[Chris O'Carroll]

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

[Brian Allgar]

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".

[Bill Greenwell]

Originally Posted by Brian Allgar

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

[Adrian Fry]

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.

[Brian Allgar]

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".

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Brian Allgar]

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!)

[John Whitworth]

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.

[Chris O'Carroll]

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.

[basil ransome-davies]

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.