by Travis Mateer
When the Festival of the Dead returned to Missoula last year, some local media publications helped this town re-write history by pretending it was the PANDEMIC that ended the festival and NOT cultural bullies high on the power of cancel culture (emphasis mine):
A Missoula Festival will return this year after a hiatus due to the pandemic. Missoula’s Annual Festival of the Dead, a multicultural event inspired by Dia de los Muertos, will feature events over several days and represent multiple cultures.
While the Missoulian did a little better by not straight-up lying to its audience about what cancel culture did to the festival, the fact that the same cancel-culture effort was happening behind the scenes was no longer something the newspaper felt like giving oxygen to, which led me to making this pertinent observation:
I’m writing all this about a festival honoring the dead because I want to highlight how it’s actually the POWER OF THE MEDIA that we’re seeing here because it’s the media that can turn ON a controversy, like they did in 2016, or they can shut it out, which this year exemplifies.
You didn’t hear about angry people giving organizers and supporting businesses angry phone calls this year because the media did NOT tell you that those phone calls were happening, but they were, and I know because one of the organizers told me this directly when I spoke with her on the phone.
One of the big ironies about this story is that a young woman who got White House attention for ANTI-bullying was one of the cultural bullies who helped make little girls cry. But before we look at “Ekoo” Beck, here’s an example of the sadness her cultural bullying produced:
Before bullying sponsors and supporters of this event, Ekoo Beck was getting invited to the White House. Is this where she learned the finer points of cancelling what she doesn’t agree with?
A Hellgate High School senior has earned a trip to the White House as a “Champion of Change” for her work in preventing school bullying and violence.
Iko’tsimiskimaki Beck – you can call her “Ekoo” – is a Blackfeet tribal member who spearheaded a program in Missoula’s schools to train and teach students about anti-bullying techniques and to fight racism.
“One issue that has always been a focus of my family is racism,” said Beck, a 4.0 student who has applied to Harvard University and plans to study neuroscience and neurobiology. “My grandfather worked with Martin Luther King Jr., so my family has always told me about racism and I’ve always known about the inequalities in our society.”
I would have included a screenshot of Ekoo here, but then I remembered the power of those who identify as professional victims, so instead I’ll use some self-censorship and just continue to the part where this professional victim (who isn’t Mexican) helped destroy a cultural event Missoula has been doing for decades:
Ekoo Beck said she grew up in Missoula participating in the festival, but was shocked to see its cultural appropriation and what she called racism when she returned from Harvard University.
“Then I realized how wrong it was,” Beck said. “It becomes a racist situation.”
She worries that, if it continues, future generations of Missoula children will grow up seeing the festival as “just a part of the community” rather than a cultural appropriation and show of disrespect.
How did Ekoo Beck get so motivated to become an agent of cancel-culture change? Was it like the story of Grace Gibson-Snyder, another Hellgate Highschool student with PARENTS lurking behind. her activism? Yes, it would appear that Ekoo Beck has some parents who were ALSO advocating for cancelling Missoula’s festival. The link is to an ESPN article that provides more context on her activism (emphasis mine):
For Beck, 16, the bullying issue cuts to the core of education. “Bullying prevents students from learning,” she said. “I don’t believe students can learn if they are not in a safe space.”
Beck has also helped lead the fight against racism and homophobia. Her paternal grandfather, Armin Beck, worked with Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement. Her parents, David Beck and Rosalyn LaPier, are professors at the University of Montana, and both specialize in Native American studies. David is of Germanic, British and Swedish descent; Rosalyn is Native American from the Blackfeet tribe in Montana and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribe in North Dakota.
Because she is half Native American, Ekoo was teased during her younger years. But she is proud of her roots and recently legally changed her name from Emily Florence to Iko’tsimiskimaki, the name that was given to her informally at birth by her great grandmother.
This sad situation could almost be described as a potential case of Munchausen by proxy, which is defined by Wikipedia as this:
Also known as factitious disorder imposed on another, Munchausen by proxy is a condition in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their own child. This may include injuring the proxy or altering test samples.
To wrap this post up, I’ll speculate that normal liberalism seems to have mutated into a destructive mind-parasite that causes the host to give zero fucks about laws and social norms in this culture war they are waging. Another example is this presidential race where the Biden administration is literally trying to rewrite history.
In a mad scramble to cover for President Biden calling half of the country “garbage,” White House press officials altered the official transcript, overriding official stenographers who objected to the alterations, the Associated Press reports.
According to the pre-altered transcript, Biden said “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
However White House press office added an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” in order to peddle the falsehood that Biden was criticizing comic Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the US island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
As someone who used to identify as a progressive myself, being a liberal wasn’t always synonymous with being mentally ill, but here we are, folks. I really hope these people get some help, because if Trump wins (which appears likely, barring fuckery), then I’m afraid they would rather destroy this country and its innovative Constitutional protections than allow their political opponents a victory.
If you appreciate my ability to NOT allow local history to be rewritten, please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). Any little bit helps.
Thanks for reading!