by FREDERICA VON McTOAST-HYPHEN, Alternate Reality News Service People Writer
Some come to learn more about their craft. Others come to network and party. Other others come to represent their imagined ethnic identity, fight feuds that reasonable people would have settled aeons ago and otherwise make a terrific nuisance of themselves to the hotel staff.
They are attending the 6278th annual Ethnic Stereotypes Convention, this year held in the Marriott Scrunchie in downtown Moncton, New Brunswick.
“It’s always scheduled during Ramadan,” complained Swarthy Muslim Terrorist Stereotype as he waited in line for his convention badge. “I tell you, sometimes the disrespect to believers of the one true religion is so blatant, it makes me just want to explode!”
By day, attendees had a choice of a wide array of panels with such titles as “Are Muslims the New Jews? Are Jews the Old Episcopalians?” and “We’ll Wait Five Minutes Before Starting to Allow the Blonde Bimbo to Find the Right Room” and “The Ontology of the Racial Epithet, or, How Come They Can Say it But I Can’t?” On Saturday night, the convention hosts a masquerade where attendees are invited to dress up as members of other ethnic groups; the Masquerade has not ended in riot police being called in for the last four years, a string of good behaviour that hasn’t happened since 217 BCE.
And, there are parties. At a Friday night room party hosted by Southern Redneck Stereotype (you could tell because the walls were adorned with a Confederate flag – to celebrate his heritage, of course, no other reason, and if you insist upon arguing the point you can just give me back my damn alcohol and get the hell out! – and life-size photographs of assault rifles he was not allowed to bring across the border), a young man in a lumberjack shirt wearing a toque was arguing with another young man in a lumberjack shirt wearing a toque over Canada’s national food.
“Beer,” said the young man with brown hair, Anglophone Hoser Stereotype.
“Cretin!” shouted the young man with black hair, Francophone Stereotype. “Beer is not a food! It’s the staff of life! Canada’s national food is poutine!”
“Aww, take off, bear breath!” Anglophone Hoser Stereotype argued. “Poutine is okay, right? But it’s no box of donuts! Mmm…snort! Snort! Donuts…”
“Tabernac!” Francophone Stereotype shouted, followed by a string of words, probably in French, that gave our translation software a nervous breakdown, so we’re pretty sure they weren’t compliments.
Needless to say with so many – why do people start a sentence with the phrase “needless to say” and then go on and say something? Needless to say, if something was truly needless to say, you wouldn’t actually need to say it!
Umm, so, it goes without saying in any large group of diverse stereotypes, some will get along better than others. Case en pointe (it did service in a ballet company’s programme for the classic Loon Lake before it agreed to appear in this article): in a discussion in a room party that spilled out into the hallway (much to the distress of the hotel’s janitorial staff), Millennial Stereotype complained, “I have to work seven full time jobs just to be able to not quite make my rent. Whenever I try to talk to my family about it, my grandfather, Self-absorbed Boomer Stereotype, reminisces about how he dropped out of university after three years of attending no classes and immediately got a job that allowed him to pay off the mortgage to our house in three months. Am I bitter? Noooooo. What could I possibly have to be bitter about?”
To which a passing Bohunk Stereotype replied, “Is that a slur against Czechoslovakia? Did you just insult Czechoslovakia?” Before Millennial Stereotype could mentally process the non-sequitur, three people had to be taken to hospital for bruised egos.
No charges were laid in the incident. “‘Twas but a mere bit o’ spirited hijinks,” said the hotel’s security head, retired Amiable Irish Beat Cop Stereotype.
As you might expect, a lot of colourful characters could be found at the convention. One example was the elderly Asian woman who wandered around the hallways who didn’t appear to contribute anything, mumbling to herself in Mandarin – or possibly Cantonese – for those of us unfamiliar with the language, it may as well have been Klingon – the whole time. I asked Amiable Irish Beat Cop Stereotype what that was about.
“Aww, bless her soul, dat’s Just Off Da Boat Asian Stereotype,” he told me. “Ye know dey never learn da language. And dey always look like someone just poisoned deir dog – or husband. Still, I’m sure dat in her own way she’s enjoyin’ de convention as much as anybody!”
This all begs the question: in this – no, it doesn’t. To beg the question means to give an answer that acknowledges the question without directly responding to it. The proper phrase to use in this situation would be “This all leads to the question…” Oh, yeah, baby – I’m on fire for the English usage tonight!
Still, I’m on a tight deadline, so, in this case, I will bow to common ignorance: this all begs the question: in this more enlightened day and age, should ethnic stereotyping be supported with its own convention?
“Vat? You vant you should take bread out of my children’s mouths?” replied the conference organizer, Little Old Jewish Man Stereotype. “Veismier! We didn’t survive 4,000 years of persecution to have you be so politically correct, already!”