According to the New York Post, the non-profit Space Foundation has canceled a fundraiser named after the first man in space and renamed it “A Celebration of Space: Discover What’s Next.”
The fundraiser was initially billed as “Yuri’s Night” in honor of Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin became a part of history on April 12, 1961, when aboard the Vostok 1 space capsule, he became the first man to orbit the earth. What caused the renaming?
“The focus of this fundraising event remains the same — to celebrate human achievements in space while inspiring the next generation to reach for the stars.”
You can see the current iteration of the conference here. In fact, the URL still calls the event “Yuri’s Night.”
This is lunacy.
There is no denying that Gagarin was the first man to orbit the earth, beating Alan Shepherd’s suborbital flight in the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule by three weeks (May 5, 1961). It would be nearly a year before John Glenn in the Mercury Friendship 7 (February 20, 1962) equaled Gagarin’s feat.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen a cascade of events that are utterly unmoored from reality. Pianist Alexander Malofeev, violinist Vadim Repin, superstar soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev have all had appearances canceled because they are Russian. In addition, famed composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky has had his music pulled from concert repertoires.
It gets worse.
While I don’t think it is possible for sane people who are not under contract to a foreign government to disagree on the fact that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked and completely deserving of the international opprobrium brought upon Russian institutions and Russian politicians, the desire of the woke fringe in American society to feel like they are “doing something” is rapidly making a laughing stock of the cause of defending Ukraine.
It is one thing to ban Russian teams from international events, or even the Bolshoi from touring, as they represent the Russian government. That is justifiable, though I don’t think particularly well-thought-out. Even during the height of the Cold War, “cultural exchanges” took place. However, punishing individual performers, athletes, or artists strikes me as something we shouldn’t do. I don’t believe in guilt by blood, and I don’t think every citizen of a country should be accountable for the dumb****ert their government undertakes. Moreover, if we are trying to make a distinction between “good Russian people who want the war to end” and “a**hole Putin who started the war,” then making the “good people” suffer doesn’t seem to be on message.
This whole mess stinks of the woke progressive cancel culture that is pushing Critical Race Theory and sexual grooming on elementary school kids, tearing down statues of Thomas Jefferson, and trying to deprive private citizens of their ability to earn a living because they won’t agree that Lia Thompson is not now nor has he ever been a woman.
Banning cats from competition or a world-renowned soprano from concert stages does nothing to help Ukraine free itself from Russian invaders and goes a long way towards trivializing a very serious matter.