, which is that he is not a racist although he has some strong biases. More than anything the post was clearly thrown out to see who would take the bait.
Is there such thing as a joke in such bad taste that it should not be told? Yes. Perhaps this is such a case, but that is different than saying the content of the joke reflect Tom's true feelings about minorities.
I know I am on slippery ground here but have any of you heard of the Law of the Splintered Paddle? In it Kamehameha the Great lays down the law that even the Ali'i may not wantonly molest even the lowliest commoner. Sounds good, right? Here is another way of looking at it:
1. Kamehameha was conducting war on fellow Hawaiians, as was common during that time.
2. He got his a$$ kicked and had to retreat from the Hilo area up towards his home base in the Laupahoehoe area.
3. A large part of what pi$$ed him off was that while many of his warriors had been killed or captured, and were therefor available to his enemies to be used as sacrifices, he had no captives to sacrifice. Bummer!
4. This bothered him so much that he called his closest men together that night and they set off in a single canoe to basically ambush a village in the Puna area. They were not stupid. They could not take on the full might of his enemy's army, which they bypassed on their way past Hilo. Consider it how you like, but when morning came they were closing in on a sleepy village of common fishermen. This story was first told by native Hawaiians during the time when Hawaiians ran the show. The story recounts how women and children ran for their lives in terror as Kamehameha approached. Kamehameha leaped from his canoe, ordering the others to remain behind.
5. Kamehameha got his a$$ kicked again. First a fisherman threw a net over him to slow his pursuit. How dare this commoner value his own life! Then Kamehameha's foot got stuck in a crack in the lava/reef. This allowed to other fishermen to stop their flight long enough to break a paddle over his head. By this time Kamehameha's men figured something was not right. His steersman, who was also a loyal friend of Kamehameha, came after him. The steersman set about breaking the lava to free Kamehameha's foot. The dedicated steersman was stabbed in the side with a spear while doing this, whereas Kamehameha managed to avoid the spears. Kamehameha broke the spear point off and he and the injured steersman, still with the incriminating point in his side, returned to the canoe.
6. Kamehameha may have been nominally the boss but there were principles to be upheld. Commoners should not have been allowed to touch a chief like Kamehameha. Kamehameha's men could be considered at fault for allowing this lapse to occur. Kamehameha ordered his men to keep silent about the whole cluster-you-know-what but word got out anyway. Kamehameha tried to save his friend the steersman but the other chiefs ended up torturing him to death by twisting the spear point in his side till he died. The honor of the Ali'i was upheld!
7. Time passed. Kamehameha, with the help of Europeans he had bribed and sometimes strong-armed into helping him, succeeded where generations of chiefs before him had failed. In the long run he kicked more a$$ than anyone else and ruled almost the whole roost, except for Kauai (he had amassed quite the armada on Oahu ready to sail over and administer the final a$$-kicking but that fell through due to an epidemic). Finally he had the time and power to settle old scores. He called all the villages together from the Hilo side. I don't know what the pretext was or whether everyone went knowing what was going down, but eventually the people from the little town in Puna were identified and isolated. The particular men who had assaulted Kamehameha acknowledged their actions. This is a quote from the story I read which, again, was written by native historians.
"When the people were thus gathered together they found themselves prisoners. They feared wholesale destruction. The days of human sacrifices among the Hawaiians had not passed by. The new king, against whom they had at one time fought, might intend their sacrifice in numbers. They were his property to be burned or cut to pieces and placed in the temples of the gods. No one could dispute the will of the chief. It was a political condition which the Hawaiians of a hundred years later could scarcely begin to realise. That man is very ignorant who thinks the old days best".
8. This time Kamehameha stopped them and issued the decree for the Law of the Splintered Paddle. He basically admitted that his actions that morning were totally wrong and if there wasn't any law that was broken when he, of royal blood, attacked without provocation defenseless commoners, well, he was making one now.
So all in all the Law of the Splintered Paddle is a riveting tale. It shows that Hawaiians, ancient or otherwise, are as good, and as bad, as anyone else. I contend however that anyone raised in today's society, if sent back in a time machine to the Hawaii of 300 years ago, would soon be crying for their mommas and clamoring to get back, that is if they weren't killed outright for not accepting their status as property. Frankly the same would be true of Europe. It is therefor hard for me to take seriously anyone getting to weepy over the old days. Not to say that there aren't issues that need to be addressed, bit it seems like the sugar barons stole Hawaii fair and square.
Is there such thing as a joke in such bad taste that it should not be told? Yes. Perhaps this is such a case, but that is different than saying the content of the joke reflect Tom's true feelings about minorities.
I know I am on slippery ground here but have any of you heard of the Law of the Splintered Paddle? In it Kamehameha the Great lays down the law that even the Ali'i may not wantonly molest even the lowliest commoner. Sounds good, right? Here is another way of looking at it:
1. Kamehameha was conducting war on fellow Hawaiians, as was common during that time.
2. He got his a$$ kicked and had to retreat from the Hilo area up towards his home base in the Laupahoehoe area.
3. A large part of what pi$$ed him off was that while many of his warriors had been killed or captured, and were therefor available to his enemies to be used as sacrifices, he had no captives to sacrifice. Bummer!
4. This bothered him so much that he called his closest men together that night and they set off in a single canoe to basically ambush a village in the Puna area. They were not stupid. They could not take on the full might of his enemy's army, which they bypassed on their way past Hilo. Consider it how you like, but when morning came they were closing in on a sleepy village of common fishermen. This story was first told by native Hawaiians during the time when Hawaiians ran the show. The story recounts how women and children ran for their lives in terror as Kamehameha approached. Kamehameha leaped from his canoe, ordering the others to remain behind.
5. Kamehameha got his a$$ kicked again. First a fisherman threw a net over him to slow his pursuit. How dare this commoner value his own life! Then Kamehameha's foot got stuck in a crack in the lava/reef. This allowed to other fishermen to stop their flight long enough to break a paddle over his head. By this time Kamehameha's men figured something was not right. His steersman, who was also a loyal friend of Kamehameha, came after him. The steersman set about breaking the lava to free Kamehameha's foot. The dedicated steersman was stabbed in the side with a spear while doing this, whereas Kamehameha managed to avoid the spears. Kamehameha broke the spear point off and he and the injured steersman, still with the incriminating point in his side, returned to the canoe.
6. Kamehameha may have been nominally the boss but there were principles to be upheld. Commoners should not have been allowed to touch a chief like Kamehameha. Kamehameha's men could be considered at fault for allowing this lapse to occur. Kamehameha ordered his men to keep silent about the whole cluster-you-know-what but word got out anyway. Kamehameha tried to save his friend the steersman but the other chiefs ended up torturing him to death by twisting the spear point in his side till he died. The honor of the Ali'i was upheld!
7. Time passed. Kamehameha, with the help of Europeans he had bribed and sometimes strong-armed into helping him, succeeded where generations of chiefs before him had failed. In the long run he kicked more a$$ than anyone else and ruled almost the whole roost, except for Kauai (he had amassed quite the armada on Oahu ready to sail over and administer the final a$$-kicking but that fell through due to an epidemic). Finally he had the time and power to settle old scores. He called all the villages together from the Hilo side. I don't know what the pretext was or whether everyone went knowing what was going down, but eventually the people from the little town in Puna were identified and isolated. The particular men who had assaulted Kamehameha acknowledged their actions. This is a quote from the story I read which, again, was written by native historians.
"When the people were thus gathered together they found themselves prisoners. They feared wholesale destruction. The days of human sacrifices among the Hawaiians had not passed by. The new king, against whom they had at one time fought, might intend their sacrifice in numbers. They were his property to be burned or cut to pieces and placed in the temples of the gods. No one could dispute the will of the chief. It was a political condition which the Hawaiians of a hundred years later could scarcely begin to realise. That man is very ignorant who thinks the old days best".
8. This time Kamehameha stopped them and issued the decree for the Law of the Splintered Paddle. He basically admitted that his actions that morning were totally wrong and if there wasn't any law that was broken when he, of royal blood, attacked without provocation defenseless commoners, well, he was making one now.
So all in all the Law of the Splintered Paddle is a riveting tale. It shows that Hawaiians, ancient or otherwise, are as good, and as bad, as anyone else. I contend however that anyone raised in today's society, if sent back in a time machine to the Hawaii of 300 years ago, would soon be crying for their mommas and clamoring to get back, that is if they weren't killed outright for not accepting their status as property. Frankly the same would be true of Europe. It is therefor hard for me to take seriously anyone getting to weepy over the old days. Not to say that there aren't issues that need to be addressed, bit it seems like the sugar barons stole Hawaii fair and square.