The float for Fairbanks North Star School Board candidate Michael Humphrey was a winner in every way. It was a gigantic inflated walrus that was towed behind a van in the Golden Days Parade on Saturday. Beneath the walrus’ tusks a sign said, “Johnny.”
Golden Days is the big annual festival and the parade is the largest in Alaska. Thousands attend.
The judges awarded the walrus the top prize. And then the fun started. Someone figured out that this was Johnny from the pro-child book, “Johnny the Walrus.”
One of the judges, a hardline leftist, went to Twitter to express her utter horror that she had helped Johnny the Walrus win.
She didn’t know, she said, that Johnny the Walrus was transphobic.
“So it turns out that the best political float was an anti-trans float. The judges had no idea. We had two floats to choose from for political. You know what I hate? Hateful people,” wrote “Tania” on Twitter.
“We both feel sick about it and especially on how it reflects on our community to those who don’t know that the judges DID NOT HAVE CONTEXT We thought ‘“’guy has a mustache kinda like a walrus, we’re in Alaska, that’s a walrus inflatable, ok.’”
The book “Johnny the Walrus” is written by Matt Walsh, of The Daily Wire. The description of the book’s plot on Amazon says, “Johnny is a little boy with a big imagination. One day he pretends to be a big scary dinosaur, the next day he’s a knight in shining armor or a playful puppy. But when the internet people find out Johnny likes to make-believe, he’s forced to make a decision between the little boy he is and the things he pretends to be — and he’s not allowed to change his mind. From Daily Wire personality and bestselling author Matt Walsh comes a timely tale of innocence, identity, and imagination.”
In the book, Walsh is writing about how kids have active imaginations, but that because a boy thinks he is a girl doesn’t mean he is actually a girl. The next day he might be a knight or a pirate. Let kids be kids, Walsh is saying.
But the Left has labeled the book as “transphobic.” And Walsh has been targeted by the left for particular vitriol.
“Johnny the Walrus” can be found at three libraries in Alaska — the Anchorage Loussac Library, Sitka, and Seward.
Humphrey’s campaign page, meanwhile, says he will work on:
- Protecting children by stopping the spread of radical gender ideology
- Creating opportunities for more parental involvement in school
- Targeted budget control with the goal of smaller class sizes and teacher salaries that keep up with the cost of living
A father of six, Humphrey is a Marine veteran who describes his politics as conservative. He and his wife have been married for 15 years.
One anonymous person on social media chimed in bravely, calling Humphrey a disgusting candidate.
As for the parade judge’s meltdown, it went largely unnoticed in Fairbanks, as there was a rubber ducky race to attend on Saturday, with 8,000 yellow rubber ducks, all of undetermined gender, heading down the Chena River in search of the $10,000 prize.
