12/11/2010

Jokes BANNED

I've stumbled across the latest Political Correctness Gone Mad OUTRAGE via Minority Thought's 'If in doubt, blame political correctness'. It's in the Mail, and it's:

Gingerbread 'person', the PC pudding: Now even biscuits can't escape the politically correct brigade

Oh, the huMANity. Or do I have to say 'huPERSONty' now? Eh? Eh? Geddit? HuPERSONty. Geddit? Cos you can't say man, you have to say person now. Hur hur.

Sorry. Here's what the Mail says:
But now he has been cornered by an even more unforgiving foe – political correctness.

Council bureaucrats have stripped gingerbread men of their gender and renamed them gingerbread ‘persons’ on menus for 400 primary schools.
And here's what the Campaign for Gullible Marks Against Political Correctness has to say:
It is not just an innocent mistake. Whoever did it, I hope they will think long and hard about it.
Yeah. They better.*

Thing is, what if it actually was deliberate, but it was someone mucking about. Like someone who thought Political Correctness had Gone Mad and wanted to take the Mickey in their menu with a bit of a joke, perhaps? Wouldn't that make the whole story look a bit stupid?

Here's what the Lancashire Telegraph says in ''Gingerbread person' off Lancashire schools' menus':
It appears the use of a politically correct term was intended by staff to amuse rather than offend, but clearly this has been lost in translation.
You know how you can tell it's probably a joke? The menu apparently said Gingerbread 'persons' and not 'people'.

Hang on, what's this?


Gah! The Daily Mail is part of the Politically Correct Brigade! They think Harriet Harman should be called Harperson! Quick, someone call the...er...Daily...Mail?

Wonder if the Mail had anything to do with the Twitter joke trial?

*In an earlier Political Correctness story in the Mail, saying someone should think hard about doing something in the future counted as BANNING it.  I'm sure the Campaign for gullible marks Against Political Correctness would like to ban people from saying 'person' instead of 'man' - but if they did, it somehow wouldn't count as political correctness.  Because it's only political correctness when someone else does it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everytime I see this story, I recall a conversation between a student friend of mine and her then tutor, now Professor Alistair MacFadyan and head of TRS at Leeds. During a tutorial, Al (as he liked to be known) confided in her the proposed title of his first book: "The Road to Personhood" (a work of Theological anthropology). She laughed, much to his consternation, and told him it was okay, but a bit "ultra-PC". Some things never change, and neither did the book's title. But given the alternative, that's probably not such a bad thing!

malleus bardorum said...

Anyway, you can't say 'person', because it's got the word 'son' in it, which is also sexist.

The correct mode of address is, therefore: Harriet Harperchild

This is, of course, nicely bland and inoffensive

Anonymous said...

surely it's huPERSON[i]ty right? I''ll close the door...