A Rake's Progress
Posted on 04/02/2009 6:07:17 AM PDT by Rummyfan
Did you hear the one about the queer, the Muzzie and the pre-op tranny?
No? Well, you’re unlikely to anytime soon. The British government, fresh from recent proscriptions on religious and racial “hatred”, is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalize homophobic jokes.
I’ve been trying to recall the last time I heard a homophobic joke in a public forum. You have to go back a ways. At Vegas, Dean Martin used to have a bit of business where he’d refill his tumbler and ask Frank, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Sinatra would go, “I dunno. How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Dino would say, “Be nice to him.”
But these days, no matter how cordial you are, it’s never enough. On the BBC comedy show “Little Britain”, a weekly glimpse of the hellhole of Hogarthian depravity that is the United Kingdom, there is a recurring character whose catchphrase is that he’s “the only gay in the village” – a Welsh village, I believe, so his claim would seem to be statistically improbable, if you’ll forgive a bit of Welshophobia - or is it Cymruphobia? Or Cymruhomophobia? Anyway, he doesn’t actually have any gay sex and he gets inordinately jealous if some real live practicing gay comes passing through and threatens his unique status. But one could argue that his determination to be “the only gay in the village” testifies to the social cachet homosexuality now enjoys. On the other hand, one could argue something else entirely. On the other other hand, once you’ve attracted the attention of Constable Plod and his crack humorological investigative unit, you’re probably best to cop a plea and settle for misdemeanor hatemongering and three points on your license.
Down the leftie end of Fleet Street, various columnists, justifying their support for the legislation, or at least its goals, have tutted their disapproval of gay stereotyping in comedy. Limp wrists. Camp walks. Judy Garland references. I write as the token heterosexual Judy Garland fan (please, no tittering) on the Maclean’s payroll, and as a chap who’s sung with Liza Minnelli on TV (oh, okay, titter mercilessly, but no guffawing), yet I confess to some misgivings about the state demanding upon pain of a seven-year jail sentence that the citizenry pretend there’s nothing the red-blooded knuckle-dragging English soccer yobbo likes better than listening to Judy singing “The Man That Got Away” before he nuts you in the head, knees you in the bollocks and tosses you through a chip-shop window. To its credit, the House of Lords inserted a so-called “free speech” amendment to the bill, but the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, has decided to repeal that, announcing that there are “no circumstances” in which the right to free speech can “justify homophobic behavior”.
And why stop there? Representatives of the transgendered and the disabled were also invited by the government to grab a piece of the joke-police action. Interestingly enough, last week Barack Obama became the first US president to do a retard gag on national TV. Referring to his bowling score (129) during an appearance on “The Tonight Show”, the Kibbitzer-in-Chief cracked that “it was like the Special Olympics.” Ha-ha! What a wag that Obama is when he unplugs the teleprompter and kicks loose a little. How do you make a fruit cordial? Appoint him your GLBT Outreach Coordinator.
If my past experience of Mr Obama’s notoriously touchy courtiers is anything to go by, it’s undoubtedly racist to suggest that the President is disablist. Likewise, Gloria Steinem and other feminists argued that Bill Clinton’s support for abortion entitled him to go around dropping his pants to any female subordinates who tickled his fancy (I paraphrase, but not much). But, that said, I do wonder how things might have gone had Obama essayed the same jest on a BBC talk show. Robin Page, the chairman of Britain’s Countryside Restoration Trust and a columnist with The Daily Telegraph, spoke at a rally opposing the government’s anti-hunting laws at a Gloucestershire country fair in 2002. “If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver,” he began, “I want the same rights as you.” A jocular reference to various approved identity groups by a member of an unfashionable one (country folk). Mr Page was subsequently arrested and, upon declining to answer questions without the presence of counsel, thrown in a cell. Don’t worry. He eventually cleared his name – after five years.
Her Majesty’s Constabulary: The joke police – in every sense.
That’s the problem. Even if you think it’s a good idea for the state to regulate speech, the only troops available to do it are blundering coppers and hack bureaucrats. Last year, as readers may recall, I had the curious experience of having the “tone” of my jokes examined in a Vancouver courthouse by the geniuses of the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal. Hitherto, such forensic dissection has been limited to the more obscure literary critics. But not anymore. Following their week-long deconstruction of Steyn’s “tone”, the BCHRT announced that for its next show trial it would be turning to the “tone” of Guy Earle, a stand-up comic whose late-night putdowns of some lesbian hecklers were allegedly homophobic.
Maybe it would be easier just to ban all jokes, except for official government-licensed rib-ticklers.
Who was that lady I saw you with last night?
That was no lady, that was my Gloucestershire Comedy Court probation officer.
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Hugh.
Hugh who?
Human Rights Tribunal Joke Investigative Unit. Come out with your hands in the air, not fluttering around your hips as if it’s Carmen Miranda night at the Gay Stereotype Lounge.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To take part in a demonstration against poultrophobic humour.
How do you make a fruit cordial?
Be nice to him. Or else.
Sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils, and, if it’s a choice between offensive gags or massive expansion of state power, no self-respecting citizen should find it difficult working out which is the lesser evil and which is the greater threat. You don’t like the President’s pathetic “joke”? Hoot and jeer at him. Obama could use more of that. The best response to his suggestion that his 129 bowling score put him in Special Olympics territory came from the Special Olympics bowler Kolan McConiughey who pointed out he’s scored a perfect 300 on three occasions, and he’d be happy to take on Mister Hopeychange any time he wants. That aside, I thought it was a revealing remark: As one of my Quebec readers put it, in Leno veritas. Away from the Telepromptered hopeychangey touchyfeely mush, this President is not cool so much as cold. The PC niceties are skin deep, and this won’t be the first time he gives us a glimpse of the harder man underneath. Unlike Clinton, he doesn’t feel your pain, and he doesn’t care if you know it.
Still, if Obama really feels the urge to do crip shtick, I wouldn’t criminalize it. In Britain, Canada and Europe, the state advances too easily from regulating behavior to policing ideas to criminalizing language. It’s almost too cute an irony that one of the United Kingdom’s few remaining principled champions of free speech is the creator of Mr Bean, a man who barely utters a word. The comedian Rowan Atkinson said he didn’t think he was at risk of prosecution for telling a gay joke “but I dread something almost as bad – a culture of censoriousness, a questioning, negative and leaden attitude that is encouraged by legislation of this nature.”
Ah, but, as the computer wallahs say, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. If the pen is mightier than the sword, then criminalizing words is a way of disarming potential opposition, of inculcating a reflexive self-censorship in the citizenry. And, after all, self-suppression is the most cost-effective of tyranny. Political correctness isn’t merely the blasphemy law of our time. It makes communication impossible. It renders a people literally illiterate: The conventions of language used by functioning societies throughout human history - irony, indirect quotation, period evocation, and, yes, even comic stereotype - are all suddenly suspect. What a strange fate to embrace. In London, the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor West End plays was finally abolished in 1968: It was widely accepted by then that there was something absurd in a palace courtier ruling that your script could have three “Bastards!” but not four, and that two specific references to sodomy had to be replaced with one vague allusion to heavy petting. Yet, four decades on, Britons now think it entirely normal for police constables and timeserving bureaucrats to function as literary critics determining the “intent” behind a throwaway jest.
To hell with it, and to hell with “sensitivity training”. The only way a multicultural society can live in freedom is with what the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle calls “insensitivity training”: We all need to develop thicker skin and rub along – without government monitoring. “CSI Catskills” is a totalitarian concept, and only a bunch of fairies would fall for it.
And just to clarify: I’m not saying you’re a fairy if you have sex with other men.
I am saying you’re a fairy if you think the state should police our jokes.
No? Well, you’re unlikely to anytime soon. The British government, fresh from recent proscriptions on religious and racial “hatred”, is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalize homophobic jokes.
I’ve been trying to recall the last time I heard a homophobic joke in a public forum. You have to go back a ways. At Vegas, Dean Martin used to have a bit of business where he’d refill his tumbler and ask Frank, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Sinatra would go, “I dunno. How do you make a fruit cordial?” And Dino would say, “Be nice to him.”
But these days, no matter how cordial you are, it’s never enough...
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Pingin' mah General Interest Ping List here. :)
Ping! Ping! Ping!
That reminds me of when Pat threw himself on the floor of the grocery store and screamed, "NO, NO! They're going to take me to Arkansas and give me a milkshake and a 16-pack of beer!"
Fortunately, some of the employees knew us (from the Republican Party) and explained that he's just Like That.
After you leave Wally-World all bets are off?!? ;-p
LOL, I’ll have to show these to my wife. :)
Who was that lady I saw you with last night?
That was no lady, that was my Gloucestershire Comedy Court probation officer.
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Hugh.
Hugh who?
Human Rights Tribunal Joke Investigative Unit. Come out with your hands in the air, not fluttering around your hips as if it’s Carmen Miranda night at the Gay Stereotype Lounge.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To take part in a demonstration against poultrophobic humour.
How do you make a fruit cordial?
Be nice to him. Or else.
- - - - - - - -
Oh, my! hahahhahaaa !!
If you insult a pregnant redneck broad who’s behind the wheel of a 15-passenger van, bad things can happen!
A Rake's Progress
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
I remember the touchy-feely-feminizing Sensitivity Off-Site course I survived, some years back. On humor, they had several of those 2’x3’(?) chartpad pages stuck to the whiteboard, filled up with “NO!” No black jokes, no white jokes, no old jokes, no young jokes, no gay jokes, no straight jokes, no woman jokes, no man jokes, no short jokes, no tall jokes, no fat jokes, no thin jokes, no accent jokes, no egg-head-vocabulary jokes, no redneck jokes, no metrosexual jokes, no basketball jokes, no swimming jokes, ... just pages and pages of “NO!”
Thanks - must read bump! ;-)
That was a great YouTube
Very good. But what is the *typewriter* thingy? (line 7)
We're not far behind. In fact, after the G20, we may be ahead.
Thanks for the ping!
It's not like Great Britain is the only nation in the West which is being gradually tyrannized by the progenitors of "political correctness".
See Canada. And, yes, the United States of America.
That list IS a little dated, LOL!
I spent a lot of time ‘at the wheel’ of an IBM Selectric typewriter. What a beauty she was!
I could also operate a card-punch machine back when they were ‘State of the Art’ as well as operate a steno machine and my first Field Computer in the Army was about the size of a VW Bug, LOL! At the end of my career I had my own laptop and I was Living Large, Baby!
My kid doesn’t even know what a cassette tape is; music was already on CD when he was born.
Man, I’m gettin’ old. You never think it will happen to YOU! ;)
Everybody's rights go away when this sort of crap happens. Everybody's.
So YOU'RE the one! :-)
As an ex-WM night-stocker in a middle-class predominately-white neighborhood, I can attest to:
1. Take shopping carts for the express purpose of filling them and stranding them at strategic locations.
Found that many a time. Also found empty drug-testing kits in the Men's room. Found a defrosted pizza in Furniture, and, by odor, a day-old (or more) defrosted chicken hidden behind some canned goods.
2. Ride those little electronic cars at the front of the store.
Chased off some young BWAA (Blacks with an attitude) playing bumper cars, running down the batteries, so the disabled had no means of shopping the next morning.
9. When there are people behind you, walk really slow, especially thin narrow aisles.
If you're HWAA (Hispanics with . . .) two of you block the aisle and chat, then glare at the Gringo who asks you to move.
11. Tune all the radios to a polka station; then turn them all off and turn the volumes to “10”.
BWIA do this with rap, WWAA (Whites . . .) do this with rock.
16. Ride a display bicycle through the store; claim you’re taking it for a “test drive.”
YWAA (Yutes . . .) do this, then fall off or ram into something/somebody and mommy sues WM.
18. Play soccer with a group of friends, using the entire store as your playing field.
Busted YWAAs who then get upset when you tell them to return the ball to the Toy department. WM is seen as an alternative amusement center.
21. Move “Caution: Wet Floor” signs to carpeted areas.
Then fall and sue WM.
27. Randomly throw things over into neighboring aisles.
A relative of dropping off a changed-mind item in another department or letting Little Jimmy use the Toy department as a playground while I shop. Also akin to swapping price tags around.
32. Take up an entire aisle in Toys by setting up a full scale battlefield with G.I. Joes vs. the X-Men.
See above.
36. Hold indoor shopping cart races.
Busted YWAAs doing this on Saturday night around 2 a.m. Busted a HWAA giving his girl a speedy ride on my hand truck.
38. Attempt to fit into very large gym bags.
Take them out of their boxes and stuff them anywhere you can find a spot, or just leave them on the floor - they're like road maps and never fold right after opened. I started taping the boxes shut.
43. Leave Cheerios in Lawn and Garden, pillows in the pet food aisle, etc.
Also leave half-filled sodas and candy wrappers you pilfered. Leave half-filled Slurpee drinks from Subway and coffee cups from Starbucks tucked away on shelves. Leave plucked-clean grape stems and banana peels on the floor in Produce. Take a bite out of an apple and then return it, good side up. Punch down on each 18-count egg carton so at least one egg is broken so that the store has to throw them all away.
47. Relax in the patio furniture until you get kicked out.
Busted YWAAs in Furniture - especially with bean bags and those one-piece rockers.
50. Drag a lounge chair on display over to the magazines and relax. If the store has a food court, buy a soft drink; explain that you don’t get out much, and ask if they can put a little umbrella in it.
See 27, 43, and 47.
Then complain about the store "looking cluttered", rising prices (time spent undoing pranks), short-tempered personnel (employees tired of cleaning up after grown-ups).
You missed one: 51. Go into the fitting room and then after a few minutes, yell, "Hey! There's no toilet paper in here!"
I manage a garden center, so I know everything people feel free to do to trash the property of others. *SIGH*
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve unclogged the toilets and the urinal, or cleaned up blood or baby poop or...well, you get the idea. I wash my hands A LOT at work, LOL!
They tip over plants, break open bags of fertilizer and dirt and grass seed, etc.
People truly are pigs. I wonder how they are at home if they’re this gross in public? *SHUDDER*
LOL
I always read Mark Steyn. He is my hero. Tells it like it is in as few choice words as possible.
The Beat Goes On
was in reference to all the total crap the Liberal/Socialist/Progress/Marxist/Fascists are constantly shoving down our throats daily.
Being a first generation on one side and second generation on the other, I am a Conservative who was raised to love our country, honor our flag and Constitution. I become extremely depressed listening/reading about all the crap. So 'The Beat Goes On' was my way of protest.
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