Last night, I wanted to write about the trend of the current culture of outrage about anything mildly offensive. The reason was this newspaper headline:
The story here is some students made some spoof advertisments in a student newspaper for commemorative 'Royal Doulton' style crockery. The subjects were well known murderers of the UK, and the theme was, apparently, "[celebrating] the plucky mischievous Brits who did gratuitous violence best".
The artwork and sentiment is good, highlighting the pithy nature of these advertisments in Sunday magazines, whilst cleverly transposing the tired images of Princess Diana or the Queen Mother with those of the The Wests or Peter Sutcliffe.
At the moment, more comedy theory than comedy gold. This is the thing that Viz (see links) have been doing, and doing it better, for as long as I can remember.
This is where the Birmingham Mail comes in.
Badged as an exclusive (how could simply reporting something that has already been printed in another publication possibly be an exclusive?), the story is the front page headline - "Fury at students' sick ad", with the sub headline of "China commemorates UK's violent child killers". More on that section later.
Using information garnered from the story itself, I can reduce this headline to virtually the word "Students'".
Within 61 words of the main text, the "ad" is revealled to be a spoof.
"Fury" seems to relate solely to the quotes from the un-named spokeswoman from the 'Support After Murder and Manslaughter' support group. She says, "It is incredibly offensive to bereaved families bereaved families and glorifies violence and killing". She ends with, "I will certainly be complaining to the university."
From this, I can confidently say that the spokeswoman was tipped off with information from the Birmingham Mail, and had no knowledge of this until contacted by them - the future tense of the complaint action is my clue here.
Support After Murder and Manslaughter are based in Finsbury Square, London, and more information on them can be obtained by clicking here.
The response from the university can hardly be called "fury". An un-named spokesman for the University of Birmingham will be censuring the un-endorsed newspaper by telling them to stop using their logo and to not distribute their magazine on campus. Damn! That's fury alright!
"Sick" is entirely subjective. Some people who have been affected by murder or manslaughter could find this offensive, but I feel that they are not responsible for raising this important issue to the attention of the Birmingham Mail - otherwise they would have been quoted. Or, at least referred to in some way.
The peice ends with "[editor of the magazine] Mr Bacon refused to apologise and said: "It is deeply regrettable that people waste their money on this kind of sentimental tat advertised in Sunday newspapers, which our 'advert' was clearly lampooning."
So, pretty much a non story.
So offensive were the images and their potential to "glorif[y] violence and killing", the responsible and considerate journalists print the pictures in colour over two pages.
Following on from recent high profile, agenda setting outrage news stories (i.e. Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand, Carol Thatcher), it appears that the Birmingham Mail has finally found something truly shocking and will not stop until it has hounded the protagonists into a Mail-engineered forced apology.
The editorial piece on page 52 seems to confirm my view; "...the mock advertisments...are crude, silly and just plain wrong. [...] Those behind this muddle-headed escapade should grow up, get real and apologise immediately".
Erm, apologise to whom, exactly?
Friday the 13th saw the expected follow up piece, headlined by "Legal action by University of Birmingham over student newspaper". The legal action in question is referring to the unauthorised use of the university crest. (Link here.)
This misplaced crusade for justice I am sure will be quietly dropped as soon as some real news arrives. Like snow.
As someone who has taken risks with humour ever since taunting the school bully for comic effect, this is concerning to me. Misunderstandings often ending up causing the most offence, and, perversely, I am more offended by the Mail's cavalier approach to bargain bucket journalism than the original spoof commercials. Misunderstandings often arise by people who mean well, but take things too far.
Hopefully, the Chinese Embassy in London won't misunderstand my email, underlining the fact that the Birmingham newspaper with the circulation of 176,395 (Source: ABC) printed these very words on their front page: "China commemorates UK's violent child killers".
But sadly, my piece was delayed by some urgent Solitaire or something like that.
Today's Independent features a (much better than mine) article on outrage and tolerance, by Johann Hari. Last week, he printed an article on the same theme, questioning the thinking behind the UN's decision to take religion out of 'free speech' during discussions. For example, if there is a discussion about unsavoury practices of a hypothetical 'particularly religious nation', this can be struck down as it is an apparent 'attack on my religion'.
Anyhow, this open thought peice was reprinted in Calcutta, which caused rioting and call for not only the local publisher but Hari himself for arrest. (The editor and publisher were subsequently arrested.)
Please read this article, if you can find it online.
The most important thing for me in that article is this, "Putting up with offence is part of being a free adult".
Here endeth the sermon for today.
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