So the head monkey has fired the giraffe in charge of looking into the Russian banana pilfering that has everyone questioning his fitness to rule. Rule? Heck! I question his continued right to own bananas!
But this post is supposed to be a reflection on surviving, not another angry animal metaphor about things that can’t be cured until the next election, or until the elephants that put the monkey in charge do something about their own addiction to bananas and work up the necessary human emotion and moral outrage to remove him as head of the zoo.
Steve Bannon, the idea-monkey of the Monkey Kingdom
So let me enumerate some of the thoughts that give me peace in the midst of this insane monkey-house cacophony. (Cacophony is a good word to use around the topic of the monkey king because it has both the words “caca” and “phony” in it.)
- Bannon is a very scary chimpanzee, but he is apparently on the outs in the court of the monkey king. He got in a verbal kerfuffle with Orangutan Junior Kushner, and the monkey king has not recently crayoned his signature on the poison-in-executive-order-form that Bannon cares most about.
- Orangutan Junior Kushner is now in charge of everything under the sun. All bananas now grow by his doings, and he can’t possibly run everywhere and poo everywhere to properly fertilize all the banana trees. And considering the toxic qualities of the monkey king’s banana trees, we probably don’t really want them to grow anyway.
Orangutan Junior Kushner has taken to wearing Trump-style hair.
- The Russian banana pilfering has put all other monkey initiatives on hold. The monkey king was planning to create monkey laws with the elephants that would prevent most other animals from having any hope of health care. It made its way successfully through the Elephant House and was supposed to move on to the Elephant Senate to be officially stamped with the notion that providing the other animals with mythical “access” to health care wasn’t just a way to make animals pay all their money to insurance piranhas and still not be able to afford any real health care. Now they are forced instead to talk about other banana-related things.
- And on the subject of bananas, the monkeys and the elephants actually have them all already. So we don’t have to worry about having bananas. We probably never will. All they have left for us are the peanuts. But they like to take and eat our peanuts too. The good part of this is that peanuts are a healthy food for diabetics. And, of course, you can’t die of over-eating if you cannot buy food.
So, the long and the short of it is this. It is not hard to see the end of this struggle to survive the monkey king’s rule. I, for one, will probably not survive. But cutting the legs out from under the giraffe investigating the Russian banana pilfering was probably the beginning of the end of the monkey king himself. The lions, wherever they have been hiding, will now come out and eat him.
You may not be able to rescue other people’s minds from being stupid. But what you can do and be artful about is… make them laugh.
Catch a Falling Star 
Fact or Opinion (It’s a Teacher Thing)
“Climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.”
That, unfortunately, is not an opinion. It is a fact. It is a FALSE FACT.
Facts are statements that can be proven or disproven. There are studies by government agencies and university science departments all over the world that provide evidence to back up the theory that the climate is drastically changing in ways that threaten our existence. The studies are repeatable, peer reviewed, and thoroughly “vetted”, to use the new word that Republicans embrace so deeply and lovingly for immigration issues. On the other side of the question, you have scoffing congressmen who bring snowballs into the capitol and say, “See? The science is not proven.” That is not a fact. Where is the evidence which is not anecdotal and based on a misunderstanding of the difference between “climate change” and “weather change”? That is by definition an opinion. And it is not even an informed opinion. Opinions are not equal to facts. Comparing the two is like comparing apples to onions. No, that is not even correct. You can eat both of those things. It is more like comparing apples to planetary moons.
After a long and heated Facebook debate about immigration between me, a Texas teacher, and an Iowa Republican Trump supporter I went to high school with who doesn’t even know if he ever met an illegal immigrant, I have pretty well proven to myself that a big share of the divide between liberals and conservatives stems from the unwillingness of one side to avoid equating facts and opinions. Apples and moons.
So give me a moment to do what teachers do.
Here is a non-political lesson in Fact versus Opinion.
Who do you prefer? Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny? The answer doesn’t matter to me.
I can give you a quick and dirty lesson on fact and opinion using these two cartoon characters. And it doesn’t even matter who you like more.
Here are some obvious facts about the two of them.
They are both cartoon characters. They are both anthropomorphic animals. They both wear gloves most of the time. They both have a thumb and three fingers on each hand.
These things are observably true. You can prove them by looking at the illustrations I have already provided.
Other things may not be as readily apparent, but no less provable.
Both of them are heterosexual and both of them have one main love interest. Neither of them have ever been married, but neither of them really are playboys and even though there are no legitimate bits of evidence that either one has ever had sex with their respective girlfriends, Bugs has kissed Lola on more than one occasion and Mickey has kept company with Minnie for longer than most old married couples.
These things are provable by watching the cartoons and observing a preponderance of evidence. There is no contradictory evidence. But the possibility of contradictory evidence doesn’t change these things into opinions. A disproven fact is still a fact. It is merely a false fact. Over time the relationship between Bugs and Daffy Duck may become clearer and the fact that Bugs is gay may pop out of the cartoon closet. It does however, require proof, so it is a fact, not an opinion.
Here’s another fact you know the evidence supports. Bugs Bunny is a nudist. He almost always appears in cartoons naked. Mickey, however, believes in wearing clothes. Even when he gets out of the bath tub, he clutches the nearest towel, and you never get a look at whether he has cartoon genitals or not. Mickey does hang out a lot with a duck who wears no pants, but that’s an irrelevant fact.
The notion that Mickey and Bugs are very different personalities because they had very different creators, is an opinion. It is a opinion offered by people who have studied the characters and their creators, and therefore can give you an informed opinion. But it still can’t be proven.
Walt Disney made Mickey into more or less of an every-man sort of character whom audiences can identify with. Things happen to Mickey Mouse, and the comedy comes from him trying to deal with those external forces, be they wind storms during music concerts, Donald Duck’s raging temper, or the evil plots of Black Pete. Walt never said this was so to prove it, but it is not unreasonable to think it.
Bugs Bunny, on the other hand, was created by several great animators like Robert McKimson, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett. And Bugs tends to make things happen to other characters. Think of how he plays Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and even his pal Daffy for laughs. He is more of a Groucho Marx type character than an every-man. We don’t identify with him. We only laugh at his victims (because they always deserve what he gives them). That too is an opinion. And even if one of his creators were to say that this was the intent, it still is not proven until all of them agree. And they all had very different ways of doing things.
But these are only informed opinions. You cannot be proven wrong whether you agree or disagree with them. You are entitled to your own interpretations and opinions because they are not provable facts. There is no one way to view any opinion.
Opinions, even un-informed opinions and religious beliefs are never either wrong or right. You don’t make a mistake when you have an opinion. It only becomes a mistake when you try to use it as a fact, or mistakenly believe it is a fact.
So, there is my lesson for those Facebook arguers who never seem to know the difference. It’s all color-coded and everything. So try using this new knowledge when arguing with me, rather than calling me stupid, or making your point IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!
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Tagged as Bugs Bunny, fact or opinion?, lesson on fact and opinion, Mickey Mouse, teaching with humor