More Faux Google Doodle Outrage

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More Faux Google Doodle Outrage

March 31, 2013

Comments

Every time there’s some kind of major holiday, or the anniversary of some important event, there are always people at the ready to claim outrage over something they considered important not being appropriately marked with a doodle on Google’s home page. Typically, you see this happen over some event with American historical meaning such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day, or the anniversaries of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the D-Day Invasion. This time around, it’s Easter:

On Easter Sunday, Google is honoring the birthday of the late labor organizer Cesar Chavez by placing a Chavez portrait within the middle “o” of the Google logo that appears on the homepage of the popular search engine.

While Google frequently decorates its logo to celebrate various holidays and special events, it is unclear why the company chose specifically to honor Chavez’s birthday, instead of Easter Sunday.

Chavez co-founded the organization now known as the United Farm Workers union (UFW). He became an iconic figure in the labor movement, with his stature only increasing since his death in 1993.

President Barack Obama released a statement in 2011 proclaiming March 31 “Cesar Chavez Day,” declaring, “I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and educational programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was an informal adviser to both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns, a member of the Obama White House transition team in 2009 and a onetime prospect for an Obama Cabinet post during the president’s second term.

As you can expect, this has resulted in the usual righteous outrage from the usual suspects, who seem to have found a lot of time to comment on their blogs and on Twitter because Google wasn’t honoring a day that they consider religiously significant. Now,while I’ll admit it’s odd that Google chose to honor Chavez, it’s worth noting that Google has not displayed an Easter-themed Doodle for thirteen years now. Even if they did have one it would obviously feature colored eggs, bunnies, and other images associated with the secular side of the day, not anything overtly religious. More importantly, though, I have to wonder why people get upset over things like this. Is their faith so weak that it can only be affirmed if they see an appropriate Doodle on the Google homepage? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

32 responses to “More Faux Google Doodle Outrage”

john personna

March 31, 2013 at 11:55 am

It doesn’t bother me particularly one way or another, but I think it is actually a mini-Chick-fil-a scenario. Chavez was a polarizing figure. There is no reason a corporation with a profit motive would sport him, as ‘logo,’ over someone or something less divisive. And so yeah, Google will earn some negative energy (Californiaism!) from the the “Easter, not Chavez” group.

I’m sure it will blow over, and be nothing big, but it was unnecessary, from a business perspective.

(Chavez fans were Chavez fans before yesterday, and will be tomorrow, so there is nothing happening on that side either.)
Ron Beasley

March 31, 2013 at 12:03 pm

Even if they did have one it would obviously feature colored eggs, bunnies, and other images associated with the secular side of the day

Easter was originally a celebration of the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex, Ishtar(pronounced Easter). Her symbols were eggs and rabbits.
George W. Bush

March 31, 2013 at 12:20 pm

Google honors guy with Spanish name that helped the poor, conservatives scream “wrong one!”
Al

March 31, 2013 at 12:21 pm

The only people who see Google’s doodle are the people who hit Google’s front page and those people tend to be old and/or less than tech savvy. (Yes, I know a smaller version still shows on the result page. Again, anyone who hasn’t long since tuned that out falls into the same category.)

I tend not to care much about the opinion of the old or tech illiterate when it comes to Google.
john personna

March 31, 2013 at 12:24 pm

@Al:

I find naked google.com to be a good homepage for the phone.
Al

March 31, 2013 at 12:28 pm

@john personna:

Ever since I switched to the iOS version of Chrome I’ve found their default tab (which is the “most visited pages” tab) to be very helpful.
Gold Star for Robot Boy

March 31, 2013 at 12:30 pm

Is their faith so weak that it can only be affirmed if they see an appropriate Doodle on the Google homepage?

Their faith is weak because they are weak. Probably the same crowd who loudly declares ‘MURICA! to be the bestest, most powerful nation evah… but it’ll crumble if Muslims can congregate near the former WTC site.
john personna

March 31, 2013 at 12:37 pm

@Al:

My Droid X still has good specs compared to run of the mill Android phones, but is stuck on Android 2.3.4, and no Chrome.

I think I’ll go to a Nexus 4, and one of the low cost networks, in coming months. The only thing that stops me is ongoing reports of Wifi problems on the N4.
mantis

March 31, 2013 at 1:37 pm

@john personna:

I’ve been using a Nexus 4 on T-Mobile’s super cheap $30/month plan since November and it’s pretty sweet. I don’t have any wifi problems, and I’m glad since T-Mobile doesn’t get the kind of building penetration Verizon and AT&T do. That’s really the only drawback so far.
John Burgess

March 31, 2013 at 2:01 pm

@Ron Beasley: Not really…

From Wikipedia (which actually gets this right):

The modern English term Easter, cognate with modern German Ostern, developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre,[nb 4] which itself developed prior to 899. This is generally held to have originally referred to the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Ēostre, a form of the widely attested Indo-European dawn goddess.[nb 5] The evidence for the Anglo-Saxon goddess, however, has not been universally accepted, and some have proposed that Eostre may have meant “the month of opening” or that the name Easter may have arisen from the designation of Easter Week in Latin as in albis.[26][27]
C Croce

March 31, 2013 at 2:20 pm

Move over baseball. Being outraged is now America’s favorite pastime.
Ron Beasley

March 31, 2013 at 2:34 pm

@John Burgess: The day of Easter in the western church is the same as Ishtar’s Sunday – the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, which was celebrated with rabbits and eggs. Easter like Christmas was placed on an existing pagan holiday after Constantine Christianized the Roman Empire. I do suspect that the that Ishtar was pronounced “Easter” is a coincidence.
swbarnes2

March 31, 2013 at 2:45 pm

Why on earth are you labeling it “faux” outrage? Just because you think it’s stupid doesn’t mean that other people aren’t very sincere in their anger over Google honoring a brown person who helped poor people, instead of supporting the majority, Christian culture.

It’s just you lying again, posturing away from your fellow conservatives, even though you vote for all the same conservative lawmakers, and therefore support all the same policies.
Sirkowski

March 31, 2013 at 3:26 pm

Is their faith so weak that it can only be affirmed if they see an appropriate Doodle on the Google homepage?

Is that a rhetorical question?
Sirkowski

March 31, 2013 at 3:29 pm

@Ron Beasley:
That’s an Internet myth. Easter comes from the Saxon Ostre. The original name for Easter in most languages is the Greek/Latin Paska, from the Hebrew Passah (to pass over). No relations with Ishtar.
Gromitt Gunn

March 31, 2013 at 4:59 pm

Shouldn’t the people complaining about this be offline doing things like going to church, contemplating the Resurrection, finding ways to follow the example of Christ in their communities, and spending the day with their grandchildren? Spewing bile on their internet and feeding their inner outrage demon seems like probably one of the least Christian things one could do on Easter Sunday.
Franklin

March 31, 2013 at 7:38 pm

@john personna: Personally I find naked google.com to be a good homepage, period. As a software programmer, I believe I qualify as at least somewhat tech savvy.
Uma

March 31, 2013 at 7:40 pm

@john personna:

this is not an ideological battle of left vs right, GOP vs Dems, Socialism vs liberty. This is ethnic warfare against white people.

Why are hostile globalist elite defending Israel as a Jewish ethnostate with Jewish only immigration, but ravaging white majority Europe/North America into a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Gulag with dystopian non-White colonization?

Why do gullible Whites kowtow to murderous Jewish/Crypto-Jewish bolshevik commissars, who butcher White soldiers in bankrupting wars, confiscate White people’s guns, infiltrate & subvert our banks & spying agencies, indoctrinate White children in academia/mass media, & plunder White jobs, wages?

East Asia is 99% yellow. Africa is 99% Black. West Asia is 99% Brown. But 3rd world colonizers are annihilating Whites, just as Chinese colonizers are annihilating Tibet. Genocidal Jewish Bolshevik commissars murdered 100 million White European Christians in Soviet Gulags from 1917-1991.

“Native” Americans are not native. They invaded from East Asia. Not just Whites, but Muslims, Jews, China, India, Mayans, Africans all are guilty of slavery, genocide, imperialism. Whites were victims of Islamic, Jewish, African imperialism, genocide, slavery.

Gullible Whites should reject subversive Jewish ideologies – libertarianism, feminism, liberalism, socialism, & reject hostile slanders of racism, collectivism.

Love to all humanity, but if White people wish to survive, they must unite & organize to protect & advance their families, their fertility, their interests. Reading list:
goo.gl/iB777 , goo.gl/htyeq , amazon.com/dp/0759672229 , amazon.com/dp/1410792617
legion

March 31, 2013 at 7:46 pm

I absolutely guarantee that a lot of those worked-up conservatives are worked up precisely because they don’t know the difference between Cesar Chavez and Hugo Chavez. And a non-trivial percentage of _that_ group don’t even have any idea who Cesar Chavez was.
wr

March 31, 2013 at 8:59 pm

@Uma: Nice to meet you, loser. Hope you like the rock you live under.

Sincerely,

A White Jew Who Respects Cesar Chavez
wr

March 31, 2013 at 9:01 pm

@legion: “And a non-trivial percentage of _that_ group don’t even have any idea who Cesar Chavez was. ”

Hell, most of them don’t have a clue who Hugo Chavez was. They just know he was brown and Fox told them he was icky.
legion

March 31, 2013 at 9:03 pm

@wr: I swear to FSM I did not see this before I posted.
Andre Kenji

March 31, 2013 at 9:49 pm

Just a note: there is no doodle here in Brazil on Google.
Timb

March 31, 2013 at 11:54 pm

@Uma: Hannity? Is that you?
M. Bouffant

April 1, 2013 at 5:26 am

Now,while I’ll admit it’s odd that Google chose to honor Chavez
Uh, it was his birthday? And Cesar Chavez Day?

It’s also a state holiday in California, so Google may be more aware of Mr. Chavez than all you Eastern elitists.
rogierdebbie

April 1, 2013 at 6:59 am

Words can not describe how outraged I am Easter Sunday’s google doodle. As an american I fully support equal rights and freedom of speach. However as a mature, educated, american adult I know the difference between exercising my right and a public display of ignorant arrogance at the expenses off those who have suffered.

What next google? A swastik on Hanukkah?
J-Dub

April 1, 2013 at 8:37 am

Isn’t he the Dog Whisperer?
J-Dub

April 1, 2013 at 8:39 am

I would have preferred to see a picture of Hopalong Junkpounch on Google’s doodle:

kelly.hogaboom.org/?p=14346
Jenos Idanian #13

April 1, 2013 at 9:42 am

There’s a lot of ignorance around Cesar Chavez. The Navy’s naming a ship after him, even though he described his Navy career as “the worst two years of my life.” (At that time, the Navy was quite thoroughly segregated, and Latinos in the Navy were restricted to menial jobs, just barely above black sailors.) And he was a very staunch opponent of illegal immigration.
john personna

April 1, 2013 at 10:02 am

@Uma:

I literally lol’d.

I came in this morning wondering what kind of people gave me down votes up top … well, you answered my question.
legion

April 1, 2013 at 10:15 am

@rogierdebbie: The fact that you capitalize Easter Sunday, but not “american”, tells me pretty much all I need to know about you. If you’d like to live in a theocracy, take your sorry ass elsewhere.
john personna

April 1, 2013 at 11:00 am

@Franklin:

As I’ve mentioned, I have developed a fondenss for whatpage.org

It’s a simple little app. You give it a few pages you like to see, and it randomly pops them as home page. So I enjoy the wind map but also remind myself of gold prices, etc.