Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The World Turned Upside Down
It's not often that I find anything positive or admirable coming out of the intellectual slum of News International. A bunch of morally bankrupt toads determined to drag down intellectual discussion to the gutter and influence Government policy not to even the betterment of conservatism but to that of the Extremely Rich Conservative Right.
But today, taking a break from accusing the Home Secretary of letting paedophiles out of prison and pointing them towards the nearest school, The Sun decides to present an article about how racism is bad.
What do we all have in common?
THEY are some of the most offensive and ugly words in the English language. Words like nigger, spic and raghead. But today The Sun makes no apology for printing them — or the pictures showing children who are the innocent victims of such repugnant insults. The youngsters, whether Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or Christian, have two things in common. Like Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty, they have encountered racism in this country. But they are also all BRITISH.
To be fair The Sun is more openly xenophobic rather than racist, on an average day the paper will complain more about white Europeans than British Asians. But the paper takes almost pride in being the paper of the racist element of the working class and certainly since 2001 when non-white faces have appeared outside the sports pages they have overwhelmingly been in articles about terrorism. The Sun has demanded that terrorist subjects be sent back to their countries of ethnic origin, even when they are British citizens, and has run it's campaign against immigration on the grounds that terrorists could come into the country unmonitored, even though the only terrorists to attack this country in the last decade were born and bred British, and the only terrorist suspect to be killed by someone other than themselves was an innocent Brazilian killed by incompetent policing.
But it's still significant that The Sun have produced a positive story about multiculturalism. I suspect that the mention of Big Brother is key. Though The Sun were pretty quick to jump on the racist behaviour of Jade Goody and the other women in the House this sort of behaviour is not natural to them and they may judge that there's a surge in awareness of racism amongst their core constituency. Hopefully this is a strand they will continue as long as their campaign to have paedophiles addresses available to local mobs for tarring and feathering purposes.
But today, taking a break from accusing the Home Secretary of letting paedophiles out of prison and pointing them towards the nearest school, The Sun decides to present an article about how racism is bad.
What do we all have in common?
THEY are some of the most offensive and ugly words in the English language. Words like nigger, spic and raghead. But today The Sun makes no apology for printing them — or the pictures showing children who are the innocent victims of such repugnant insults. The youngsters, whether Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or Christian, have two things in common. Like Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty, they have encountered racism in this country. But they are also all BRITISH.
To be fair The Sun is more openly xenophobic rather than racist, on an average day the paper will complain more about white Europeans than British Asians. But the paper takes almost pride in being the paper of the racist element of the working class and certainly since 2001 when non-white faces have appeared outside the sports pages they have overwhelmingly been in articles about terrorism. The Sun has demanded that terrorist subjects be sent back to their countries of ethnic origin, even when they are British citizens, and has run it's campaign against immigration on the grounds that terrorists could come into the country unmonitored, even though the only terrorists to attack this country in the last decade were born and bred British, and the only terrorist suspect to be killed by someone other than themselves was an innocent Brazilian killed by incompetent policing.
But it's still significant that The Sun have produced a positive story about multiculturalism. I suspect that the mention of Big Brother is key. Though The Sun were pretty quick to jump on the racist behaviour of Jade Goody and the other women in the House this sort of behaviour is not natural to them and they may judge that there's a surge in awareness of racism amongst their core constituency. Hopefully this is a strand they will continue as long as their campaign to have paedophiles addresses available to local mobs for tarring and feathering purposes.
Labels: News International, newspapers, racism, The Sun
