Out to Pasture
When I was a child in the declining days of the solidly segregationist South, when Jim Eastland was still a Mississippi senator and Herman Talmadge was his Georgia counterpart and George Wallace was governor of Alabama (the list of similar, ahem, “statesmen” goes on and on—and on), there was an extremely popular license plate containing the message “Keep your heart [with an image of a splashy red heart subbing for the word] in Dixie, or get your ass [garish illustration of donkey’s behind] out!”
Now, I hated that thing even before I was old enough to grasp the offensiveness of its meaning, primarily on aesthetic grounds. It was super tacky, and I knew the noble donkey (otherwise known as and already among my very favorite animals) did not deserve to be used in such a way. But the long-suffering ass, which was first domesticated around 3000 BC and has been used as a working animal ever since, is a beast of burden that has borne far more than its share.
