And Pigs Might Fly

I was trying desperately to resist commenting on this, but found that I just couldn’t. Now I despise negative campaigning so I dislike the poster on those grounds, just as I deplored the Tory poster a couple of elections back that depicted Tony Blair with demon eyes. Such posters lower the tone of the election to silly name calling that appeals to the critical mass of voters who are too idle to spend time and effort thinking through the issues. The poster is not, however, anti-semetic. Stupid, purile and thoughtless, maybe, but not anti-semetic. You could argue as they have over at Samizdata that New Labour is in some way getting its just deserts – after all, it is they who have championed the hyper sensitive ” toxic identity politics” and are now being bitten on the bum by it. What are we coming to when everyone is just so ready to take offence where none was intended (although in this case it was, but for a different reason)?

Only recently Rodney Marsh was sacked for an indiscreet comment about the tsunami. Tasteless, yes. But a sackable offence? Certainly not. I recall standing alongside police officers looking at the remains of a suicide on the railway line. We cracked several equally tasteless and macabre jokes while awaiting the arrival of the doctor who had to declare that the body parts were indeed dead and the coroner’s henchmen to collect said parts. Such black humour is a part of what we are. A survival mechanism for those who have to deal with the gore of violent death on a regular (if not daily) basis. Also, how can we have taste if we do not have the opposite? And why are people so ready with their politically correct fascism to demand heads on a platter in the event of indiscretion?

I try to avoid causing offense, as I suspect most people will do naturally. But we all at sometime put our foot in it. If we get it wrong and do indeed cause offense, a simple apology should suffice. The over-reaction to these two incidents says more about those who cry foul than those who committed the offenses in the first place. Political correctness is a disease that corrodes our society with its purse lipped puritanism, stifling free speech and expression.