Remember, remember …

OK, so I may have missed Guy Fawkes Day, November 5th, by a day or two now. Nonetheless, I wanted to take this opportunity to remember the luckless traitor and celebrate the 401st anniversary of his attempt to blow up British Parliament in the infamous "Gunpowder Plot."

You've got to love the British. They celebrate their villains and overlook their heroes (there's still no "Churchill Day"). Where else in the world could you find a national holiday in which the man of honor is paraded through the streets and burned in effigy? I mean, can you imagine Americans parading down Main Street every April 19th with likenesses of Oklahoma city bomber Timothy McVey?

Sadly, Fawkes popularity seems to be waning. In Tower Hamlets, an East London borough, the town council voted to abandon the historic Bonfire Night celebration this year, (a.k.a. "Guy Fawkes Night") in favor of hosting a production of the traditional Bengali tale "The Emperor and the Tiger." It turns out that Tower Hamlets is home to about 20,000 Bengali immigrants, and Bengalis make up a majority on the town council.

But the British take their eccentric traditions seriously, and many townsfolk were angered by the council's move, which they viewed as forcing the community to buckle under the pressure of multiculturalism and political correctness.

John Midgley, spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, told The Daily Mail, "[P]olitically correct actions like these undermine our historic occasions and harm community relations." To which members of the council responded: "We did Guy Fawkes last year."

Midgely warned that the council's decision would "explode in their faces." Take that, political correctness! Huzzah!

I was reminded of this colorful figure and the very off-color debacle he has inspired when I walked through Harvard Square yesterday and saw this rather erudite graffiti on the side of the new American Apparel store:



My first impression was that it was a "shout out" to Natalie Portman, Harvard hottie and star of last year's Guy Fawkes revival "V for Vendetta," an excellent film, which I highly recommend for anyone caught up in the civic-minded spirit of Election Day today.

But then, I started to grow concerned. Is it possible that the Ivy League has finally become that snakes nest of leftist revolutionaries the Conservative Right has been warning us about for decades? Are the Harvard kids plotting to overthrow the government and bomb Congress?

Then I looked a little closer:


I doubt these freedom fighters could pull off a violent coup if they can't even remember how to spell "remember." It's good to know the value of a $44,000-a-year education.