Look, I'm sorry to go on, but really I have no choice. Yes, it's the bloody BBC again.
We know that the BBC is a deeply hypocritical organisation. Its stance on the Gaza charity appeal is a case in point; it claims to be safeguarding its neutrality, when throughout the recent Gaza conflict its reporting has concentrated on the suffering of innocent civilians and ickle children in Gaza and mentioned little or nothing about the homemade rockets that rain down every day on Israeli suburbs and schools.
The Carol Thatcher affair really does take the biscuit, though. Jonathan Ross keeps his job and his multi-million income despite outraging thousands with his on-air antics, but Carol Thatcher is sacked from "The One Show" for something she said in private, between colleagues, in the dressing-room, miles from any microphone. Mind you one of those colleagues, Adrian Chiles, doesn't come out of it too well. Apparently he was the one who took offence at Thatcher's use of the word "golliwog", so not only is he a talentless, unattractive oaf who should keep his greasy hands off that nice Christine Blakeley, but he's a tight-arsed humourless specimen of political correctness too. Nice one, Ade. Naughty Carol said a bad word, so you ran off and told a grownup. I hope you're pleased with yourself, because no-one else is.
Funny expression that, isn't it - "took offence"? If anyone had used those words during my childhood I'd have assumed they meant someone had legged it with an armful of waney-edge. When in fifty or a hundred years' time, social historians look back on the first decade of the twenty-first century, will they dub it "The Era of Offence"? And will they notice that more than fifty percent of the people who use the word can't actually spell it (if that includes you, it has a "c", not an "s")?
Carol Thatcher's offence was, apparently, that in her usual rather coarse and unintelligent way she likened a tennis-player to the golliwog that used to adorn our jam-jars years ago.
Now, golliwogs exist. They are children's stuffed toys, mainly of a past era though I dare say there are probably still plenty of them tucked away in playroom cupboards. They weren't offensive when they were popular, and they aren't now - any more than a white dolly is offensive to white people, or a teddy bear is offensive to animal lovers. They're TOYS, for God's sake.
Let's think about spastics. "Spastic" is a term commonly used for those suffering from cerebral palsy. There used to be a "Spastics' Society" - in fact there still are quite a few elsewhere in the world, particularly in India, and there's at least one (or was until recently) in this country, the Devon & Exeter Spastics Society.
However, the word "spastic" started to be used as a term of abuse in schools, to describe anyone clumsy or stupid. Perversely, the BBC may have been partly to blame for this when in an attempt to show disability in a positive light, the Blue Peter programme followed the life story of Joey Deacon during the International Year of Disabled Persons. The Spastics' Society therefore changed its name to "Scope" in 1994, and I imagine that if I called someone "a spastic" these days - even someone suffering from cerebral palsy, or perhaps especially someone suffering from cerebral palsy - there would be outrage, opprobrium, offence and calls for action by my ISP.
Yet there was a word that was going innocently about its business, annoying no one, offending no one, fulfilling a useful function … and suddenly through no fault of its own it's a swear word! How does that happen?
Think about the phrase "Nigger Brown". This is, or was, a colour found in tubes in artists' supplies shops, and a useful way of describing a very particular shade of brown. Even quite recently a Chinese factory was describing a sofa as "nigger brown" in colour. But of course the word "nigger", as a contraction of "negro", is offensive.
Bit of a problem, that. What should we ban? The colour? Artists are going to find life a little difficult if we tell them they aren't allowed to have certain colours in their paint boxes in case their names are offensive to … some one. For that matter, what about "niggerheads"? These are outcrops of coral just under the surface of the sea in tropical lagoons, very dangerous to yachts. Are these to be banned from the charts in case someone is offended? Tough on the sailors if so.
And yet quite a few black people call each other "nigger" today, apparently without either giving or taking offence. How does that work? Is the word only offensive when used by a white person? Because if that's it, surely it's racial discrimination to suggest that a person of a certain race may not use certain words? Or is the word only offensive when used with pejorative intent? No, it can't be that. Carol Thatcher wasn't being critical or unpleasant about the tennis player, she thought she was making a joke.
Or is it the corruption of "negro" to "nigger" that's offensive? Would it be all right to say "Hallo, Negro!" to a black person in the street? No, I thought not.
Corruptions and abbreviations like "Paki", "Yid" or "Nip" are often held to be offensive. Yet one of the best-known websites for the Pakistani community in Britain is called www.paki.com - it's rather a good site, actually.
In Japan, hundreds of companies and organisations use the word "Nippon" in their names, yet to us the contraction "nip" is offensive. Why? And Yiddish is a perfectly respectable adjective when applied to aspects of Jewish culture, especially referring to Jews of East European origin. Yet the contraction "Yid" is offensive, as some Jewish fans of Tottenham Hotspur found out recently when the club forbade them from calling themselves "The Yid Army".
On the other hand many people feel able to freely use the contraction "Brit". Why is that different? If "Paki" and "Yid" and "Nip" and "nigger" are wrong, why is "Brit" OK? Many English, Welsh and Scottish people don't like being called "British". Personally I'm happy to be British, but to me the word "Brit" is deeply offensive because of the connotations it carries, the association with tasteless stupidity, chauvinism and union jack underpants.
A word cannot of itself be offensive. A word is simply a collection of letters in a certain order, or a collection of vocalised sounds in a certain order. It depends for its emotional impact on the meaning it is given as it is being used - not its meaning in the dictionary, not the meaning it used to have in the good old days, but the meaning the user attaches to it. If the person using it means it to be rude, it's rude. If the person using it means it to be benign, then it cannot be offensive, however hard people like Adrian Chiles try.
Take "spastic" for instance - it only becomes offensive if it is used with offensive or contemptuous intent. If it's used to indicate someone suffering from a certain disorder, it is not offensive. What we should be legislating for - if indeed, any legislation is necessary or appropriate - is to prevent people insulting each other. To ban any word is ridiculous: you might as well ban shoes in case we throw them at politicians.
Of course, if a word could be offensive all by itself, then surely the contraction of that word must also be offensive - perhaps even more so? So why don't we ban the word "Golly!" when used as an expression of surprise? The GOS uses it quite a lot, and nobody's ever objected.
It's not even racially offensive to liken someone to a golliwog, if they look like one as French tennis player Gael Monfis certainly does in some photos (incidentally, he probably wasn't the one Carol Thatcher was referring to), or as many black pop stars did in the seventies ...
… if they look like a golliwog, they do, that's all. Just like Princess Anne has certain facial characteristics in common with a horse. It's rude to say so, but she can't help her face, poor girl. When The GOS was a teacher the kids nicknamed him "Beaky" because he had a big nose (still has, sadly). It was rude of them, but then it's quite a big pointy nose. We all have our crosses to bear.
I didn't hear anyone complaining when "Private Eye" pointed out that the elderly and rather porky Boy George bears a striking resemblance to a Sontaran from "Dr.Who" …
… or that Andy Murray could be mistaken for a werewolf …
That's it, really. A word's offensiveness OUGHT to depend on (a) who uses it, and (b) what they intend by it. That's fine. But unfortunately that's not the way the world is going. In our world, just the simple assemblage of letters is enough to make people cry foul, and this simply betrays their lack of understanding of the language we all speak. I'm tempted to make some cutting remark about the lunatics having taken over the asylum, only I don't want to offend all the mad people.
Personally I find the word "bucket" offensive, because of the connotation "kick the bucket" meaning to die, which I presumably will do some time. Since old people are far more likely to kick the bucket than young people, the word is chronologically offensive.
So every time I read the word "bucket" in a newspaper, or hear someone using it in the street (or, more likely, in B&Q), or on the radio, I'm going to make a formal complaint. It's my new campaign.
Do join me.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2008 The GOS
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