According to the New York Post, the non-profit Space Foundation has canceled a fundraiser named after the first man in space and renamed it “A Celebration of Space: Discover What’s Next.”
The fundraiser was initially billed as “Yuri’s Night” in honor of Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth in space on April 12, 1961 aboard the Vostok-1 spacecraft. The reason for the change?
“The focus of this fundraising event remains the same — to celebrate human achievements in space while inspiring the next generation to reach for the stars.”
Here is the latest version. In fact, the URL still calls the event “Yuri’s Night.”
It is lunacy.
There is no denying that Gagarin was the first man to orbit the earth, beating Alan Shepherd’s suborbital flight in the Freedom 7Mercury capsule by three more weeks, May 5, 1961 John Glenn would have been almost a year old when Mercury capsule was released (May 5, 1961). Friendship 7 (February 20, 1962) equaled Gagarin’s feat.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen a cascade of events that are utterly unmoored from reality. Russian-born conductor Valery Gegiev, pianist Alexander Malofeev and Vadim Repin, the violinist, star soprano Anna Netrebko, and musician Vadim Repin all saw their performances cancelled. Pyotr Tachikovsky, a well-known composer, has also been removed from concert programs.
But it gets worse.
International Cat Federation bans Russian cats from competitions https://t.co/JVMfZAl4hb
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 3, 2022
As seen in the Wisconsin mustard Museum pic.twitter.com/tynV4sCg5c
— David is Employable (@ExodiacKiller) March 13, 2022
While I don’t think it is possible for sane people who are not under contract to a foreign government to disagree on the fact that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked and completely deserving of the international opprobrium brought upon Russian institutions and Russian politicians, the desire of the woke fringe in American society to feel like they are “doing something” is rapidly making a laughing stock of the cause of defending Ukraine.
One thing is to ban Russian team from international events. It’s another to prohibit the Bolshoi and other Bolshoi teams from touring. They represent Russia. That is justifiable, though I don’t think particularly well-thought-out. Even during the height of the Cold War, “cultural exchanges” took place. However, punishing individual performers, athletes, or artists strikes me as something we shouldn’t do. I don’t believe in guilt by blood, and I don’t think every citizen of a country should be accountable for the dumb****ert their government undertakes. Moreover, if we are trying to make a distinction between “good Russian people who want the war to end” and “a**hole Putin who started the war,” then making the “good people” suffer doesn’t seem to be on message.
This whole mess stinks of the woke progressive cancel culture that is pushing Critical Race Theory and sexual grooming on elementary school kids, tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson, and trying to deprive private citizens of their ability to earn a living because they won’t agree that Lia Thompson is not now nor has he ever been a woman.
It is not possible to ban cats from competition and a well-known soprano off concert stages in Ukraine. This trivializes a serious issue.
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