You Heard Me
“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” is a textbook case of workplace discrimination masquerading under the pretense of a song-that’s-also-the-name-of-an-adjacent-movie, joining a long and celebrated list of which the most famous is, of course, Wild Wild West. As much as Will Smith delicately crafts an intricate and complicated tapestry in support of child labor laws that wouldn’t technically exist until long after the real Wild West had been paved, “Rudolph,” is equal to the task in building a civil case that any attorney worth his salt would run over a judge’s son for.
I can be that attorney; nay, I am that attorney.
“All rise, all rise, court is now is session for Rodolphus Reindeer vs Santathon Klaus, The Reindeer, Et All”
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen
But do you recall
The most famous reindeer of all?
Your Honor, I do NOT recall the names of these particular stripper gentlemen off the top of my head, and I reject the implication that I’m a regular at The North Pole. What I DO recall is the most famous reindeer of all; his name is Rudolph, and he is my client. He’s the one who’s name is emblazoned so brightly across the top of his North Polar Regional Fulfillment Center, you know, the one that the Russians complained about. The light was keeping them awake, probably not unlike Kramer with the Fried Chicken place.
Rudolph’s influence on his employer’s expansion has been a sight to behold, nor can it be overstated. He wants to break into the Middle Eastern market, and Eastern Hemisphere markets in general but has thus far been met with… reluctance.
More importantly, let it be known that prior to my client’s promotion, Mr. Klaus was unable to deliver his goods because of fog. Yes, Your Honor, fog. Pathetic, right? Sorry, Your Honor, I’ll stop editorializing and just present my case.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows
Your Honor, let’s paint the scene here: it’s reportedly so foggy that the reindeer can’t fly – this is apparently the first time in the history of December 25th that the weather hasn’t been absolutely perfect because Santa is completely unprepared to deal with fog – so much so, in fact, that he asks the one reindeer that nobody even likes to drag his, that is, Mr. Klaus’, fat ass around all night like it’s some sort of privilege, all because this reindeer’s nose glows enough so that Mr. Klaus might complete his single night of work without smashing into a building like Wile E Coyote.
At best, this casts a shadow of negligence; a cynic might claim Mr. Klaus, by placing my client’s faintly glowing red nose at the front of the dog-sled harness, was attempting to shift liability and financial responsibility to my client should any mishap occur on their trip around the globe. Personally, if I was navigating my sleigh around in the middle of the night, in winter, that nose had better be a fuckin’ beacon, know what I’m saying, Your Honor? Would you substitute a glow-stick for your cars’ headlights? ‘Cause that’s what Rudolph’s nose looks like, we’ve all seen it and with all due respect to my client, I ain’t navigating shit with that shit.
With that in mind, sir, if it would please the court, I humbly submit revised, US Department of Transportation approved, lyrics:
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Had a nose like a lighthouse
And if you ever saw it
You’d say, “Ahhhhh what the fuck is that kill it kill it kill it”
Your Honor, I move to strike the original lyrics from the record of history on account of the writer’s phoning it in big time, even by their standards. At least we learned the characters names in the first verse, right? This part’s like, “Hey that dog is so furry. It’s so furry you might say it looks like it was born with all that fur. You’d know that if you saw the furry dog with all the fur it was probably born with.” No, Your Honor, you sit down. I’ll sit down, too, though.
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games
And here we have the crux of the case. Your Honor, this is a clear admission of guilt by the defendants. They discriminated against Rudolph on account of his genetic mutation, which if I recall any of the X-men movies, works out gangbusters for the mutants – well, except for the mutants at Table 9.
Yet the other reindeer made fun of him and purposefully excluded him from their Reindeer Games, which if I’m to understand that documentary correctly, got Ben Affleck into a lot of trouble. Good to see Lt. Dan back on his feet, though, right Your Honor? He had a rough go after his spaceship blew up. Wait no he wasn’t on the space ship, he had the poops and couldn’t go up. Poor guy.
Your Honor, I admit I’m as confused as you are and am not sure what else needs to be said as the defendants openly admit to ostracizing my client, barring him from participation in what amounted to be, frankly, the world’s most contrived cock-block. Because while my client admittedly benefited from their shunning by not going to jail (maybe, I only watched the trailer and even then, kinda not even), the fact remains that my client totally would have tried to hook up with Charlize Theron if the other reindeer hadn’t refused his entry into their Reindeer Games, all because – and this their own admission, Your Honor – all because of my client’s unique nose, which may or may not have saved the lives of those same reindeer, what with my client’s superior navigational capabilities. Your Honor, I really want you to consider that my client was denied the opportunity to hook up with Charlize Theron when weighing your decision. No, Your Honor, sorry ma’am.
Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say
“Rudolph, with your nose so bright
Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”
Your Honor, I dropped my index cards before and you saw how when I tried to do the PowerPoint all the porn popped up and I was really embarrassed – for you, ma’am, that you would look up those disgusting and depraved things on my computer and in the aftermath, well I kinda jumped the gun and did this part of the song already.
Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
You’ll go down in history”
Your Honor, the facts speak for themselves. My client was discriminated against, openly and on the record – they published, distributed, and celebrated the segregation of my client for generations of children to sing. Kinda fucked up, right, Your Honor?
Mr. Klaus and his team has, also openly and on the record, taken advantage of my clients likeness and image and profited immensely without my client seeing a single dime of residuals. In the meantime my client is the designated lead of the sleigh, due to his unique and extremely valuable light up nose, and as such has eaten so many more bugs than he ever wanted to. He’s run into duck butts a bunch, too, and, well, he didn’t like that very much either. As soon as my client proved to be better at their jobs than all of the other reindeer combined even Mr. Klaus was like, “Shit, Ronald -“
“- Rudolph,”
“Sure, Trudy, you’re cool, dude, you’re really good at letting me see in the fog, somehow. There’s value in that. I’m woefully unprepared for everything but especially fog which doesn’t speak well for the rest of what nature and trigger-happy mankind has to throw at foreign objects in the sky but mostly please don’t bend me over a barrel.”
And my client likes Mr. Klaus. He did that cool thing with Wonder Woman and Luke Skywalker when our Imaginations were under attack, and he brings people presents. This isn’t personal; this is about my client getting what he is due. My client is asking for the value that he’s provided to his employer’s business. Without my client’s nose, Mr. Klaus isn’t getting Your Honor’s presents on time, Your Honor. Don’t you want your presents? No, ma’am, that’s not blackmail, that’s a poorly worded threat.
If any of this story sounds familiar it’s because my client’s tale overlaps greatly with another very popular fictional characters’. You see, first they mocked my client. Then they needed my client, and he saved all their asses in spite of their asses being a bunch of jerks. I ask you: is my client Jesus Christ? Well, my client does admittedly have close ties to December 25th, but as far as I know, Your Honor, Jesus can’t fly. Now, does that make my client better than Jesus? That’s for the courts to decide… and since that’s you, Your Honor, and I’m asking for a lot money on behalf of my client, hell yes my client is better than Jesus.
Yes, your Honor, my client at this time is, in fact, CEO of the North Polar Regional Fulfillment Center, but you and I both know Mr. Klaus’ tentacles run deeper than that. Santa is capable of secretly entering and exiting probably like over a hundred thousand million houses in a night with handfuls of goods – probably multiple times because he’s only got so many arms and some kids get fuckin’ hooked up, you know what I’m saying Your Honor? Anyway our boy Santa clearly has connections. The shipping, the distribution, the manpower… the mans’ reach is literally limitless.
Not to mention, Your Honor, but Santa’s PR record is spotless and the guy’s like 4 millions years old. There’s no way anyone lives that long and theoretically literally goes in and out of every single house that’s ever existed and hasn’t done at least one morally borderline thing. To be sure, we’ve all seen our mommy’s kissing the Defendant, Your Honor, and historically people don’t react well in those situations. In fact, just last week a man attacked another man after mistaking him for the defendant. It was grotesque:
Mr. Klaus’ reach in the Press is dangerous, sir, and there is precedent to break his empire apart based on this country’s monopoly laws. Yet in the meantime, since that is an exhaustive and toothless endeavor, and firmly in the spirit of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” I suggest that my client be appointed or sworn in or blooded-in or whatever to be made CEO of Klaus Enterprises, Inc, as without my client’s nose none of this empire would be possible. Especially given how Ben Affleck turned out, I think my client is due to clean up, Your Honor. Yeah yeah yeah I hear you I hear you but let me finish real quick I got a thing going, c’mon Your Honor you’ve had the microphone this whole time it’s my turn, c’mon.
Your Honor, my client is a hard worker. Rudolph stepped up when called upon. He didn’t complain. He was undersized and had to work twice as hard while being singled out. No one recruited my client; he walked-on. He kept his head down, which was hard as a redhead; he stood out, even among the supposed Fighting Irish. Your Honor, I’m not here to spread rumors but I’ve heard the move Rudy was actually supposed to be a thinly veiled allegory for my clients life – of which Rudolph has yet again not seen royalties from – and if that’s true than doesn’t it kind of make sense for my client to get some of that Lord of The Rings money? And probably some of that Stranger Things money, too? Rudy pretended to be other guys, too, so let’s get that money while we’re here, right? Your Honor, cool it, I’m wrapping it up for fuck’s sake.
Before I leave here, Your Honor, I want to speak to the character of the other reindeer negatively so that you might think more poorly of them and grant my client more money.
The other reindeer are a bunch of front-runners. They didn’t like that which was different from them so they mocked my client, until it turned out that my client was the fucking Bee’s Knee’s and the Duck’s Nut’s and now these chumps are straight-up licking his stupid reindeer hoofs – that he somehow fucking flies on, I mean, Your Honor, we’ve barely acknowledged my client can fucking fly and he’s not even a bird, don’t we all owe him money for that alone, somehow? Not to mention all the shipping fees he’s saving Mr. Klaus, I mean my client has personally landed on all of your roofs, and probably pooped on more than we’d like to think about – I object, Your Honor, strike that from the record – alright fine we’ll throw out the Rudy part of our lawsuit to negate the reindeer-bombs dropping from the reindeer-butts but lets keep talking shit about the other reindeer, it’s only fair.
Between you and me, Your Honor, I bet the defendants, the aforementioned reindeer, love the Dallas Cowboys. No, you take it easy! It stands to reason that if one sucks at everything else in life, like the defendants have openly admitted and displayed and promoted, then one might as well double down and root the for the Cowboys. Your Honor, could you hammer down your hammer thing and tell the front-runners to please shut up? Hey what are the handcuffs for