WhatFinger


Hanging with the Pooh

Exploiting the innocence of Winnie the Pooh



imageRichard Danzig, Navy Secretary under President Bill Clinton, now touted as National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, is not the only one ready to exploit Winnie-the Pooh. Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.” Now the criminal element in Japan, becoming somewhat extrovert, is exploiting Winnie the Pooh.

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No one and especially the unflappable American mainstream media was taken aback when Danzig made his quip about the lovable Queen of the Nursery Room and national security. Japanese police must have been more than a little surprised when they had to arrest Masayuki Ishikawa, a 20-year-old pretender to the innocence of the childhood image of Winnie the Pooh when they discovered why he and friends attacked and robbed their victims. Ishikawa-cum-Winnie had attacked and robbed two people—all for staring at his Winnie-the-Pooh getup. Decked out in his Pooh costume on a day that had nothing to do with celebrating disguises, Winnie the Pooh, Japan style, was just hanging out on a Tokyo street corner, minding everybody else’s business. Pooh Bear just happened to be flanked by two friends, one dressed as a mouse, the other, a panther. Incredibly, Pooh soon took offence at being stared at. “It’s uncommon to see people dressed up like this, so the victims were watching them. Then the perpetrator came up and said, `What are you looking at?’ a police spokesman said.”” (Reuters, Aug. 12, 2008). Just hanging out and getting offended without police interference would have netted Ishikawa and friends $160. And Tokyo’s Pooh Bear and friends had a very good alibi for their disguise: They had run out of clean clothes, their jammies were hanging out on the clothesline and their mommies were nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, maybe it’s time for the ACLU to come to the rescue of the well-exploited Winnie the Pooh.


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Judi McLeod -- Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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