…at table tennis, squash and chess.
Context, as the above illustrates, is everything.
Isolate facts (or words) and they can suffer distorted interpretations to fit an agenda. This is a banal observation to most thinking adults. Unfortunately, non-thinking adulthood appears to be in the ascendant at present.
Two examples, one trivial and the other potentially devastating.
National MP for Hamilton-West, Tim Macindoe makes a private joke about pushing ‘two ex-wives’ off a balcony, referencing the British TV series House of Cards. This is overheard on a Facebook live stream and is predictably fed to the usual outrage mongers by media. Professional Silly Person, Jackie Clarke is reported as being “in tears” because of this, declaring, “It left me speechless and breathless with rage.” She is a “domestic violence advocate”, you see.
Context, context, context. It was a joke. Mr Macindoe does not have one ex-wife, let alone two, that he could possibly push off anything. Nor does he have a history, so far as anyone is aware, of domestic violence. If he had, the joke would obviously be in very poor taste.
Forgive me for this peek into the John Black upbringing, but my mother used to make regular jokes about poisoning my father’s coffee and ‘getting a new one’ if he didn’t pull his weight around the house. He in turn had a running gag, when his mother-in-law used to stay, of her being a witch and the need for plenty of kindling for ‘the burning’. All fun stuff and examples of black comedy that most of us use to get through this vale of tears. If puritan police such as Ms Clarke had her way, our lives would be drained of such innocent cathartic coping mechanisms. What’s next? A ban on ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ jokes because they trivialize jay walking and the plight of the battery-farmed chook?
You would think Ms Clarke, who lists ‘comedian’ as one of her trades, would recognize a joke. But of course she does, she just wishes to work herself up into faux outrage because it is more useful to her cause. I think she’s wrong. Jokes don’t trivialize or lessen the importance of a serious issue. But overreacting to such jokes may well do so.
While we quibble about the appropriateness of jokes, a greater context crime has been taking place – the catastrophization of COVID-19 (henceforth referred to as the Chinese Government Virus, in honour of its creators). Our current excessive lockdown provisions have been driven by hysterical media reporting. If it was put in its proper context by a sober media (ha) we would realize the CGV is a serious health challenge but far from an existential threat. Why on earth do we get a daily government briefing announcing the infection and death toll? If we have to, why is it not given alongside the death toll for car crashes or heart disease? Y’know, for CONTEXT.
So far this year: CGV: 17, Car Crashes: 88, Heart Disease (estimated): 1500.
And yet few are the calls for banning motor vehicles and fried breakfasts.
Context is necessary for accurate risk assessment, and the media are delinquent in not providing it. They’ve had plenty of practice in eliminating context all together in their treatment of the 45th President. Such is their Trump derangement they cannot stop themselves from (mis)interpreting his comments in the worst possible light. Take the current furore over his disinfectant injection comments. Trump knows as much about medicine as you imagine the average real estate mogul would, and should shut-the-hell up when actual experts are in the room, but he did not suggest injecting disinfectant to treat coronavirus, which is literally what some news outlets ran with. If you read his comments, he was in his ham-fisted way wondering aloud if there was a way of killing the virus from within.
Similarly, Trump’s musings on the possibilities of the drug hydroxychloroquine were blamed for the death of a man after he and his wife ingested fish tank cleaner, containing a chemically similar substance. A little context would have helped here too. The man’s wife was a Democrat party donor and had been charged with domestic violence against him – trying to brain him with a birdhouse (looks like they really loved their pets.) The man’s last cocktail of fish tank cleaner was suggested and prepared by his wife, and while she became sick, her husband bigger and stronger, was the one to actually die.
Perhaps she, at least, wasn’t joking about offing her spouse.
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