We have several Wankers this Week. They are District Councillor Peter McDonald, parish council chairman Richard Deeming, Naomi Byron who is a spokeswanker for some sad organisation called "Youth Against Racism", and various inhabitants of the village of Cofton Hackett in Worcestershire.
The parish newsletter, which goes out to all 1,747 inhabitants of Cofton Hackett, contains details of local public footpaths, a knitting group and a recipe for a fruit salad. But it also has a page of "jokes" that has led to accusations of racism and sexism from some residents.
Now the Daily Mail reports that those behind the newsletter could face disciplinary action or even suspension from the parish council after it was handed to the standards department of parent authority Bromsgrove District Council, which has launched an investigation.
District councillor Peter McDonald said he had received complaints from several residents saying the jokes were sexist and racist. He said "It is an absolute outrage the taxpayer is footing the bill for this kind of material. It's very childish and immature. I've had letters and phonecalls about it. I know the monitoring officer on the district council has been told about this and ... it's going before the standards committee."
Councillor Richard Deeming, the parish council chairman, has made a grovelling apology to those offended. "I will be apologising in the next edition," he said. "I didn't check this one unfortunately."
Youth Against Racism spokeswoman Naomi Byron welcomed the fact that residents had complained, saying 'It shows that racist and sexist prejudices are not seen as acceptable in Cofton Hackett.'
So why are the two councillors, the campaigner and the complaining residents receiving our prestigious Wanker of the Week award? Read the jokes and decide for yourself ...
• If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?
• If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren't people from Holland called Holes?
• Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
• If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?
• If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
• Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
• When cheese gets its picture taken, what does it say?
• Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist?
• Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?
• Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
• Why isn't the number 11 pronounced onety-one?
• "I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?
• If lawyers are disbarred and a clergyman defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed?
• What hair colour do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?
• I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks, so I wondered what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?
• Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the postmen can look for them when they deliver the mail?
• You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive or use a computer.
• No one ever says "It's only a game" when their team is winning.
• Ever wonder about those people who spend £1 apiece on those little bottles of Evian water? Try spelling Evian backwards.
• Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?
• Ok, so if the Jacksonville Jaguars are know as the Jags and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are known as the Bucs, what does that make the Tennessee Titans?
• If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhoea, does that mean that one enjoys it?
Get the point? They might have complained that the jokes aren't terribly funny, because they aren't (though we quite enjoyed the one about "I do" being the longest sentence).
They might have complained about inconsistency, because one or two of them aren't actually jokes as far as we can see. I mean, what the hell is the thing about postmen and criminals' pictures doing there?
Or they might have complained about some of them being factually inaccurate, like the one about smoking sections in restaurants, when smoking is banned in all restaurants.
But no, they chose to claim that these jokes are "racist", and by doing so they revealed the depth of their own ignorance about the English language.
You see, Wankers, a thing isn't racist just because it mentions a different race. If we say "The majority of people from Uganda have dark skins", that isn't racist. If we say "The inhabitants of Switzerland enjoy a higher standard of living than those of Zimbabwe", that isn't racist.
For a thing to be racist, it has to be derogatory. It has to make an insulting generalisation about all people in a certain ethnic group.
To say "all French people smell" would be racist because even if it were true it would be insulting. To say "all Indians speak English with a sing-song accent" could be racist because even if it's true in a proportion of cases, it makes Indians sound ridiculous. To suggest that "all Scots are ignorant, uncouth louts who subsist on deep-fried Mars Bars and their own bile" might be true but it's also definitely racist.
But to suggest that because Polish people are called Poles, people from Holland might be called Holes is not racist because it's not derogatory. It's just a rather weak joke about the similarity between the words, not about people.
Similarly to suggest that a Chinese woman might feed her baby with a pair of toothpicks - toothpicks being like tiny chopsticks - is hardly derogatory. It carries no insult about Chinese people (who do, after all, habitually use chopsticks rather cleverly), any more than it does about women, babies, or mothers in this country who use little spoons and forks.
Incidentally, for those Wankers whose intellect is so impaired that they can't cope with long words, "derogatory" means "rude" or "demeaning". "Demeaning" means "making you look small".
As you do, you sad, po-faced, ignorant peasants. We'd tell you to get a life, except that before you can do that, you really need to get some sort of education.
Wankers.
The GOS says: I've got a degree, for God's sake. I've published three books of non-fiction, and many articles and reviews in newspapers and professional journals. I run a website that gets more than 20 million visitors a year. And here I am trying to explain really weak jokes to people with really weak intellects.
I can't believe I've sunk so low.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2008 The GOS