New Statesman -- politically correct -- May 9 deadline
 

No 4273
By Gordon Gwilliams
You are challenged to be comprehensively politically correct about any current item in the news.
Max 150 words by 9 May comp@newstatesman.co.uk

Can anyone explain to me what is going on with the NS deadlines? The last three have been April 4, April 18, and now May 9. The two-week gap was due to the Spring double issue, but that is now followed by a three-week gap. Are they planning to bring out a triple issue, or does it mean that there will be no competitions during that period?

Yours, etc,
"Deeply perplexed".

Dear deeply perplexed

It's at least partly to do with the fact that this issue is another double (a centenary issue)

cheers

Bill

These double issues are getting more frequent; the thin end of a wedge that will end (soon) with the magazine going bi-weekly on a permanent basis. You heard it irresponsibly rumoured here first.

Perhaps they'll go the whole hog and publish monthly. Then, following the example of "New Labour", they could call themselves "The New New Statesman", or even "The New Oldie".

Well, I wouldn't mind if the competition was for verse every month. I'd like to say that lefties can't do verse but Bazza, Bill and even you Red Baron Brian, prove me wrong week after week.

The dismissal of Carol Thatcher for uttering a racist remark is reassuring for those of us who feared that the BBC was in danger of becoming soggily liberal. Childhood recollections of Robertson’s Marmalade cannot justify Thatcher’s insulting use of the word “Golliwog”.

But the BBC still has a long way to go. Only yesterday, I heard an announcer state that the next piece was Debussy’s “Golliwog Cakewalk”. Wake up, BBC! It is evident that this work needs to be renamed “African-American Cakewalk”, just as the racist title of Conrad’s novella should become “The African-American of the Narcissus”.

And what are we to make of those announcers who still refer to a whole body of music in racist language? The BBC should sack anyone who does not use the respectful term “African-American Spirituals”.

Their bridge correspondent, too, must learn to refer to the suits as Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and African-Americans.


(The funny thing is that there a few people on this site, as I know from my own experience, who will agree with every word of the above!)

The trouble is there isn't any news at the moment. Can one be PC about measles? By the way, how many Spherians have had measles. I had measles AND mumps, though not simultaneously. Some might say that accounts for it. The trick is to have them YOUNG. Oh, I've had German measles too. A life crammed with incident.

What the hell can the folks at the New Statesman be thinking? I’m deeply suspicious of any comp that invites us to make fun of “political correctness.” All too often, that translates into an invitation to indulge in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. while congratulating ourselves on being freethinking dissenters from some prevailing cultural orthodoxy.

I totally get that some self-appointed guardians of righteousness are risible and obnoxious. I roll my eyes as I remember a young actor who scolded me for insensitivity toward people with physical disabilities when I wished her “break a leg.” And there are plenty of racial activists, gender activists, and others who would rather score debating points about style than delve into the nuance and complexity of underlying substance. But the fact remains that people who get all bent out of shape about things you shouldn’t say usually do less harm in the world than people who (carelessly or deliberately) say all those things. Yelling “dyke!” or “pickaninny!” or some comparable epithet in a crowded theatre really is the wrong thing to do, even if some of the people who take offense manage to seem a bit silly.

Golliwogs were not part of my American childhood. But Little Black Sambo picture books were. On one level, there’s no reason to object to those books. Sambo is a brave, quick-thinking hero who is clearly more admirable than that thieving vandal Goldilocks, another protagonist whose name derives from racial characteristics. But all of us who don’t live outside of history (in other words, all of us) should be able to understand why Sambo might be offensive to “black” readers in a “white” American or British context.

I’m going to enter this comp. But I don’t like it, and I’m probably not going to win it.

pull the chain
 

I'm pretty much of the same mind as Chris about this one, with the added objection that it is oddly vague & unfocussed & seems unlikely to generate any real wit. But like Chris I'll hold my nose & do it. 'Poète, et non honnête homme'.

Not that I'm a poet.

Oh yes you are. I told a nice fat lady on Thursday that you are. And I repeat, the Rimbaud verse is pure poetry. Now, as to the PCness of measles...

I dunno about measles, John, but if you had chickenpox as a child, avoid any kids who have it. It's a dormant virus that is reactivated in adults in the form of shingles. Believe me, having that is even more debilitating than being politically correct.

Good Heavens. I had chicken pox as a kid. Everybody did. And my daughter had chicken pox. But God was obviously watching over me.

The measles thing won't have reached Paris. A load of Welsh people have got measles. You'd think it was smallpox the way they've gone on about it.
I don't know what percentage of people who get measles actually die of it, but in my childhood it was not considered a serious matter.

I expect some Spherian knows.

Are you sure it's measles they've got, and not some STD caught from sheep?

As far as I know, anyone who had chickenpox as a child is at risk for shingles in adulthood even without coming into contact with a child who currently has chickenpox. I had all of the standard childhood diseases, and I got an anti-shingles vaccine not long ago. I had to pay about $250 for it, but my insurance company later reimbursed me for the full amount. Presumably, the same vaccine is available in the UK, although I have no idea what it might cost there; I don't believe the NHS offers it for free.

As for measles, it's mostly non-fatal -- maybe 3 deaths per thousand cases in relatively healthy, affluent populations, 3 deaths per 10 cases where factors such as poverty, malnutrition, and AIDS make people more vulnerable. I don't know a great deal about the extent of the Wales outbreak; perhaps a fatality rate of zero is not too much to hope for.

If the NHS offers it for free then I've had it. If I have to pay, then I'll trust in God.

Naw, it's measles. So far it hasn't been blamed on Lady T, but on a wicked Doctor called Wakefield, now practising in the United States, which just shows how wicked he is.

If Andrew Wakefield is practicing medicine in the U.S., he's doing so without a license. (And, really, would anybody put that past him?) According to the latest information I could find with a fairly cursory web search, he's living near Austin, Texas, where he is or has been an administrator at a clinic dealing with autism. His fraudulent, discredited claims about a link between vaccination and autism do have a cult following over here, his most famous disciple being Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy. Of course, the fact that somebody looks good naked is not by itself reason to reject her medical advice. The fact that someone has been stripped of his medical license, on the other hand . . . .

Wales, sheep, STDs... not much fear of political rectitude there, then.

Carolyn, I think that political correctness obliges us to refer to sheep as "age-challenged lambs".

In politically correct terms, 'mutton dressed as lamb' becomes 'valued members of the ovine community dressed as equally valued members of the ovine community.'

And also to Brian:

Baaaa to you both.

I expect you are right about the man Wakefield, Chris. The trouble is that when you are faced with a Government spokesman called Doctor Anything, the default setting is not to believe him. And why is that? Because they have so often lied to us in the past.

and chicken pox should be "a mild childhood disorder unjustly laid to the charge of gallinaceous fauna, which in adults can lead to a severe disorder unjustly blamed on roofers."

the fascinating off-topic drift here towards medical discussions testifies that the comp itself is irretrievably dull. after all these years is there any humour left to be wrung out of pc euphemisms and circumlocutions, other than among brain-dead saloon bar wits and daily mail readers? bottom of the barrel stuff, staggers.

But Bazza, you could win it with one hand tied behind your...

Perhaps, Ann. At least I can do caps now. Should soon be able to pull on my own trousers. But I'd rather win with quality stuff that requires thought and skill, like the Kipling tribute to Rimbaud.

Picky, very picky.

Correctamundo.

Sad, even horrifying, to think of you walking around all this time without trousers. Even worse to think that you'll probably beat a lot of us with the stuff that you were brokenly managing to type during this crippled interval.

My chère épouse even has to peel my quail eggs for me.

Now we know the rest of the answer - they got the date wrong!

I'll have a bash, too, but I'm struggling to be inspired. Max Clifford? Signage? MMR? Let's see....

Born in Bethlehem, persecuted for his right to religious freedom and often accused of incitement to acts of terror, Omar Mahmoud Othman, also known to some as Abu Qatada, has many reasons to be grateful for the UK’s exemplary policy on human rights. Granted asylum here twenty years ago, Abu Qatada has eked out an insecure living in homely Acton, West London – but thanks to the UK’s comprehensive network of social benefits neither Abu Qatada nor his family has had to endure privation. His five children have felt happy and secure here, though they confess that recent attacks on their family home are frightening. Fortunately, their rights to a British education appear unthreatened. Who knows what future benefits these bright youngsters could bring the community? Abu Qatada’s wife, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was not available for comment: we offer her our thoughts in these troubling times.

I'm not going to send this in.

Worried about possible consequences, Caroline?

Possibly; or the fact that it's perhaps not "current" enough, having been part of our island story so long.

Carolyn, send it. It's good.

The death of former Government Facilitator Ms. Thatcher offers us an opportunity to reassess her enormous contribution to the feminist project. The phallocratic establishment has always enjoyed bleating about how she never promoted a single womon to her cabinet, but Ms. Thatcher was simply sparing her fellow sisters the ignominy of being part of what amounted to little more than an irrelevant forum for primitive power displays and the accumulation of personal wealth. Wimmin, as she knew only too well, had far better things to do with their time than bear witness to the pathetic boy’s games that constitute the majority of government business. Let us also remember that in closing down Britain’s coal mines, Ms. Thatcher not only empowered those wimmin associated with fossil fuel extraction technicians by ensuring that both they and their life partners achieved wage parity (£0 per annum), she also drastically reduced the nation’s carbon footprint.


This is contemptible and pathetic, even by my notoriously low standards, but there we go.

I think the competition is a bad one and you have do0ne remarkable things with it.

George, you're a dear fellow. I don't know what it is about names, but I have been called "Caroline" - even by dearest chums - on and off for as long as I can remember. I'm just so chuffed to be spoken to that it seems picky to worry about the small print. It was the name my father wanted for me, after his mother, but my mother was trying to be modern.

Families, eh?

That's nothing, Carolyn. When I was at boarding school, I received a letter from a friend "back home" that I never lived down. It was addressed to "Brain Allgar".