Howard and/is a racist joke
After nineteen (maybe twenty) mainly Chinese immigrants were drowned in horrific circumstances at Morecambe Bay, a Conservative MP made a joke about it:
[Ann] Winterton referred to two sharks who were sick of eating tuna and said: “So one said: ‘Let’s go to Morecambe for a Chinese.’”
Although Winterton refused to apologise, her leader stepped in and “effectively sacked” her from the party:
Howard described Winterton’s remarks as “completely unacceptable”, adding: “such sentiments have no place in the Conservative Party”.
“I deplore them and I apologise for them on behalf of my party.”
I tried to imagine what our own conservative leader, also a Howard, would have said in that situation:
Look, I wouldn’t necessarily make a joke like that, but you have to realise that there are people out there — ordinary Australians — who find that sort of thing funny. I welcome the fact that people can now make jokes about certain things without living in fear of being branded as insensitive or racist.
If only our Howard borrowed as much from his British counterpart as Latham does from Blair…
When did Blair bash a middle-eastern taxi driver?
For that matter, when did Latham?
It’s not the first time…
Winterton has been stood aside before, from the position of spokesperson for Agriculture I think, for making anti-Asian remarks.
Interestingly though, Ann is a Fellow of the British Taipei Parliamentary Group.
NB. I noticed, looking at the tory website, their positions are still referred to with the traditional male suffixes: chairman, spokesman…I thought the world’s PC and valueless society had at least eradicated these types of patriachal allusions from daily use? Surely even Tory women object to being referred to as something-’man’?
Oh – don’t forget though Rob, someone in the Libs, if not the leader himself, did stand up to Hanson’s politics at one stage, at least. Remember Hanson was expelled from the party right before the ‘96 election?
Given Blair’s recent antics on the House of Lords, internment without trial, refugees, public service reform, the war, and the GCHQ prosecution you’d almost prefer that Latham would start borrowing from Michael Howard.
True enough, both Carita and Alan.
Cartia, on the PC language thing, are you serious, or was that a joke?
Of which part are you asking whether it was a joke? My indignance or the conservatives’ use of gendered language? Because neither was in jest.
By the way, apologies for my ineptness with HTML. I meant to turn italics off.
Manas, why didn’t you use spokeswoman instead of spokesperson, when referring to the woman in question?
Given that chairman goes to chair, shouldn’t spokesman go to spoke?
I think they should just be called “bikes” myself.
As in “A bike for the sugar industry accused the Prime Minister of being a howling fuckwit who doesn’t want kiddies to get their cheap kitchener buns.”
13th July 2001
According to that story:
I fail to see how that could be considered a bashing.
Here’s another interesting line:
I certainly wouldn’t say that if someone had bashed me.
O.K. Rob, I give in. But if it was one of your unwashed brethren being tacked by the police you’d of called it a bashing.
Manas,
I remember Hanson being expelled from the Liberal Party – it was Howard who expelled her.
I remember an Australian politician, who spoke good Mandarin and was well respected by the Australian Chinese communities, who once said “Two Wongs don’t make a white.” [He wasn't in Howard's Party]
Mind you, that was so far back, it was a time when people even understood that the “man” in “chairman”, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with sex — or even “gender”.
If it was derived from the latin, why on earth would the plural of “chairman” be “chairmen”?
Norman isn’t trying to argue that the “man” came from latin — just that it had nothing to do with the battle of the sexes.
True, at the time “chairman” was used, the chairman would always be male, so one couldn’t argue that “man” was intended to just mean “person” (couldn’t argue that “man” wasn’t intended such, either, though — we just don’t know). I personally use “chairman” for men and women, but merely out of habit (”chair” works just as well; “chairperson” is silly; “chairwoman” works, but I think it brings unwarranted attention to the sex of the chairman…).
In soccer, I still call my assistants “linesmen”, whether they’re male or female. The only people who get upset with me are the bureaucrat-equivalents who’ve got a new toy (the title “assistant referee”) and are upset that not everyone is interested in playing with it. The female linesmen themselves don’t notice, and Norman’s hated fiends the “PC brigade” haven’t said boo on the subject.