I will admit to having no interest in American football. Neither do I delight in the bombardment of corporate advertising aimed at me via the US TV media. Consequently, I guess I’m something of a non-starter where matters relating to this year’s Super Bowl are concerned.
Normally, this strangely hallowed event would pass unnoticed in the Adam’s household, replaced by some suitable feature film or previously recorded documentary, or ignored, as music or computer served to provide more suitable entertainment.
Last night, however, it was the Green Bay Packers.
On arriving in America eight years ago, this name kept cropping up. I assumed Green Bay to be some industrial town employing an unusually high number of factory hands in the shipping department.
Eventually, I was informed of my mistake by my wife – a long-standing ‘Packers’ fan. She had developed a liking for the team while watching games on TV with her young son, and even though he’s now grown to manhood, the pair will still exchange ‘Packers’ titbits whenever they get together.
Consequently, last night the Super Bowl could not be casually tossed from memory in favor of a bit of Beethoven or a selection of latest blog postings. It was there; it was real; it was ‘The Packers’, so it had to be watched.
Let me make it quite clear from the start, my wife is not the sort of person to demand my attendance at the TV screen just because she expects my company. Not at all. For the first three ‘quarters’ (I believe that’s the terminology) I retired to my den, dabbled on the guitar, and wrote a post for Sparrow Chat.
It’s not that I’m against sport. It just doesn’t interest me. Also, any game that is composed of four, fifteen minute quarters, yet lasts four hours, is highly suspicious to my mind.
I’ve watched football games in Europe, what Americans laughingly call ‘soccer’, and they last ninety minutes, plus a fifteen minute break at half-time. Just occasionally, if there’s no decider, an extra thirty minutes will be added, but that’s fine; it’s in the rules.
So far as I’m aware there’s nothing in the American Football rules to say a game must last four hours. Especially as, for half of that time, there’s no game, only adverts. God alone knows what the players do during the advertising breaks that seem to occur every two or three minutes, and last for five. According to my wife, who knows about these things, they probably “huddle and talk tactics”.
Out of a four hour game the actual time spent ‘in action’ is probably less than twenty minutes, so two hours of tactic talking in between the ‘action’ seems somewhat excessive in the circumstances. Not so much a game as a board meeting.
After three hours, or so, I was getting a bit lonely in my den so wandered into the living room to inquire after the score. Apparently, it was very exciting as the ‘Packers’ were in the lead and it was the last quarter, with under ten minutes to go.
I decided I could probably suffer ten minutes of lumbering Michelin men so settled down on the couch. Half an hour later, I was becoming more and more frustrated as the game kept interrupting the advertising, which was infinitely more interesting than the sport.
I began to mentally record the number of advertisers who relied on violence to get their products across. Soon, I wished I hadn’t bothered. I’m usually adept at mental arithmetic, but the numbers became too great.
By the end, while everyone else was jumping up and down celebrating the Packers’ triumph, I was still wondering what on earth America was inflicting on its kids, most of whom would have been up watching the great game.
And, finally, who was that God-awful yodeler who murdered the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’? Never mind that she fluffed the words, it would have been adequate had she sung in tune.
The previous post, “Too Politically Correct For Our Own Good”, detailed absurd situations that form part of what is ludicrously termed by society today, ‘political correctness’.
The term was, no doubt, originally coined for the well-meaning purpose of curtailing the verbal persecution of certain minority groups, but like most societal trends the pendulum has now swung so far in the other direction that literary and artistic work is being attacked, modified, or persecuted, if it fails to conform to the self-imposed restrictions of the nameless, faceless, individuals responsible for determining this type of censure.
Often, a decision on political correctness is left to the not-so-tender mercy of some obscure committee. Nowhere is the puffed-up ego more at home than among its fellows at the committee room table. Here, it can preen and admire it’s self-importance, while supported and inflated by those around it.
We hardly need reminding of the education committee that banned a school nativity play at the last moment because one Muslim (Jewish, Hindu?) parent complained; or, the manhole covers renamed ‘Personnel Access Units’ by certain British local authority committees because it ‘might be deemed sexist’.
Such nonsense is rife among education departments; remember when classrooms had blackboards? That was before they were renamed ‘chalk’-boards. Schools now have their students decorate the ‘holiday tree’, just in case the word ‘Christmas’ might offend a non-Christian, or an atheist like me. Needless to say, it doesn’t. I love Christmas. What is offensive to me are these idiotic puffed up egos who believe they have the right to determine how I should think and speak.
When I was growing up, one of my musical heroes was Mark Knopfler, of the rock band, Dire Straits. He’s 61 now, but still making and writing music. His musical scores include Metroland, Local Hero, Cal, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Wag the Dog, and The Princess Bride, as well as numerous songs and discs, including the legendary CD, “Brothers-in-Arms”, which sold thirty million copies.
One of the tracks from that disc was, “Money For Nothing”. It details the opinions of a delivery man watching pop stars perform on the MTV channel of TVs in a store window. In the fourth verse of the song, our delivery man sings:
The little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy, that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaire
The song was written in the early 1980s and, as previously stated, sold over thirty million copies. Rolling Stone magazine rated it as the 94th greatest guitar song of all time. Yet, only last month, after one lone caller from Newfoundland contacted the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (read ‘committee’) and complained the word ‘faggot’ was a slur on gay people, the CBSC banned the song from all private radio stations in Canada.[1]
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (read ‘committee’) has nothing to do with the Canadian government. It’s a private organization, against which there is no redress, and no doubt staffed by puffed-up little egos all desperate to out-inflate the other.
Such manipulation of artwork should be made illegal. In this instance, Knopfler took a level-headed view of the situation and has substituted another word in place of ‘faggot’ when performing the song of late.
If he were around today, I wonder if Mark Twain would be so accepting of the abuse imposed on one of his greatest works by the academic ego of Alan Gribben?
Gribben has taken it upon himself to erase 219 references to the word, ‘nigger’, from the book, Huckleberry Finn, and replace them with, ‘slave’. The ‘new’ version is due to be published this month.
I can only agree heartily with Jamelle Bouie, a black writer for Atlantic magazine, who recently wrote of this abomination:
…..erasing “nigger” from Huckleberry Finn—or ignoring our failures—doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t provide racial enlightenment, or justice, and it won’t shield anyone from the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. All it does is feed the American aversion to history and reflection. Which is a shame. If there’s anything great about this country, it’s in our ability to account for and overcome our mistakes. Peddling whitewashed ignorance diminishes America as much as it does our intellect.[2]
While the ego can make us believe we know better than anyone else, it doesn’t force us to do so. We can control our ego, but only if we ensure it remains deflated and in its place. The mind is a vastly superior machine to the ego. It has the ability to think things through, overcome prejudice, and realize that ‘political correctness’ is nothing more than the application of wallpaper to a defective building, in the vain hope it won’t fall down.
There seems little doubt the ego of the human race will eventually over-inflate, like a toy balloon attached to a runaway air compressor line at the local gas station, until it bursts with a loud popping noise and we all disappear up our own anuses.
Why do we take ourselves so seriously? We’ve turned into a load of po-faced miseries. We’ve totally forgotten how to laugh at ourselves. Humans everywhere have become so inflated with our own importance we have to pussy-foot around each other for fear of upsetting the overly-sensitive natures of our fellow beings.
Those who refuse to capitulate to the extremes of ‘political correctness’ imposed by the exponentially increasing abundance of ‘do-gooders’ in our society, risk castigation on par with the Puritan witch-hunts of medieval times.
Take the case of 34 year old Laura Bowater, a senior staff nurse at London’s Central Middlesex Hospital – at least, she was until July 2006 when she was fired for a remark made while helping control an unconscious patient in the midst of an epileptic fit.
According to the Daily Mail newspaper:
Laura Bowater, 34, quipped: ‘It’s been a few months since I have been in this position with a man underneath me’ as she straddled his naked body while doctors tried to give him an injection.
The trousers of the ‘extremely strong’ 31-year-old patient had been removed so doctors could inject his buttock and Ms Bowater sat on his ankles to control his flailing legs.
But the patient span on to his back, exposing himself and kicking her forward so that she ended up astride him.
The senior staff nurse’s remark would have been considered ‘merely humorous’ by many people and did not warrant losing her job, the judges found.
Ms Bowater was on her way home from a 12-hour shift in the accident and emergency department at London’s Central Middlesex Hospital in July 2006 when she stopped to help staff.
A complaint was made six weeks later even though no-one suggested the unconscious patient could have heard what Ms Bowater said.
She was fired from her £25,000-a-year post for gross misconduct over the quip despite four years’ unblemished service.[1]
Though an industrial tribunal found in the nurse’s favor, North West London Hospitals NHS Trust appealed the decision and their ruling was reversed by the overly-inflated ego of an appeals court judge, thus leaving the country with one less experienced and capable nurse to help run an ailing health service.
Then, there’s Stephen Fry, the well known entertainer and intellectual, who appears to have upset the whole Japanese nation following a segment on his quiz show, QI, which featured a discussion about Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only man to survive both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions.
From the BBC:
Mr Yamaguchi was the only person to have been officially recognised by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.
Mr Yamaguchi was burnt in the Hiroshima explosion – only to travel by train to Nagasaki to be caught in the second attack three days later.
During the programme Stephen Fry and two fellow comedians discussed Mr Yamaguchi’s survival.
Alan Davies suggested an A-bomb had landed on Mr Yamaguchi and “bounced off”.
And Stephen Fry expressed amazement that the Japanese trains were still running after the blast.
The episode prompted a complaint to the BBC from the Japanese Embassy who accused the broadcaster of making light of the attacks.
The BBC responded by apologising, acknowledging the sensitivity of the subject for Japanese viewers.[2][2]
As a result of this nonsense, the BBC shelved plans to film part of a documentary, starring Stephen Fry, in Japan due to the ‘strength of feeling’ in that country.
Having watched the offending episode of ‘QI’ I can say with all honesty I found nothing offensive whatever in that particular segment of the program.
The atrocities committed by the Americans should neither be forgiven nor forgotten, but nevertheless, in the light of significant atrocities committed by the Japanese against allied forces during WW2, perhaps its time the people of Japan lightened up a little and were less sensitive to events imposed on them over sixty years ago.
So, too, the Mexicans. Just a click way from the Fry fiasco, one finds the team that brings us the top-rated TV show, ‘Top Gear’, in trouble for slagging off the Mexicans. Apparently, they described them as ‘lazy and feckless’. The Mexican ambassador wasn’t amused. He demanded an apology, calling the remarks “offensive, xenophobic and humiliating”.
Hundreds of Mexicans contacted the BBC Spanish-language website BBC Mundo to protest about the remarks made by presenters Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
Many more expressed outrage in e-mails to Mexican newspapers and websites, where the Top Gear jibes have received huge coverage.
The matter was also raised in the Mexican senate, where lawmakers were considering a motion of censure.
On Thursday an all-party group of British MPs also urged the BBC to apologise, calling the remarks “ignorant, derogatory and racist”.
In a statement, the BBC said the comments may have been “rude” and “mischievous,” but there was no “vindictiveness” behind them.
“Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and over dramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being over-organised,” the BBC said.
It added that stereotype-based comedy was allowed within BBC guidelines in programmes where the audience knew they could expect it, as was the case with Top Gear.
“Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show’s intention,” the BBC added.[3]
A motion of censure in the Mexican senate! British politicians urging the BBC to apologize? All because Jeremy Clarkson, who’s built his career on bluntly humorous, controversial comments, calls Mexicans lazy?
Have British and Mexican politicians nothing better to do with their time? Mexico’s fighting a drug’s war on its streets, and the British parliament is supposed to be concentrating on dragging the nation out of recession. If the Mexican ambassador doesn’t like Top Gear he shouldn’t watch it. Don’t Mexican TV’s have an ‘OFF’ button? Or, had he just imbibed one too many tequilas and failed to see the joke?
Meanwhile, if you’re planning a vacation in Malawi this year, be sure to take an abundance of corks with you. Due to the over-inflated ego of Malawi’s justice minister who doesn’t believe he should suffer the need of others to occasionally break wind, an unexpected bout of public flatulence could see you in jail.
Justice Minister George Chaponda is determined to criminalize farting.
The BBC again:
Justice Minister George Chaponda says the new bill would criminalise flatulence to promote “public decency”.
“Just go to the toilet when you feel like farting,” he told local radio……
……The Local Courts Bill, to be introduced next week reads: “Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious to the public to the health of persons in general dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be guilty of a misdemeanour.”
Mr Chaponda, a trained lawyer, insists that this includes farting.
“Would you be happy to see people farting anyhow?” he asked on the popular “Straight Talk” programme on Malawi’s Capital Radio.
He said that local chiefs would deal with any offenders.
When asked whether it could be enforced, he said it would be similar to laws banning urinating in public.[4]
Only a lot more difficult to enforce.
One is reminded of the stoning sketch in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’:
“Alright, who threw that stone farted, then? Who was it? Come on, own up. Was it you? Go to the back!”
These days we no longer need to visit the cinema in order to see human beings acting silly. Just turn on the news, or open a newspaper.
No-one wants a return to the bad old days when vitriol against minorities abounded, but there’s a world of difference between a humorous comment and one that’s deliberately intended to vilify.
It seems our ego’s puffed-up self-importance sometimes fails to comprehend the variance.
Not-so-Super Bowl
Hyperinflation