They just cannot help themselves. This need by the press to dump on, diminish, or denigrate items in our culture that are collectively enjoyed persists to such a level that it might be a pathology. There must be courses in J-schools instructing this mindset — “How to Be Contrarian With Traditional Events and Holidays.” It has become both laughably predictable and desperate. 

On the last “Lia-Able Sources” podcast, I covered how the Washington Post felt the need to disparage the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. (Hey, did you know this destructive act of defiance towards the crown was illegal and seditious???) Now, not to be left out of the parade precipitation, comes the Associated Press, where Morgan Lee decides to deliver a load of reindeer droppings on your doorstep to inform you just how you are a horrible person this holiday season:

Your Poinsettia Plants Are Racist!

I mean, for real — when you are delving this low by scrounging under the straw in a manger to find something objectionable about Christmas, you are in dire need of some high-test eggnog and a partner to greet under the mistletoe. 

Just why is it that this plant that has been an American staple for about two centuries is, today, considered an intolerant display in your home or business? It all has to do with the contemporary practice of looking into the history of an item and finding elements of its formation that have no bearing at all on today’s activities, but are now declared disqualifying and in need of rectifying. It amounts to nothing more than select individuals wanting to feel superior by noting details from a bygone era that have zero relevance to what is currently taking place, all for the sake of lecturing and tapping a foot in a disapproving fashion. 

The plant is named after the botanist Joel Roberts Poinsett, who discovered it while serving as US Minister to Mexico in 1828. It turns out that some elements of his past are deemed unsavory (by today’s repressed leftist standards), and this is cause for concern. You see the familiar language of the hectoring busy-body at play here, as Joel’s history is alternately described as “complicated,” “troubled,” and “checkered.” 

TRANSLATION: “Things that were acceptable in his era are now distasteful, so we all have to change our behavior to satisfy the wishes of people who do not know we exist.”

Just what is it that this botanist did to generate upheaval over his namesake foliage?!

He was cast out of Mexico within a year of his discovery, having earned a local reputation for intrusive political maneuvering that extended to a network of secretive masonic lodges and schemes to contain British influence.

I’m sorry, but this hardly strikes as being sufficient to cause a radical shift in the nomenclature of a holiday potted plant. We are going to need a bit more to go on with this demand. Oh, but there is more objectionable material afoot! As you probably have guessed, Poinsett was a landowner, and as such, you know what that means!

Unvarnished published accounts reveal Poinsett as a disruptive advocate for business interests abroad, a slaveholder on a rice plantation in the U.S., and a secretary of war who helped oversee the forced removal of Native Americans. The cosmopolitan Poinsett (w)as a political and economic pragmatist who conspired with a Chilean independence leader and colluded with British bankers in Mexico. 

Funny, you would think that these are the kind of disqualifying details that might have emerged at any point in the past 200 years. Yet, it is only today that we are instructed how this resume is now a matter of concern and the impetus for us to stop calling a plant what it has been called…for almost two centuries. As for myself, pragmatist that I am, I need to ask a question: What is specifically fixed, repaired, or otherwise rectified by deciding to no longer refer to a poinsettia plant as a poinsettia? Who is healed, what justice is rendered, or what other social remedy is applied with this proposed relabeling?

Oh, did I not mention there is a new name, one that is expected to roll off the tongue of Americans during future Christmas celebrations? Well, it is not specifically a “new” name, but Morgan Lee manages to supply us with the preferred reference to this Christmas favorite.

Year-end holiday markets in Latin America brim with the potted plant known in Spanish as the “flor de Nochebuena,” or “flower of Christmas Eve,”

“Cuetaxochitl” is winning over some enthusiasts among Mexican youths, including the diaspora in the U.S., according to Elena Jackson Albarrán, a professor of Mexican history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University. “I’ve seen a trend towards people openly saying: ‘Don’t call this flower either poinsettia or Nochebuena. It’s cuetlaxochitl,’” said Jackson Albarrán. 

Suuuuure, We will bet the content of our stocking that this name is not about to be heard around garden centers in December in the years going forward.

Now, Poinsett must have been something of an influential figure, as we are told he has a bronze statue commemorating him standing in Greenville, South Carolina. We can only assume it is just a matter of time before this honorarium is struck down and the metal recast into planters to be donated to the National Museum of African American History.

Of course, all of this intolerant Wikipedia content is the primary focus, and not the beneficial deeds the hateful Poinsett also ushered forth. It is only in the final paragraph of Lee’s lecture that we are told the influential botanist was instrumental in the creation of the National Science Museum and he was a key figure in the development of the Smithsonian Institution. 

Those seem, at the very least, to be some mitigating accomplishments for the betterment of our society. Nonetheless, he once owned slaves, so get rid of your racist flowers.