'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
I’m sure that I will not be the only writer to remember this exchange between Alice and an animated egg as a way of thinking about the continuing controversy about what Jade did or didn’t say in the Big Brother House and whether what she did or didn’t say was racist.
I was speaking with Paul 1 yesterday and he, without endorsing what Jade said, was impressed by her performance as a sort of ‘damage limitation’ exercise as she saw her future career as a non-entity celebrity evaporating like her withdrawn perfume.
The one thing that she did, time after time, was apologise. That was clear enough. She also, in spite of continually denying that she was doing it, did attempt some form of justification. She kept asserting that what she said was not said in a racist way and was not in itself (presumably in her mind) racist.
This is an interesting situation. Her continual statement and restatement that she was not a racist and what she said was not racist is to be commended for the number of times that she managed to get this simple message into a fairly gentle interview; but it is irrelevant how many times you say something if what you are saying is simply not true! By almost any standards what Jade and her cronies did was to indulge in bullying in which one of the most telling weapons they used against a foreigner was aspects of her foreign culture. Now to me, if something foreign is used to spice up prejudice it is simple racism. Denial doesn’t change that judgement.
I am prepared to believe that Jade doesn’t have the intellectual apparatus to think out elegant racist taunts and that she would have used any aspect of someone she disliked: the intellect (!); their body shape; their sexuality; their class; their accent; their eating habits, anything. What is different can be used as a weapon against the weakest; the more obvious the difference, the more likely to be used by a person motivated by ignorance and prejudice. Jade used the ‘weapons’ she found to hand; that they were racist was possibly no more than that they were available rather than motivated by deeply held racist bigotry. This doesn’t, of course, alter the fact that what she said was objectionable, vile and undeniably racist.
I hope and trust that the maw of the media machine that made her will have the good taste to vomit her forth with the justified, self satisfied moral loathing that is so easy for a seemingly amoral press to dress itself in when a suitably vulnerable target presents itself.
I merely pause to wonder if the vapidly sentimental taste of the Great British Public will now recover from its spasm of moral outrage and suddenly discover that it has a maudlin bout of sympathy for the poor little rich girl who is being unfairly hounded by the cynical pack of press hounds; and Jade retains her status as an ordinary, but ‘real’, girl who can hold her own with the best of them. Plucky little (well, perhaps not ‘little’) busty Jade; we love you!
From the country that idolised ‘Eddie the Eagle’ anything is possible!
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
I’m sure that I will not be the only writer to remember this exchange between Alice and an animated egg as a way of thinking about the continuing controversy about what Jade did or didn’t say in the Big Brother House and whether what she did or didn’t say was racist.
I was speaking with Paul 1 yesterday and he, without endorsing what Jade said, was impressed by her performance as a sort of ‘damage limitation’ exercise as she saw her future career as a non-entity celebrity evaporating like her withdrawn perfume.
The one thing that she did, time after time, was apologise. That was clear enough. She also, in spite of continually denying that she was doing it, did attempt some form of justification. She kept asserting that what she said was not said in a racist way and was not in itself (presumably in her mind) racist.
This is an interesting situation. Her continual statement and restatement that she was not a racist and what she said was not racist is to be commended for the number of times that she managed to get this simple message into a fairly gentle interview; but it is irrelevant how many times you say something if what you are saying is simply not true! By almost any standards what Jade and her cronies did was to indulge in bullying in which one of the most telling weapons they used against a foreigner was aspects of her foreign culture. Now to me, if something foreign is used to spice up prejudice it is simple racism. Denial doesn’t change that judgement.
I am prepared to believe that Jade doesn’t have the intellectual apparatus to think out elegant racist taunts and that she would have used any aspect of someone she disliked: the intellect (!); their body shape; their sexuality; their class; their accent; their eating habits, anything. What is different can be used as a weapon against the weakest; the more obvious the difference, the more likely to be used by a person motivated by ignorance and prejudice. Jade used the ‘weapons’ she found to hand; that they were racist was possibly no more than that they were available rather than motivated by deeply held racist bigotry. This doesn’t, of course, alter the fact that what she said was objectionable, vile and undeniably racist.
I hope and trust that the maw of the media machine that made her will have the good taste to vomit her forth with the justified, self satisfied moral loathing that is so easy for a seemingly amoral press to dress itself in when a suitably vulnerable target presents itself.
I merely pause to wonder if the vapidly sentimental taste of the Great British Public will now recover from its spasm of moral outrage and suddenly discover that it has a maudlin bout of sympathy for the poor little rich girl who is being unfairly hounded by the cynical pack of press hounds; and Jade retains her status as an ordinary, but ‘real’, girl who can hold her own with the best of them. Plucky little (well, perhaps not ‘little’) busty Jade; we love you!From the country that idolised ‘Eddie the Eagle’ anything is possible!
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