It’s Safe to Insult Certain People. Apparently.
Coverage of the recent Olympics has made me realise that despite the fact that Political Correctness is widespread and pretty much ingrained in Western society, there are still 2 groups of people that we can still be patronising and rude to without any comebacks. I don’t know if this is a loophole or whether the groups aren’t deemed worthy of our protection. Oh, and before I go any further, use this at your own risk! I am not liable for any damage you receive…..
This whole thing was prompted because of a cheesy BBC slot. A reporter was asking the locals in Beijing whether they recognised certain London landmarks - Big Ben being the main one. None of the people on camera could name them. Cue the reporter looking at the camera with a wry look. Oh dear, people in China can’t recognise landmarks from a city more than 5000 miles away. Those ignorant Chinese people! But let’s flip that around. I’m relatively intelligent and know things about foreign countries. I doubt I could recognise any landmark from China apart from the Great Wall and maybe the Forbidden City. Does that make me mockable? Would anyone in China reading this be rolling about the floor in tears because the ignorant round eye doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of their places of interest? Or would they, and I think this is more likely, just say “OK” and forget about it? Because it doesn’t matter and I’m sure the Chinese have better things to do with their time than memorise landmarks. Unless there’s a Chinese version of Jeopardy, of course.
Secondly, and this really really annoys me, is the use of a short phrase which is employed to encompass a whole range of people. “Simple folk/people”. As in “I would love to live in a rural area among the simple folk”. This isn’t restricted to the UK and is used to describe people in small villages/towns and rural areas. Basically, using it means that those people couldn’t possibly understand the horrible pressures that traders and bankers and accountants have in the City, because life is so much easier in the country. Let’s forget that farms are going to the wall every day and that suicide rates among the farming community are on the rise because farmers are seeing their livelihoods disappear and land held in their families for generations are being sold so the family can survive. Forget the bankruptcies and having to negotiate the minefield that claiming subsidies entails. Forget the fact that abattoirs are closing regularly and new regulations mean that farmers have restrictions on transporting the animals to be slaughtered so end up with a lot of dead livestock rotting on their lands. Their lives are just so simple.
Continue reading ‘It’s Safe to Insult Certain People. Apparently.’ »