OPINION
Bob Jones
When news of Australia’s most loved sportswoman Sam Kerr’s arrest broke, I could scarcely believe it.
But not for the usual reason, namely the sheer absurdity of the ungrammatical “Racially Aggravated offense”, this occurring after a taxi fare row and Sam, who’s of Indian ethnicity, calling a policeman a stupid white bastard, which knowing British policemen, he probably was.
My amazement was personal. That’s because four years ago my “Four Comic Novellas” book was published and one of those tales, “The Last Judgement” recounted an identical story.
It described how an effete black homosexual (Sam is a lesbian) so called Council Outreach Officer with a nonsense doctorate from one of Britain’s lowest ranking universities, wandered into an Irish labourer’s pub, was immediately appalled and in his haste to leave, accidentally bumped one of the drinkers, spilling his beer.
The Irish navvy responded by calling him a “fucking black poncy bastard”.
The Outreach Officer immediately filed a racist complaint to the Police.
My story recounts his courtroom demolition by a brilliant barrister, who appalled by this nonsense law, had come out of retirement and volunteered his services pro bono.
Kiwis of my generation grew up imbued in British culture and one of its most appealing characteristics was a delight in piss-taking and a tolerant outlook of differences and eccentricities, best epitomised by the wonderfully outrageous “Little Britain” television comedy.
But over the last two decades there’s been a dramatic change, not I sense with any meaningful public support.
I could recount numerous ludicrous examples, such as the Senior Detective conducting a detective seminar and stressing the need not to cut corners but behave honestly, then being suspended for saying “We must be whiter than white.”
Or the prosecution of a Pom for calling a Welshman a “Taffy” and another case of someone for calling a Scot a “Jock”. Prosecutions occurred despite both the Welshman and the Scot protesting that they had taken no offence.
The good news is my sense of a lash-back underway with the likes of the brilliant Ricky Gervais leading the charge.
We’ve endured similar nonsense here in New Zealand with anything to do with Maori being unacceptable unless viewed through the prism of Maori wonderfulness.
This is epitomised by the dying print media’s ludicrous current fashion of listing in brackets a series of tribal names after any part Maori, which is all of them, who’s currently in the news.
The standout exception is with their numerous reports of part Maori criminals. No brackets and tribal details for them, though, which selectivity is simply unabashed hypocrisy.
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