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Yet another milestone has been crossed on the road to lunacy. Specifically: Girl Scouts of the United States of America v. Boy Scouts of America, 18-cv-10287, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Yup, now that the Boy Scouts are admitting girls, they're re-branding themselves with the more gender-neutral "Scouts BSA," which means of course that the Girl Scouts are suing them over the use of the word "Scout."
I don't understand it either.
The Girl Scouts Just Sued the Boy Scouts Over Use of the Term 'Scout'
In this June 18, 2018 file photo, patches cover the back of a Girl Scout's vest at a demonstration of some of their activities in Seattle.
By CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN / BLOOMBERG November 6, 2018
America’s gender divide is leaving no generation on the sidelines.
A year after the Boy Scouts of America announced it would admit girls, the Girl Scouts of the United States of America punched back Tuesday with a federal trademark lawsuit seeking to block the boys group from rebranding itself simply as “Scouts.”
The Girl Scouts, called GSUSA in the filing, claim the move by the Boy Scouts will “marginalize” the female organization and “erode its core brand identity.” The Boys Scouts announced in May that it was changing its name to “Scouts BSA,” with members known as “Scouts.”
“Since BSA’s announcement that it would admit girls to its core programs, GSUSA’s fears about the damage that would be caused to its trademarks and the mission those trademarks symbolize have been realized,” according to the complaint filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court. “Throughout the country, families, schools and communities have been told that GSUSA and BSA have merged, or even that GSUSA no longer exists. Parents interested in signing up for Girl Scouts programs have instead mistakenly signed up for the new girls’ programs offered by BSA.”
A representative for the Boy Scouts didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case was filed as Americans went to the polls to vote in midterm elections in which the gender divide is stark and expected to influence the outcome. A record number of women are seeking office in the election, and the #MeToo realizations of workplace sexual harassment in the last year have crystallized voter opinion on candidates and social issues.
In the lawsuit, the Girl Scouts claim their right to use “Scout” and “Scouting” marks in marketing to girls has long been recognized both by the law and by the Boy Scouts. But the Boy Scouts’ decision to open all of its programs to girls has crossed that line, according to a complaint.
The Girl Scouts seek a court order blocking the Boy Scouts from using the term “Scout,” “Scouts,” “Scouting,” or “Scouts BSA” without an “inherently distinctive or distinguishing term appearing immediately before it.”
The suit isn’t the first time the two organizations tangled in court. A century ago, the Boy Scouts sued to block the Girl Scouts from using the name “Scout,” according to The Atlantic magazine.
Given that BSA is in an impossible situation and both organizations have used the "Scout" term for more than a century, I think it likely the court will find the term "Scout" or "Scouting" to be generic and not subject to trademark enforcement.
Of course, the Girl Scouts face an existential threat here. You can either go on cool camping/hiking trips, or you can sell cookies to enrich a centralized "charity." Hmmmm . . . .
YouTuber Shirrako has been banned from the platform for his viral video in which he punches a feminist in the face and runs away in the popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2.
YouTube banned the user who created the viral video “Red Dead Redemption 2 – Beating Up Annoying Feminist” claiming it advocated violence, in spite of allowing other game play videos from the popular video game, which requires the player to commit bank robberies, train robberies, massive shooting sprees, theft, and kidnapping in the course of playing the game, to remain on the platform.
YouTube closed my channel because I killed a female NPC in #RDR2
They said It promoted violence.
^ This is oddly parallel with my own experience growing up in the cracker south as a brown person. What is commonly construed as "race" in the mainstream dialogue is much more a question of attitude and behavior than of genetics.
I'll never forget what a good friend of mine from high school told me just a year or two ago: "Gonzo, you're the whitest Hispanic guy I've ever known."
Being cognizant of the context, and coming from a lily-white Midwesterner of Dutch ancestry raised in a sheltered environment, I took that as a compliment.
People who would, in my situation, have chosen to be offended by such statements are really a large part of the underlying cause of most of the "racial conflict" in this country today.
Incidentally, my first generation Hispanic immigrant side came from far more privilege than the Son of the American Revolution side. Ironic?
Not really.
Back in Cuba, my father's family owned a large textile plant and distributorship. They were empire barons, and had, for all intents and purposes, slaves who worked on their estate. (Slavery wasn't technically legal in Cuba in the 1950s, so maybe Indentured Servitude is a better analogy.) Much as in present-day India, a strong caste system existed in the Caribbean at the time. This is probably the biggest reason why Guevara and Castro were welcomed with open arms, and why many Cubans (those who remained behind) still consider their actions to have been a net positive for the island.
My mother's family, by way of comparison, were steelworkers and coal miners in Ohio / Indiana / Kentucky.
Andrew Klavan has a long-standing observation about the Left: "Everything they do turns out the opposite of what they say they intend," and that extends to LGBTQ issues. In an effort to create "safety" for LGBTQ students, a Florida school district decided to force a male P.E. teacher to watch a female student change in a boys' locker room, all under the guise of transgender rights. Klavan highlighted this "insane" story on Wednesday's episode of "The Andrew Klavan Show."
"It is hard to pick the most insane story of the year, in an insane political year like this one, but this has got to be close," said Klavan.
Klavan cited a Federalist article by Joy Pullmann describing a female-to-male student whose coach refused to watch her change in the locker room. As punishment, he was transferred to another school for not "fulfilling his duty." Here's an excerpt from Pullmann's report:
With a “gag order,” school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room, the letter says. When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.'”
"So this is a girl who thinks she’s a boy, they let her in the boys locker room, and the first time she walked in she caught the boys, literally, with their pants down," Klavan explained. "They were embarrassed, right? They didn’t like it. So the school put a gag order, forbidding teachers from talking about the change."
"They’re making the world safer for people, right," he joked.
Speaking of gen wuss: now that clocks have changed for daylight savings time, I have noticed that since it’s dark out, people are constantly camping the left lane and flashing their lights if you pass them. People would camp before, but now that it’s dark in morning and night, I guess it’s also convenient to flash your lights at everyone that thinks you need to move the **** out of the way.
In Chicago, it's utterly irrelevant, as nobody is going faster than 5 MPH regardless of which lane they're in.
And the police don't give a **** unless you're firing an automatic weapon out the window. (Revolvers are generally tolerated, provided that they are < .44 cal.)
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11-06-2018, 07:34 PM
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