LA Lights the Way

Tonight is the last night when “Angelenos” will be able to see their most noted structures lit up like – well, not a Christmas tree because that would be, um colonialist?

From those giant LAX thingies at the airport to the zoo to city hall to the U.S. Bank Tower (it’s a tall building downtown that has had many names – you may remember it from the  helipad scene when it got blowed up real good in the movie Independence Day,) the city’s Office of Civil Rights is splashing the pastels the world has been forced to associate with DIVERSITY over the past few years.

“Since 2020, LA Civil Rights has worked to strengthen, promote, and fight to protect Angelenos and LA visitors from hate and discrimination,” said LA Civil Rights Executive Director Capri Maddox. “This year more than a dozen LA landmarks will be illuminated in honor of our LA is For Everyone award winning campaign. It is a beautiful mosaic of colors representing the brilliant diversity of our City. Its growth in popularity is part of our intentional awareness campaign that hate has no home in Los Angeles, and we are building an inclusive LA for All.”

Here are a couple of examples:

As noted above, all of this is in aid of making sure that local residents understand the importance of diversity and tolerance and understanding and listening and never pointing out anyone else’s foibles or holding people accountable.

It’s not just buildings – a portion of the fleet of the most dangerously “diverse” bus system in the world – is part of the program as are the city’s garbage trucks (not sure they thought that one through entirely.)

The point seems to be to remind folks to embrace diversity and that if they do not they have a problem – how could you not be moved by the colors?

Hating people for what they are is wrong – hating people for what they do?  Not so much.  There are monsters and bastards who are terrible people who do terrible things, but do you really think seeing city hall lit up all pretty is going to spark an epiphany moment?

The effort reminds one of comedians Bill Burr’s classic monologues – a true bastard is slamming his wife’s head into the cabinet for not drying the can opener properly when he sees an anti-domestic violence ad on television, pauses, stops, and then says (paraphrasing) “Oh honey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that.”

Here’s the brilliant but very very sweary routine.

It is like almost every public service campaign government agencies spend literally billions of dollars each year – they do not work, they do not change behavior. On occasion they can be useful by letting people in need know about specific services and how to get help, but the general “be nicer” or “worship diversity” or what have you are destined to fail.

Proof? The video on YouTube announcing this particular bit of government-enforced joy has  – and it’s been up for eight days – exactly 25  now 26 hits.

So just in case you didn’t know why city landmarks were lit up in the actually not very diverse colors representing diversity (they always use the same ones,) they are there to remind you be more diverse…or something.