Adolf Fudge

Warning! This is a totally “following-the-bread-crumbs” post.

The hardest part about doing a bread-crumbs post is backtracking. I feel like James Joyce with amnesia.

It all started with Ray Girvan’s very thorough investigation of the coopting of the swastika — from inoffensive to offensive — by the Nazis. So, first, I take a look at one man’s effort to take the sting out of the swastika symbol. Cartoonist Sam Gross published a book, We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons (Simon & Schuster). Here is a bit from a review of the book, Can a Swastika be Funny? by Steve Lipman (02/13/2008) in The Jewish Week:

… Gross says he is walking in the artistic footsteps of Dave Chappelle, whose creation, “The Niggar Family,” on Comedy Central four years ago, was viewed as both groundbreaking and empowering, infantile and offensive. Comic Chappelle is black; the family he created was stultifying, white and square. The skits were packed with clichés and stereotypes about African Americans, veiled behind the N-word that was the family’s name.

Chappelle was both praised and pilloried for “The Niggar Family,” which he wrote to give the minority community control of the hated word.

Because Chappelle is black, he could do it.

… One cartoon in Gross’ book alludes to its inspiration. It shows a man spray-painting swastikas on a wall and telling a friend on a cell phone, “I’ll call you back. I’m trying to make the 10 o’clock news.”

My next bread crumb was the Dec. 2008 brouhaha over a New Jersey couple who tried to get a birthday cake for their three-year-old:

JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell and Adolf Hitler Campbell.
Good names for a trio of toddlers? Heath and Deborah Campbell think so. The Holland Township couple has picked those names and the oldest child, Adolf Hitler Campbell, turns 3 today.
This has given rise to a problem, because the ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich Township has refused to make a cake for young Adolf’s birthday.
“We believe the request … to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” said Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman.
The Campbells turned down the market’s offer to make a cake with enough room for them to write their own inscription and can’t understand what all of the fuss is about.

Since then the children have been removed from the custody of their parents. Reasons for the removal are not given. I hope it wasn’t because of the names. Lots of people have odd or silly names. Google “funny names” and you’ll get a zillion results. You can probably think of quite a few without Googling. 

Once, years ago, while talking to my mother on the telephone, I mentioned a recent obituary in our local newspaper for a woman named Fern Fudge — I thought the name was funny and so did my mother. She is very literal so many types of humor escape her, but silly word play definitely hits her funny button. Because I like making her laugh, I improvised, as if reading it from the paper, an ever more elaborate obituary (how Fern had met Mr. Fudge, all the little Fudges; achievements, hobbies and community activities and so on playing on all the Fudges).

Googling “Fern Fudge” finds quite a few Fudges in Pilley’s Island, Newfoundland. Great name, Pilley’s Island — and it includes places called Bumblebee Bight, Flat Rock Tickle.

Getting back to fudge, I wondered where that word came from. Etymology Online says this about the verbal form:

v. 1674, alteration of M.E. fadge “make suit, fit,” of unknown origin. The traditional story (attested from 1791) traces fudge in this sense to a Captain Fudge, “who always brought home his owners a good cargo of lies.” It seems there really was a late 17c. Captain Fudge, called “Lying Fudge,” and perhaps his name influenced the form of fadge in the sense of “contrive without the necessary materials.”

All this thinking about fudge reminded me of little Adolph’s birthday cake. Which reminded me of Cake Wrecks.

You’ll have to read the explanation of that one for yourself (the picture of the thing that the store were supposed to put on the cake was on/in the flash drive.)

See also misunderstood phone orders, and the politically correct Christmas cake.

Communication is problematic. [ << --- lame attempt at summing up this post]

-Julie

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