Red Ribbon Rant

Today at work we're told to wear pink on Tuesday to bring 'awareness' to the disease of breast cancer. Please. Do the wearers of these ribbons really think putting a decoration on their clothing is going to do one thing stop this disease? Unfortunately, they do. They make themselves feel like they are part of a solution. In reality they are doing nothing.

I first noticed this when I was approached to wear a red ribbon for Drug Abuse Prevention Week. I asked the lady in charge of passing out ribbons if wearing a red ribbon ever got someone off drugs. She said no probably not. I said do you think that a teenager about to shoot up heroin for the first time is going to see some forty something white guy wearing a ribbon and immediately stop what he is doing and run off to college? She said no. So then what is the point of wearing a ribbon? What was the point of even buying the ribbon to give away? Wouldn't society be better served if the money was given to victim/witness program, battered women's shelter or other such cause? She then tried to tell me that wearing a ribbon really did help. Bah!

The only person aided by red ribbon day, blue ribbon week or pink ribbon month is the guy that manufactures the ribbon!

The difference between a magician and the rest of the world is that magicians know that what you do matters. Empty gestures have no value. If you want to make the world a better place, volunteer, give some money or help a little old lady cross the street. Do anything but pin a meaningless ribbon to your chest and convince yourself you've done something worth while because you haven't!

To make this worse, I went in search of a picture of a pink ribbon. I found http://www.carolsutton.net/download_pink-ribbon.html. The site boldly proclaims that this is the first pink ribbon on the internet (see above). I kid you not. The text under that somewhat dubious statement reflects the mentality of people that think this sort of thing has value. I quote, "When I first went in search of a pink ribbon in 1996 to put up on my site there were no copyright free ones available on the web, so I designed my own and a page to go with it and that was the start of the pink ribbon site."

So, let me get this straight. You made the first pink ribbon on the internet because the other pink ribbons on the internet were copyrighted. Gotcha. You go with that if you have to.