November 8, 2005
Butterstick's Deadbeat Dad
Yesterday a select group of National Zoo donors were given first crack at seeing the District's newest four-legged sensation, Butterstick (yes, officially he is called Tai Shan, but National Airport is also officially known as Reagan and we're not about to start calling it that). Parents and children took the opportunity to ohhh and ahhh their way past the undeniably cute panda cub and mother Mei Xiang, while those of us too cheap to donate money to the cause are left with little more than the voyeuristic Panda Cam.
In reporting on Butterstick's first public outing, WJLA noted that while Mei Xiang has been a staple in her cub's life, father Tian Tian has been, well, a bit of a deadbeat. It's not that Tian Tian, pictured here above Mei Xiang, is an unloving father or that he spends too much time out hitting the sauce with the boys (see Federline, Kevin), it's just that it's nature -- male giant pandas don't much care for their offspring. And this being Washington, expect that someone somewhere will seek to make a political point of Tian Tian's pitiful paternal contribution to his only child.
How so, you ask? Not two months the New York Times reported that various conservative organizations had adopted "March of the Pengiuns" -- a popular and moving presentation of penguins' harrowing experience in mating and raising offspring -- as unofficial evidence of the importance of monogamy, the value of family life, and proof of some sort of intelligent design. Some called it a stretch, many agreed.
But given that some people are willing to use anything to make a political point, what can we expect from Tian Tian's terrible fathering? Will feminist organizations take him as poster-child for deadbeat dads, using his likeness to demand that Congress and the states increase penalties for failing to make child support payments? Or will conservatives blame Butterstick's apparent restlessness and proclivity for trouble-making on his lack of a stable heterosexual household?
Just who will make that first unfortunate leap?
Picture of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian courtesy of the National Zoo.
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You forgot to mention that Mei Xiang was artificially inseminated to make that cute little squirt...
Deadbeat dad or not, Tian Tian didn't do much on the pre-fathering end so don't blame him!
Thanks for the National Airport mention! I've been living in the DC area for about 19 years and haven't known it by any other name (well, maybe Washington National Airport). All my friends moved here in the last 5 years so I have made it my duty to "correct" them whenever they call the airport by that other name.
I heard they renamed BWI, but I will never call it by any other name either.
Dude! Tian Tian got kicked out of the house and was even allowed to see Mei Xiang and his own kid, ALONG with having to give up some of his hard earned bamboo and apples, why? Did he do anything to Mei Xiang, if he did okay then this would be justified but NO!
Maybe if Tian Tian was around Butterstick would have been walking weeks ago. Mei Xiang has spent a fair amount of her time out of the den away from Butterstick, how do we know she hasn't been off flirting with the cheetas? THEN when Mei Xiang shows up and butterstick isn't right there she starts dragging and tossing him around! Maybe we should let Tian Tian raise butterstick for a few weeks! Sounds more like an overbearing abusive Mother than deadbeat Dad to me.
Hey DCist, it's hypocritical to refuse to call it Reagan National Airport while also calling that stadium RFK. Both were renamed. I would suspect an political bias, but I think it's more the typical result of a recent arrival to DC trying to take on the air of a native. Kind of like people who keep calling them Fresh Fields even though they know they're called Whole Foods now. Why don't you call it the Potowmack River while you're at it?
By the way Alexandria, they changed BWI's name to include Thurgood Marshall's name. Pretty classy of you to willfully ignore that...
I heard Mei Xiang was at the Club on Sunday drinking vodka redbulls until 2am. Someone needs to her you got to get your kid on, or you can get your groove on, but you can't get both on at the same time.
Hey What's the deal?--
I think you're missing the point. There's something to be said for tradition...I would venture to guess that "Alexandria" (?) doesn't have much against Thurgood Marshall.
What does any of this have to do with Butterstick, anyway?
myself and my family are d.c. natives and none of us ever, ever call the airport reagan. rfk was renamed in something like 1969, so i think people got that past that. btw, did they ever resolve if they were going to rename rfk, like, "thank god for the army" stadium?
Hey DCist, it's hypocritical to refuse to call it Reagan National Airport while also calling that stadium RFK. Both were renamed. I would suspect an political bias, but I think it's more the typical result of a recent arrival to DC trying to take on the air of a native.
I grew up in Arlington, and to me the stadium has always been RFK and the airport National. Maybe in twenty years everyone will call it Reagan; then perhaps you'll have a point. But crucial difference is that D.C. welcomed the RFK name; the Reagan renaming was forced on us by Congress.
oh yeah, this post is about butterstick. just to bring it back: he's cute! he squeals and totters around! yay baby pandas!
Seattle LOVES Butterstick!
So Butterstick was artificially inseminated, huh? Does this mean that Tian Tian had to sit around at some sterile clinic, look at PlayPanda magazine, and get himself in the mood?
This Butterstick cub is going to be pouring its heart out on Oprah before you know it. This is no way to raise a family!
Perhaps I'm just a little too nostalgic, but I still like to call JFK Airport in Queens, N.Y., Idlewild.
Catherine and DCist Tom:
My point was that it is disingenous for a non-native like Martin to act like its so difficult to accept the name change. The fact that natives like you are so opposed only goes to prove my point that non-natives try to act like natives by adopting their grudges. It's like someone who moves to Boston all of the sudden discovering a bitterness about the 1986 World Series.
Or, perhaps someone who moves to a new town and tries to learn its culture ends up emulating the affectations of the "true" natives (a fairly dubious classification in any case). Such as, if you walk around DC calling it Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, people will think you're a dweeb. The analogous example for the stadium is: you would look incredibly stupid calling the joint the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. RFK will suffice.
i don't think it's disingenuous, especially since i think it more reflects a disgruntled attitude abount congress forcing stuff on us unrepresented folks, which they tend to do. it was renamed in 1998 (i believe), which is plenty of time for anyone who was living here a bit before then to get pissed about it.
No one is suggesting people use the full "Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport" name in conversation. Most people I know say just "Reagan". But really, anyone saying that they're just "too used" to saying National to start using a different name are kidding themselves. They just don't like Reagan [the president] and resent the name change. [Do those same people refuse to call it the Robert Kennedy Building?]
Certainly What's the Deal must admit that "BWI" rolls off the tongue a lot better than "Thurgood Marshall Airport". And that "National" sounds more like the airport of the nation's capital than "Reagan". Perhaps if I was alive in 1969 I would be calling RFK "DC Stadium". But we'll never know...
To bring this back to pandas, did you know if you go to the panda breeding facility in China you can pay like US$10 and hold a baby panda? I suspect that like Butterstick, those pandas also have absent fathers. Perhaps with a father figure in their life, they wouldn't turn to panda prostitution for love and hugs.
Dude, no one calls that airport Reagan.
Politics aside, Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, and BWI was renamed by Maryland officials. National is a local facility but was renamed by a Congress in which Washingtonians have no representation.
It wasn't forced on "us unrepresented folks". The airport is in VA and it has always been owned and operated by the government or a semi-governmental entity. The government merely decided to rename it.
Besides, I always find it funny when people in DC act as if Congress' dominion over the District has been "forced on them". It's not like the Federal Government took over your hometown, it CREATED this town. No one (at least since 1865) was forced to move here. You knew, or should have known, the deal when you got here.
WTD?, the decision to rename the Metro stop was indeed forced on us, which is probably what most people are thinking of.
DCist Ryan: Sorry "Dude" plenty of people call it Reagan, maybe just not in your circle of bitter Democrats.
AlexanDRA (sorry about that): I think just calling it Thurgood or Marshall would be easier to say than "BeeDoubleYouEye".
Ronald: Who cares whether DC residents have representation in Congress or not, the airport is IN VIRGINIA (where they have both less taxation and infinitely more representation...). Second, it's never been a "local facility". It's always been a plaything of Congress. That's why there are flights to faraway state capitals, even though the airport is not supposed to handle long distance flights.
WTD, I've heard a rumor that people are occasionally born here in DC. But I suppose they should all move out.
The residents of the American colonies in 1776 should have just stayed away or moved somewhere else if they were interested in having representation. They knew the deal.
Well, what with all the death and deficits these days, it's not hard to imagine why the Dems might be bitter.
And I suppose I should quit taking taking the ten minute Metro ride to fly out of National, since it's not a local facility and I'm not a Congress person.
WTD, it's not the "easiness", it's the sound. It's just a fun sound. When you wrote it out phonetically like that I smiled. Anyways, Maryland changed the name to BWI-TM Airport. By keeping BWI in the front, it will always be known as BWI. Even on its website it is called BWI (except on the splash page). The MTA maintained the name BWI for its Light Rail Stations. I suspect the name BWI is very safe. But if for some reason that changes, I'll always call it BWI, the airport who's control tower-to-aircraft communications could randomly be heard on my computer speakers growing up. Aww, now I'm really in nostalgia mode.
See, the problem is that Reagan could never quite get along with the airlines and that's what pisses me off about the airport being renamed Ronald Reagan. I seem to remember something like him violating the law firing striking aiport traffic controllers... Yeah, something like that. So it's not that I didn't like the guy. I'll call it the Reagan building or whatever. But the fact that they chose to rename an airport with his name is just so beyond any reasoning and rationale.
To the real issue, Butterstick is adorable. I rue the day when we have to send him to China.
Matt: Yes Metro was forced to change all their signs, but that is only because they issued a whole new set of signs without the new name, even though it was in place already. Essentially WMTA officials were loathe to recognize the new name and thought they'd thumb their noses at Congress, all at the expense of Metro riders. And besides, I don't think anyone here is talking about the Metro station.
KCinDC: Someone made a choice to move here, whether it's your parents or grandparents, etc. And the comparison to the Colonists is not apt, seeing as there was no written constitution saying "hey you can move there, but just know, we can do pretty much whatever we want to you and you can't vote about it."
See, the problem is that Reagan could never quite get along with the airlines and that's what pisses me off about the airport being renamed Ronald Reagan. I seem to remember something like him violating the law firing striking aiport traffic controllers... Yeah, something like that. So it's not that I didn't like the guy. I'll call it the Reagan building or whatever. But the fact that they chose to rename an airport with his name is just so beyond any reasoning and rationale.
To the real issue, Butterstick is adorable. I rue the day when we have to send him to China.
DCist Ryan: What I meant is that it's not like the airport was some local municipal airport that Congress took over. Of course it is proximate to DC. But what I meant is that it wasn't some "home grown" airport. And frankly I think we should be happy that congressmen are so selfish about the place. If it weren't for them thinking about themselves first, there's no way an airport would be built so close to the nation's capital.
alyssa: Ronald Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers out of a concern for the safety of passengers. This decision was never found to be illegal (public safety workers have less to no right to strike). You can argue with the merit of this decision [and claim it had more to do with labor unions as a whole], but how does acting under the guise of protecting airline passengers make you ineligble to get an airport named after you?
And for the record, I think Butterstick is adorable too. Maybe we can give the Chinese back Yao Ming instead of Butterstick.
That Baltimore Airport is called "Friendship."
Those in the know will remember that as federal employees, the air traffic controllers had a "no-strike" clause in their contract. I think it's important to remember who was violating what there.
More importantly, Butterstick totally rules! He's his own panda, even if Dad's not around a lot.
No one (at least since 1865) was forced to move here. You knew, or should have known, the deal when you got here.
hoo boy. now *that's* a disingenuous statement. not that there would EVER be extenuating circumstances for the reasons somebody would move to a place.
if you want to get into why exactly you think d.c. does not warrant congressional representation, then you deserve every response you will get on this thread.
i mean, do you want to just cut to the chase: do you think district residents deserve the same constitutional rights as their countrymen? or not?
Catherine: They do have the same consitutional rights as their countrymen. The Consitution says that anyone who lives in the District has no voting representation in Congress. Therefore anyone who lives in the District has all the rights afforded to him under the Constitution. If any of his fellow countrymen moved to the District, they be treated exactly the same way.
There's no provision of the Constitution that says "Everyone in the country has a right to voting representation". The Constitution specifically carved out a "federal city" to be separate and apart from any of the states. The states did not want to give that city a vote in Congress, and so that's how the Constitution got written. You can say you don't like that, but you can't say it's unconstitutional or that the Consitution itself deprives people of their Constitutional rights.
Also:
I think whether or not District residents have voting representation is separate and apart from whether Congress has dominion over the District. You could have voting representation and still have Congressional dominion. I was talking about Congressional dominion, not voting representation.
The day may come when voting representation is granted, but there will never be a day when Congress cedes ultimate dominion over the District.
hello, she had to be artificially inceminated. isn't it a bit heterosexist to just assume that dear old dad is a heterosexual?
Screw representation. I'd rather just not pay any property taxes like a Puerto Rican.
Shped, I think you mean federal income taxes, not property taxes. But if DC became a tax haven, I doubt any of us would be able to afford to live here anymore. Housing prices and rents would skyrocket, and we'd have a vast displaced underclass that would have to find new places to live, perhaps in PG County.