Yesterday I received the following comment in my timeline.
"Did you go to school in the Deep South? There are a lot of things we read, said and sang that we don't now because they offend. I wish you better times but think our paths separate here. All the best"
I was puzzled at first as I had traded a few lousy puns that day with this member so I checked back in my timeline to see what heinous crime I had committed. It turns out I had mentioned an old song we sang at junior school (sensitive souls can pass this paragraph now) as a reply to another members memories of old school songs. The song was called old zip coon. I mentioned that it was unlikely to be popular nowadays because of the title. There was my crime. The fact that the song is about a violinist and, as far as I'm concerned, nothing to do with race colour or creed, was lost on this poster. I am now, in her eyes anyway, a relic racist who has no part in the modern utopia these people have built over the last fifty years.Strangely enough, if I hear the word "Coon" I immediately think of the song, not the interpretation she does. Who has a corrupted connotation?
This person probably thinks that the word "gay" has always meant homosexual. To my generation it means happy and it was also a popular girls name until it was bastardised. Her reaction to my post, to me, highlighted how the thought police have infiltrated and control so much of media and popular opinion. All racists make the following statement. "I am not a racist but......". We all have our prejudices, as this woman so brilliantly exhibited to me yesterday. We simply choose different ways and means to release them. The thought of deciding how I judged a person, solely by the colour of their skin, is abhorrent to me. I chided myself on my first visit to Atlanta years ago. I went on a business trip and we were standing on a street corner, lost and wondering where the hell we were supposed to be going. Across the road was a huge black man, slightly scruffy. He was watching us. We tried to ignore him but he suddenly sprinted across the road and joined us. I readily admit I was wary, very wary. "Hi" he boomed. "You guys look lost" He spent the next five minutes explaining where we needed to be, where to catch the bus and where to avoid going. I was quite disgusted with myself for jumping to conclusions. I have never made the same mistake since.
The riots of the last week have totally thrown the liberal left, the luvvies and the P.C brigade. They have seen what years of appeasement, tolerance and making up excuses is doing to the country. For the first time they may have to confront the fact that there are elements of society who do not want to enter the mainstream at any level. Some criminals actually love and thrive on chaos. It is their lifeblood.
I worked for a short time at a law firm who specialised in legal aid cases in Salford. My eyes were well and truly opened. They defended families where grandfather abused daughter, son abused daughter, Grandfather abused granddaughter and actually saw no problem with it. It was their right. It was how they lived. Nothing would convince them otherwise. My wife then spent fifteen years working in the courts system. my eyes were again opened at the low life we routinely share the streets with. I now sound like a right wing, lock 'em up lunatic. This is because it is no longer acceptable to have right wing views without also being branded a racist.
Humour is a very personal thing. My family has a dark sense. At my eldest uncles funeral, as the coffin was lowered into the grave, my dad nudged his ailing older brother and whispered loudly "Is there any point in you leaving here". I know that some people will be disgusted at that. I lost a follower early on who found my jokes about death unacceptable. I find it sad that to be a successful comedian nowadays you need to be on the left. Right wing comedians don't exist. Kenny Everett would have a hard time nowadays because of his Tory sympathies. Jim Davidson was pilloried as a racist comedian. He was possibly a racist but comedian? I have had funnier illnesses.
I feel sorry for my critic. I hope she has a happy life with not too many disappointments along the way. I fear to do this though, she will have to keep her prejudices and blinkers firmly in place and ignore the realities of life in the 21 century.
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