TODAY IN FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.

Apparently the organizers of a local entertainment award ceremony in Los Angeles didn't do their homework, and it's instant crisis.  "Mispronouncing someone’s name, accidentally or on purpose, at the very least demonstrates a selective laziness to learn the correct way to address or acknowledge a person. The name is perceived as particularly difficult only because it’s beyond the white European names that have been deemed normal."

Really?  Get a grip.  Think of all the ways you might abuse Stephen Hopkins Karlson.

That first name?  If you're familiar with Good King Wenceslas, you're home.  Younger people, who might not have that cultural competence, or who have grown up with all sorts of idiosyncratic pronunciations and spellings, often get it wrong.  That's the world they've made, they'll have to live in it.

That middle name?  If you're used to life in upscale precincts among Mayflower descendants, that's nothing surprising.  Neither of those stipulations applied to the southwest side of Milwaukee.  Grief?  I got some.  But you might as well outlaw adolescence.  Among adults, there's carelessness, then there's rudeness.  "When done willfully, it’s a conscious decision to weaponize one’s name — a deeply personal signifier of ethnic background and family lineage — against them, othering and invalidating them in a culture that already upholds white supremacy."  Please.  The article started with an anecdote in the Los Angeles theater community, probably not a haven for white supremacists or middle-class kids with two first names and none of the pretension to use both, the way intellectual types do.

The last name?  Easy to say, hard to spell.  Am I being mean when I check in someplace and the person fumbles and squints and "What did you say that was?" rather that just note "Look in the KAYS," although sometimes that doesn't even register?  (My usual follow-through when the person gets apologetic is "if that's the worst problem we encounter today, it's a good day" or something along those lines.)  But a microaggression?  Only a very privileged Ashley Lee would find that.  "People like my parents hoped to shield me by assigning me an Anglicized given name at birth. Making my name more convenient for others was a defensive move: to lessen the likelihood of being bullied about my race and to up my chances of blending in, belonging and being seen as equal to my peers."  Kids are going to do their dominance things anyway, even kids brought up to respect differences.

That careless theater association?  It shut down.