Wednesday 7 February 2018

Political Correctness. Didn't we do this,already ?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7a/7b/c9/7a7bc990e8828945cc2fafd0d5bbe849.jpg




Grid Girls have lost their jobs.
As have the darts ladies.

Objectifying women is a crime on a par with the Holocaust.
In the wake of Weinstein using the same casting couch that has been in existence since motion pictures, and some men getting a good look at some girls legs at a charity event, the politically correct social media had a fit of the vapours. And when the smelling salts took effect have forced institutions to take action. 

Take action on things they were probably planning to do anyway. 

Like when the Left thought they had won a moral crusade to stop page 3. And to hurt the hated Murdoch. 
Lads Mags, like Loaded and Nuts came and showed a lot more of what "Sarah, 19, Payroll Clerk from Basildon," had to show.
 And since then Internet porn and mobile phone photography have made topless pictures about as pornographic and forbidden as a nude nymph in a Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Something else that has been banned.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2018/02/01/23/48CE053A00000578-5342349-image-a-11_1517527221872.jpg

Nobody wants to say 'No' to the Twitter-Storm. That just fuels the easy journalism of the intern's article. Makes a bad story, worse. 
So, often its easier to give in. meaning next time, the New Puritans will be further emboldened.

Poundland are remarkably relaxed about the ton of publicity they got for their, teabagging elf ads. Adverts that were clearly designed to press the starter of the outrage bus. 
 Image result for elf asa ad

Some clever Adzecutives saw how to get the masses to do their bidding. All the while acting surprised that their targeted offence might be triggering the campus guardians of morality. And pressing their buttons with wide eyed innocence and further sexual positioning.


For those who missed the story, the Elf was a Christmas advert. Cashing in on last year's "Elf on a shelf" craze. 
{If you don't know,I'm not explaining it. Google it or ask Grandchildren.}
 The Elf was a naughty elf. Basically, he was objectifying the fairies. Bigly.
The Poundland Elf writers clearly saw how this was going to cause a stink in PC-Land. And reckoned the bad publicity would be overwhelmed by total publicity. And they were correct.

What I find so tedious about all this New Puritanism, is it wasn't that long ago that we already did this. The 1980s were awash with 'Alternative' comedians. And what they were an alternative to was sexist and racist comedy. The new comedians wanted to do more jokes and observations that were not about mother-in-laws or black neighbours or wives who couldn't park. And to be more political. 
They appealed to a totally different audience to the traditional TV watching folk. Were extremely Politically Correct, which is where that old fashioned word comes from, and were very, very funny.

The high priest of alternative comedy was Ben Elton. 
Motormouth guest, host and writer and so popular he had his own show that raked in huge audiences in its relatively short run.

Ben was  the most 'progressive' of them all. 
And he meant it. As did most of these new university jokers. Ben was unapologetic for his vies that there should be no sexism or racism in comedy. Or anywhere else. 

As uncontroversial as it sounds today, there was quite an establishment, ie, red top press, backlash against glitter suited Elton. More for his unremitting anti-tory, anti-Thatcher monologues than his championing of feminism. But any stick would do to give him a quick whack with. For a while Ben Elton was as much of a hate figure as Ken Livingstone. No more so than when he attacked Benny Hill.

What actually happened was in a few of his skits he was disparaging about the scantily clad Hills Angels. And in one Wogan TV interview he specifically mentioned he thought the roles for women in those BH shows were just objects. They didn't have any charcuterie except to be a sexy temptress or an ugly harridan. And he said he thought he could do comedy better, without relying on those sterotypes.

Benny Hill was long past its sell by date when he said that. And ITV stopped commissioning it soon after. When Benny Hill died a few years later, Ben Elton was attacked in the press for forcing harmless comedy off the air. Though Elton had always insisted he didn't mind Carry On. With its stronger female roles. But didn't like the Benny style of comedy. He had to row back a lot as the backlash against him, personally, grew.

The Blackadder co-writer has a point though. Blackadder, the best of Elton's TV work, has stood the test of time equally as well as Porridge. Dad's Army. Two Ronnies or any of those other 'British Greats.'

What's different about the likes of the old, alternative comedians and their strong, Corbyn style, political thoughts and leanings, and today, is people like Elton wanted to change things. 
Not to ban things. Not to prevent things. But to change the way something was perceived.

I expect Ben Elton would be appalled by the idea of 'No Platforming' or 'safe spaces,'  and the closing down of free speech.

He was always clear he wanted to change people's views. Not stop them having any views. 

And, that political correctness, that began in comedy, spread to politics and then to advertising, and then, everywhere. The likes of Jim Davidson, popular and successful at the same time as Elton, lost that cultural war.

I suggest that the reason the alternatives had a far reaching, long lasting effect on our societies culture, was precisely because they stood FOR, not AGAINST, something.

And because they really were very, very good comedians and writers.

Have a look at this.

This is Ben Elton in a Harry Enfield sketch. Self parody and sending up the whole Politically Correct experience. Whilst paying homage to the Benny Hill comedy.

Its terrific..

32 comments:

Steven_L said...

Am I bovvered? I simply don't read any PC feminist claptrap anymore.

Note the rising mysogyny (mainly over the pond) in response though. There are some hilarious websites in the 'manosphere' these days.

Has anyone else had a gander at 'tagthesponsor' for instance? Where 'instagram models' are exposed agreeing to raher unusual business proposals involving camels and excrement?

Or that Roosh V bloke Mrs May banned from entering the UK in 2016? Most of what he writes is utter codswallop, but its a hell of a lot funnier than any utter PC feminist codswallop I've read.



hovis said...

On this subject but a little tangential the ASA is a private limited company with no actual powers - it just pretends it has them, and people fall into line. They are not impartial and have few "standards".

They undertake a position which no matter how untrue it is proven to be they will continue the lie. I have a friend who had a disgreement with them, provided full evidence that their "ruling" was incorrect but they would not budge from the party line. He was told by his barrister he could take them down, but it would just take 3 years and would cost the same amount as remortgaing his house; the cost benefit wasn't there as the Govt. (and the Blob) would then likeley put in legislative powers to hold their preferred little line together.

hovis said...

and on the PC angle - does the neo-puritanism remind you of the distaste "the party" had for sex in a certain novel by a Mr Orwell. The proles of course just carried on regardless in thats story ...

Bill Quango MP said...

Good point Hovis.
Orwell was writing about both Fascist and communist clampdown on free speech. And especially, free thought. Sex is considered a free thought and free act. And so must be controlled by the party. To be purely for reproduction not gratification.
Aldous Huxley writes about the same.

Thud said...

I couldn't stand the frothing southern luvvie.

Nick Drew said...

the funny thing was how at the very same time Harry Enfield swept the board with Loadsamoney & Stavros & the Scousers - on Elton's show!

Enfield - who is, to be fair, capable of dropping a bollock occasionally - is a seriously perceptive cove

Raedwald said...

Unlike Billy Connolly, in whom I could find no virtue whatsoever, one had to recognise Elton's cleverness, though that irritating Australian whine and his constant references to 'Fatch' grated. That silent Benny Hill clip was unspoilt by his voice, and truly brilliant. Elton and Enfield partnership was pure gold.

I was always more of a Comic Strip man; again, largely because it did not shy from taking the piss out of the Blair's luvvies who made it.

Couldn't stand Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson. Like Connolly, crude untalented filth. I also watched one episode of Mrs Brown's Boys recently to find the nation's taste for this genre of offensive ordure hasn't changed.

But then I'm an East Anglian - we've always had a slightly puritan streak in us which exists to this day.

Still, the revelation from the archaeological reconstructors yesterday that we're actually all black is of some comfort, rasclad. I is now finding my old Bob Marley vinyl, blud, and will shake my booty.

miker22 said...

Elton's smugness and the vitriol barely hidden under a cloak of "humour" didn't appeal all that much to me. Benny Hill was a very inventive comedian and if his later work became smutty, it should not detract too much. That sketch was derivative, of course. Incidentally, amidst all the heroine worship of the Suffragettes, are you aware of this (from the Conservative Woman website):‘The Pankhursts became stridently anti-male, ruthlessly dropping even the most loyal of their male supporters from the WSPU [Women’s Social and Political Union], and claiming, as Christabel did in her 1913 book The Great Scourge, that men were “little more than carriers of venereal disease”.’

Anonymous said...

Elton, having helped elect Blair, decided he didn't actually like the country he'd helped create and decided to find another functional Anglo country to mess up, afaik he's still in Oz.

OT, but AE-P in the Telegraph is getting very worried about our Brexit. Last column was "the EU are taking the mick, leave now under WTO rules, in six months it'll be too late".

Today?

"The nightmare recurs. Call it the British Versailles. Theresa May is ash-white and exhausted after sixteen hours of cliff-edge talks. The grim ordeal lasts deep into the night on Friday, October 19.

Britain’s friends around the table at the Justus Lipsius – named after the stoic Flemish author of "De Constantia" – wince with pain and sympathy at the emotional spectacle. Yet they say nothing. The sum of the European Council is of a different character from its parts.

The document sitting before Mrs May spells out the terms. There is no bespoke deal, and no market access for services. The "Canada plus" model has degenerated into a deformed variant of "Canada colonial" with a permanent EU veto over larger areas of British law and policy. It is the worst of all worlds: a limited trade deal under draconian conditions. Medieval historians would call it suzerainty."

Anonymous said...

Yawn ....

It's a done deal - and has nothing to do with PC.

Jesus wept. Brexit for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Has your wife left you yet. Best go and check.

Electro-Kevin said...

I liked Elton... at the time. Read all his books avidly.

Sadly, in retrospect - now I can see how it's all worked out...

We had to move on from Manning/Davidson/Chubby (couldn't see much wrong with Connolly) but the tub is now without baby.

Get used to being told what you can eat too. This veganism thing is only just starting.

However, PC is in a race against time and it is losing. While it is hammering stale, pale, males (the only people it is NOT a crime to hate, along with old people) it is looking 180 degrees the wrong way.

There is a religious demographic outpacing it.

The puritans are doing their ground work in getting women to cover up.

There is little they can do about the strict patriarchy that will be upon us within 50 years.

Electro-Kevin said...

"Call it the British Versailles."

The German one went well, didn't it.

Remember that the whole point of the EU was because Germany could not keep her hands off of France.

We went exhausted to the EU because we were depleted after two unecessary world wars.

We deserve more respect than we're getting.

Nick Drew said...

BTW, for a solid belly-laugh on this general topic, all over to CiF for this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/08/self-certified-trans-women-all-women-shortlists-labour

"Should self-identifying trans women be on all-women shortlists? Labour is consulting on the inclusion of transgender women without a gender recognition certification. Four writers share their views on this proposal"

hovis said...

Benny Hill was in the tradition of much music hall comedy.

Connelly I always liked in his lat 70's early 80's hey-day, though he grates now.
Elton was cool at the time and quite clever, though I do find him a santcimonious prick now.

Coming to prominence along with Elton initially (and alittle O/T),I can't stand Steven Fry - somehow people think is an intellectual (wtf?) - he is a second rater, an end of the pier huckster who uses a largish vocabulary to appeal to those that want to beleive they are clever.

How far we have fallen.

Electro-Kevin said...

You love Russell Brand then, Hovis !

James Higham said...

Yes, I've been having a go about this too.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

I think it was William Donaldson who described Stephen Fry as “a stupid persons idea of a clever person”. Bang on, if you ask me.

Connolly is a comic genius as far as I’m concerned. Saw him at the Albert Hall back in the 80s and I laughed so hard I ended up with a stitch. At the time Reagan had a cancer scare. Connolly said something along the lines of ‘I hope he doesn’t get depressed and decide to end it all. With his finger on the nuclear button it could be curtains for us all. My father’s younger than him and we don’t let him have the remote control for the TV’

Anonymous said...

"the revelation from the archaeological reconstructors yesterday that we're actually all black is of some comfort"

Sadly a) they are reconstructions which the Guardian and BBC have chosen to darken up for political reasons - they were probably swarthy rather than black - think the French rugby player Chabal.

b) most of their males (90%-ish from Y-DNA analysis) were wiped out when the Bell Beaker people arrived from le Continent. A few survived and probs most of the women (there's a teacher in the area who's a descendant via the maternal line)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture

Raedwald said...

I'm not black?

damn.

I had high hopes of reclaiming some genetic rhythm, there, for a moment. Blud.

Anonymous said...

I did hear that Connolly became upset when he was talking about his Parkinson's Disease and someone suggested he might shortly die from it. Not certain, but it may have come from a friend of Ken Bickley.
Penseivat

Anonymous said...

I guess we're all black on a long enough timescale, if the Out Of Africa hypothesis is correct. But Europeans also have some Neanderthal admixture - see Chabal again!

https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1354539/sebastien-chabal.jpg

Electro-Kevin said...

If we go back far enough in our genealogy the British were actually green in colour - and a bit slimey.

Oh well. Expect period dramas to start featuring a lot more black people and a lot more of our inventors to be depicted as people of colour. As in Our Darkest Hour the black tube traveller "No he wasn't there, but he represented the Commonwealth's contribution."

Fair enough but I wager this,

300 years hence there will be a tabloid scoop "The British were actually white !"

Or more probably "Bloodclart wi' all cumin' from darn honky !"

Thud said...

Steven fry is Al Sharpton/Don king in whiteface they seem to be suffering fron dictionary regurgitation syndrome....I claim my £5.

Electro-Kevin said...

Another thing to boil my piss. The Handmaiden's Tale. A feminist drama in which Christian white men are demonised as patriarchal, oppressive - demanding that their women wear headgear, drab clothes, remain subservient and make babies.

Now where do we see those sorts of values in modern day society ? Hmm. Let me think.








Steven_L said...

But why watch feminist dramas?

In the long run feminism will lead to mysogyny anyway, as those cultures that demand women make babies asap will outbreed those that allow women the freedom to put it off 'til the last minute.

Steven_L said...

Here's some good mysogyny to help you forget about those feminist dramas EK, you'll like this...:

When I read the symptoms of canine false pregnancy, I realized that the majority of childless women over the age of 25 exhibit the exact same symptoms. The most obvious symptom that we can visually observe is weight gain. It is hard, if not impossible, to find a female past her fertile prime that is of normal weight. Next, the human female shows emotional attachment to objects that are outside of her personal domain of home and family, specifically minorities and Islamic migrants. A childless woman collects animals and third world migrants like a bitch collects tennis balls, as if she is their mother trying to protect them from danger, but of course poor brown people are not her children, and may view her as stupid.

Electro-Kevin said...

Sorry to be boring (that was very funny btw) but I don't want to counter this with mysogyny.

I am aghast at how arse-about-face the feministas are ALLOWED to get things.

I think the West is at serious risk. Total pussification while the East are building up legions of hard men.

Steven_L said...

The funniest things is that it's not supposed to be funny. You and I can laugh at it, but there appears to be a growing number of young (mainly American) men who take all this seriously. It's there to sell books and course on how to get laid.

Bear in mind prostitution is illegal in the states and cops do enforce to the point of advertising as hookers themselves in stings, then add tinder to the mix (which allows the promiscuous women to just hop from bed to bed with ease, but by and large with only the 10% or so of best looking promiscuous men) and the levels of sexual frustration appear to be through the roof there.

There is a whole movement of young men over the pond who identify as 'incel' (involuntarily celebrate) and they really, really hate women. Out media don't comment on it much, but they appear to be the ones that do some of these high school shootings, where they simply blow away as many 'Chad's' and 'Staceys' as they can. Youth culture over the pond is so f***ed up now, and what happens in America happens here next.

Electro-Kevin said...

"involuntarily celebrate"

That's almost as bad as the woman who complained that her husband had "... been made *impudent* by his hormone treatment."

Good angle on the sexual reason for rampage killings.

Having a pair of balls is like being chained to a raving maniac. I want what my dog had - he's much more content and happy now.

Electro-Kevin said...

That's him in my inset photo. Little did he know what I had planned for him that day.

Electro-Kevin said...

BTW - The Chinese army is looking like it's packed with potential rampage killers.

Anonymous said...

Echoes and the past is coming back and it's haunt is right here.

Have you ever had a conversation with a brother, one adhering to the latter Abramaic monotheistic strain?

They'll never talk about the truth, always dodge the question will always claim victimhood and always, always shout and even spit, lose the argument straight away, quote endless hollow ideological guff and preachifying with it. And always, they end up playing 'the man not the ball'.

They are the labour party's best mates, it's been a gradual process, they do now run all University campuses they do run the twittersphere albeit not out in 'full glare' it's influence you see, the do run mrs maybot in Westminster, the establishment invited them in and now all they do is appease and retreat, retreat and kowtow.

Political correctness??

No! no, no, no it is something much more censorial than that and it demands total, blind, absolute obedience, we're all going back, way back to meet history and most likely a very violent narrative played out daily but not the stuff of fiction, it is becoming a nightmare manifested and whatever else it is, it certainly has no sense of honour, no humanity and, no sense of humour either.