Say you're the minister of a tiny Lutheran church in a small town in a state few can even recall the capital of. How do you get your name not only in the local paper, but picked up by the news networks and have it published and broadcast all over the country?For Rev. David J. Baer of Whitewood, South Dakota, the answer came to him as if a message from God.
Complain to the town council about the name of a street, and demand the name be changed.
"Hooker Street doesn't quite lend itself to a family atmosphere and is offensive to some residents in the town of about 800 people, according to Baer," news sites across the world proclaimed today.
The street was named for Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, a Union general during the American Civil War.
Even changing the name to "General Joseph Hooker Street" wouldn't satisfy the reverend, the article says.
The article doesn't actually go into why the word "hooker" bothers Baer so much. Hooker, of course, is another word for prostitute.
Perhaps he fears the street will become a red light district, or maybe Baer just believes the myth that Gen. Hooker is the etymological source of the slang term hooker for prostitute. Dictionary.com dispels this story thusly:
In his Personal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as "a dangerous man... not subordinate to his superiors." Hooker had his faults. He may indeed have been insubordinate; he was undoubtedly an erratic leader. But "Fighting Joe" Hooker is often accused of one thing he certainly did not do: he did not give his name to prostitutes. According to a popular story, the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch, and would spend much of their time in brothels when on leave. For this reason, as the story goes, prostitutes came to be known as hookers. However attractive this theory may be, it cannot be true. The word hooker with the sense "prostitute" is already recorded before the Civil War. As early as 1845 it is found in North Carolina, as reported in Norman Ellsworth Eliason's Tarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. It also appears in the second edition of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1859, where it is defined as "a strumpet, a sailor's trull." Etymologically, it is most likely that hooker is simply "one who hooks." The term portrays a prostitute as a person who "hooks, or snares, clients."While just 35 miles away in Rapid City, an 18-year old man is charged with brutally raping a 3-year old boy, Rev. David "Family Values" Baer is using his pulpit to demand the town protect its 800 residents from being offended by a man's last name. I think he's got his priorities a little, uh, screwed up. There are those who obviously could have used some ministerial services nearby.
What's next for Baer (whose own last name is both an anagram and a homonym — uh oh... homo!? — of "bare," which means "naked")?
Rumor has it the next windmill he tilts with will be the nearby state of Idaho, which is, as is so blatantly obvious as to offend even me, Ebonics for "I am a whore."
Image: The Red Light district in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Whitewood, South Dakota | Joseph Hooker | Rev. David J. Baer | Offensive | Christians | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com
Ha! He should come to Hartford Connecticut where they have the annual Hookers parade. Thomas Hooker founded the city and is so honored each year by a goofy and fun parade. They even have T-shirts, "Hartford Was Founded By A Hooker!"
ReplyDeleteTM
Apropos of nothing, last year the Troy, MI, city council denied a license to a new bar because "Hooters does not fit in ... the Big Beaver corridor".
ReplyDeleteI am not making this up.
I can give a similiar example.
ReplyDeleteI'm from southwest Florida. South of Naples is Marco Island, a very rich community, which was created from a barrier island (prehaps re-shaped would be a better term).
In looking for additional places to build, developers looked at another nearby island. Only problem was its name: Horr's Island. Its named for an early settler to the island, a Mr. Horr. Developers didn't like the name, and wanted to rename the island prior to development. Of course, the more historically minded didn't like that. AFAIK, nothing has happened regarding development of the island.
Thanks for noticing our small town and the serious discussion we are having about our street names.
ReplyDeleteI'm the pastor mentioned in the stories and criticized on this site.
The suggestion for the change in street name came from a group of Whitewood citizens who have been meeting for several months to work to better our community. It is part of a program called Horizons that seeks to help small communities with a significant percentage of disadvantaged citizens.
You can read about Horizons at
http://www.nwaf.org/Programs.aspx?pg=Programs/Horizons.htm
You can read about the local Horizons project and other community activities at the Horizons Blog:
http://whitewood.communityblogs.us/
This group is working in many areas in our community. One thing they suggested was that this street name was not appropriate or helpful to our community. Among the reasons offered for changing the street's name, people talked about the hurt caused to a young girl who might have to explain that she lives on Hooker Street. They also thought that potential businesses and new residents might balk at a Hooker Street address.
We consulted our local postmaster and learned that only one person receives mail with a Hooker Street address. Like many small towns, most people receive mail at post office boxes. The postmaster said that the change could be made easily and with little disruption to that one customer.
I agreed to take the concern to the city council. I knew that folks might sensationalize and trivialize this matter -- especially with a pastor asking that something called "Hooker" be changed. I thought it was worth the potential personal embarrassment to help our community improve itself. (I’m not so sure any more.) The news media certainly managed to sensationalize and trivialize this matter on a grand scale.
Suggestions for the street name change included using General Hooker's first name and calling the street Joseph Hooker Street so that he would still be honored but any potentially offensive or embarrassing reference would be eliminated. Children might even learn that he was a general during the Civil War.
If you want to read an accurate portrayal of what is happening, check out this article from our local newspaper.
http://www.lawrencecountyjournal.com/articles/2007/11/27/lawerence_county/headlines/doc4743490cde09d963439868.txt
It may be fun to poke fun at a pastor and to use this opportunity to belittle traditional values and Christianity, but most of those in our community suggesting this change were not thinking from a Christian perspective. They were thinking about what living on a street called Hooker could mean for a young girl and whether a business would want to locate on a street with that name.
The experience in watching the news media and others misrepresent what is happening in Whitewood shows the power of words to hurt others or to help them. That is the reason we are discussing the possibility of changing the name of the street – because some words can be hurtful to others.
Pastor David Baer
Whitewood, SD
Rev. Baer:
ReplyDeleteThanks for noticing our small blog and our silly discussion of the Hooker Street incident. We're honored that you found us among the hundreds of news sites that ran the story.
While we as Masons commend efforts to reduce poverty and empower citizens of your area, I think your concern about the name of a street is nothing more than political correctness gone wild. If the name Hooker is offensive and embarrassing, why haven't all the people with the name Hooker flooded the courts with name-change applications?
If the street was named for John Lee Hooker, legendary bluesman, would it still be offensive? Or would it be empowering that a street was named for a poor black son of a Mississippi sharecropper who made good? Does the name of the nearby Black Hills offend little white children? Does the town's name Whitewood offend little black children?
Again, your efforts to create more economic wealth for the citizens of your area are commendable, but you can do it without finding reasons to be offended.
The reason editors across the country, and I, "trivialized" the story is, well, because it's trivial.
Thanks for visiting.
— W.S.
"BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM."
ReplyDelete"It may be fun to poke fun at a pastor and to use this opportunity to belittle traditional values and Christianity."
ReplyDeletePoke fun at the pastor for focusing on minutae, yes. But please don't play the persecuted Christian. No one here as I read it made fun of traditional values and Christianity. (Although I wouldn't refrain from doing so when I thoght those were silly as well. It certainly didn't stop good ol' Samuel Clemmens.)
No sir, I believe in the revitalization work that is being undertaken is worthy, but this business about the name of a Street is, in my opinion, a canard that diverts energy from more substantive efforts. In fact, it could be used humorously to attract business as it is done in Hartford.
Should you ever find yourself in Connecticut in CT in October, I'd be glad to take you.
Be Well,
Traveling Man
This preacher is worried about a street, and in California there are laws being signed that do away with gender and allow boys and girls to share bathroom and all, but no one is speaking up about this mess? I wonder why? Here's the latest.
ReplyDeleteADF: Calif. law eliminates “gender” roles, creates safety hazard for women and children
ADF and allies file lawsuit challenging SB 777
Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 5:18 PM (MST) |
ADF Media Relations | 480-444-0020
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Comments
SAN DIEGO — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of California Senate Bill 777. The new law redefines a student’s sex as his or her “gender identity,” relying upon a student’s feelings about whether the student is male or female rather than his or her biological sex.
“State officials are jeopardizing women’s privacy and the safety of women and children. Without any standards for determining someone’s ‘gender,’ school officials have no way to prevent a man from using the girl’s restroom or locker room, for example, and this should alarm students and parents,” said ADF Legal Counsel Tim Chandler.
SB 777 prohibits schools from imposing dress codes or segregating school activities and programs on the basis of “gender.” ADF and Advocates attorneys representing California Education Committee, L.L.C., argue that SB 777 is so vague that it could force schools to permit boys to participate in girls’ sports and run for homecoming queen.
In October, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed SB 777 into law to become effective Jan. 1. The law applies to all public schools and most private schools, including pre-schools, elementary schools, high schools, and post-secondary schools, such as colleges and universities.
A copy of the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in the case California Education Committee v. Brown can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/CECComplaint.pdf.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
Ridiculous-both cases.
ReplyDeleteRev. Baer,
ReplyDeletePlease understand that neither this blog nor the posters in it are representative of Freemasonry as a whole.
In regards to the issue with your towns street names, that is for you and your town to decide. As far as I am concerned the street can be called Jesus Lane. Only you and the people effected should determine whats best for your local area. The issue may seem trivial to those outside your community, but if your community sees it as a concern it must be addressed.
The reasons you provided seem sound and rational to me, though an explanation was unecessary in my opinion.
It is amazing how we tend to advocate democracy, until we see it work against our own beliefs.
Br. Arthur Peterson