According to Wikipedia, a 27 year old amateur boxer who recently defeated 58 year old Mike Tyson in a bout. For you youngsters, Tyson was once the heavyweight champion, but he was disqualified for biting a chunk out of an opponent’s ear, and also sent to prison for raping and severely beating a woman. Even 31 years younger and somewhat larger, it must have taken some guts for Paul to get in the ring with Tyson.
Don’t forget that Airplane was based on a deadly serious CBC (Canadian public TV) made-for-TV movie, about an ex-Spitfire pilot who had to take over the controls of a 4-engine airliner when the pilots became ill. I don’t remember if they ate the fish, but there was no drinking problem, no war trauma, and no jive. Just a man who had only flown single engines, and hadn’t flown anything in 10 years, having to learn to fly one of the big ones.
As other posters have explained, Pastis made this up as a satire for the many times a word has really been “canceled” because some professional agitator took offense.
There was an episode of Alf (an 80’s sitcom about an orange furry alien), where the neighbor reported that they had an alien living in their house. The INS came and searched everywhere for the type of illegal alien that comes from Mexico. They found Alf hiding in the closet and frozen with fear – “Nothing here but a big weird stuffed animal.”
“Watch out for that one! You never know when she’s going to make salad out of you!”