Last year, Wonkette reported that the Mississippi Tax Commission's (601-923-7000) answering maching announced that the office was closed, "...in observance of Robert E Lee's and Martin Luther King's birthdays."
At the time, I asked incredulously if a rebellion-leader like Lee was entitled to a holiday, but I acknowledged that "this Mississippi compromise was probably just a way to get the fine, backwards, incest-committing people of the South to acknowledge - however backhandedly - MLK and all the good he did to make our country a better, safer place to live."
Well, I called Mississippi again this morning, and today the answering machine says simply that the office is closed "...in observance of a state holiday."
It is a message that sounds a little like the announcment our Hassidic gabbai makes when he tells us that the minyan times have been changed on July Fourth or Memorial Day "because of the Federal Holiday." And I am sure the sentiment is similar: Not to name the holiday is a way of undermining it. (Ladies, when men can't seem to remember your boyfriend's name they are playing a similar game. Be advised.)
