This is a bad time to be a Vulcan. Inopportune, to put it mildly. The fellows, who once deserved to be rounded up and placed in the public stocks, have brought themselves into the modern era, well, as far as you can be brought in while still wearing a red suit and covering your head in the comb of a rooster.
Put another way, there was a time, not that long ago, when being a Vulcan was a good boot camp for maybe taking a run at the U.S. Senate or applying to become the town crier for a mythical settlement of white Lutherans. The boys liked to run around downtown during the Winter Carnival and chase the gals, many of whom ended up in phone booths pounding on the glass for help like Tippi Hedren’s character in “The Birds.” Oh, they were rapscallions, and we now find that we must apply modern sensibilities to past indiscretions like do-gooders do when they want to change the name of a lake.
The current Vulcanus Rex, the grand poobah, David W. Breen, has just stepped down following a complaint against him, received by the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Association. Typically, the foundation did not provide any details, leaving too much of this to our imaginations.
The Vulcans are the principal attraction of the Imperial Order of Fire and Brimstone Ltd., whose president, Jerry Lanahan, said his group investigated and recommended that Breen turn in his ceremonial sword.
But what happened?
“It was not a grabbing thing,” Lanahan told the Pioneer Press. “He didn’t touch her.”
Hmmmm, a her. A clue.
“It was down in La Crosse,’’ Lanahan said, meaning that Wisconsin river town. “Dave says it was wild down there … something may have happened.”
But if it wasn’t a grabbing thing or a touching thing, then what kind of thing was it?
“People down at Oktoberfest were partying,” Lanahan said. “There’s people doing all kinds of things. Everybody was standing around, other carnival people standing around. Everybody’s having a party. It was out in the wide open.’’
People doing all kinds of things opens up the field to card tricks or spin the bottle or pin the tail on the donkey. If Breen is alleged to have not grabbed anybody or touched anybody, then we are in the realm of Breen telepathically committing a crime against the rule book of modern sensibilities.
Lanahan told the Pioneer Press that “we are going to do more sexual harassment classes,’’ which presumes that they already have done some. The boys have come a long way from the days of the forced grease pencil smudge and games played with perhaps garters, but there is a new and heightened sensitivity burning across the land.
I have always rooted for the red. According to the legend they are the ones who bring spring by dethroning that candy-coated Boreas. But I have always thought that the boys are overextended. There was a time when the Vulcan Krewe did the 10 days of the Carnival and then detoxed for the rest of the year.
These days it seems the Krewes are in competition to see which gang can make the most public appearances throughout the year, thus the 2017 Vulcan Krewe showing up at Oktoberfest in LaCrosse. In the old days maybe they would show up at a raspberry festival or an Aquatennial event, but that was about it. Today you can book them to show up in Mandan, N.D., to watch the destruction of a barn.
The boys have spread themselves too thin and sometimes, as Chris Rock has pointed out, you are only as faithful to your moral and ethical high ground as your options. It’s even more complicated today when we are left to consult only our imaginations as to what constitutes harassment, especially if there wasn’t any grabbing or touching.
Copyright 2017 Pioneer Press.