A Birthday Cake For Adolph Hitler Campbell

The Street Hustle

In 1975, Pere Ubu released their first single on the entitled “Final Solution” on the Hearthen label.  Although the song is a typical punk teenage angst rant, the title, with it’s allusion to the Nazi term for the Holocaust, turned a lot of people off.  In Clinton Heylin’s book From The Velvets to the Voidoids, Thomas insists that his bands flirtation with fascist imagery was designed to annoy his bands parents because nothing is as aggravating to parents of that generation as fascist/Nazi symbolism and ideology.

Thankfully, certain things haven’t just haven’t changed.

In New Jersey, a couple called the local Greenwich ShopRite to get a birthday cake for their three year old.  The store refused to make the cake.  Why?  The child’s name is Adolph Hitler Campbell.  Apparently, this isn’t the first time this store has turned down a request from the Campbell family due to lack of taste.  Last year, Greenwich ShopRite refused to make the family a cake in the shape of a Swastika. 

Although the Deborah and Heath Campbell claim not be white supremacists, they also have a child named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and to have named their oldest son Adolph Hitler because “no one else in the world would have that name.”  For their part, the ShopRite is worried about offending both its employees and customers.  “We reserve the right not to print anything on the cake we deem to be inappropriate.  We consider this to be inappropriate,” store spokeswoman Karen Meleta said.

I get it because I grew up in the same midwestern milieu the boys form Pere Ubu grew up in, compounded by the fact my Old Man was a Holocaust survivor and a notorious capitalist.  So to the Campbell’s I say offer this piece of advice: if you name your kids after notorious anti-Semites and other persons who are enemies of the human race, expect to have to justify your actions and beliefs in the media.  This isn’t the same as throwing a Nazi salute in plain view of your grandparents who actually fought a war to make sure the evil the National Socialist Party stood for would vanish off the face of the earth.  Keep this in mind next time you are asked if you have mixed race friends.  And if this was your premeditated fifteen minutes of fame, I hope your children need far more therapy than I and you have to pay for it all.

ShopRite, why did you turn down the cash for making the cake?  We’re in a depression guys.  Any port in a storm!