The first Objective script is proving to be hard work for me, but this is always the way. I have to write four shows in four weeks and anticipate the usual depression at not being able to do it, followed by the euphoria of pulling it out of the bag. At least this year I am not trying to do As It Occurs To Me as well. But I am making slow progress and being very easily distracted. Finally after dinner today I managed to force myself to sit by my computer for an hour and wrote a whole sketch about the rhyme "eenie meenie miny mo" and how when I was a child it wasn't a tiger that was caught by the toe.
It is incredible to me that just thirty to forty years ago the word "nigger" was in a rhyme intended for children and that we were allowed to merrily chant it without anyone (as far as I recall) telling us off. I would be heavily chastised for swearing - I remember my dad was very cross with me once when I repeated a phrase said by a sportsman who had failed to win on the TV show "Superstars" and said, "It's a damn, bloody shame." We lived in a bizarro-Universe where "bloody" was rude, but "nigger" was fine. And this is the golden age that people who claim political correctness has gone mad are harking back to. What amazing values we had back then.
I had intended to write a skit about how whoever realised that the rhyme needed changing had perhaps acted hastily by substituting the word "tiger" (any two syllable word would have been fine, it didn't have to sound quite so much like the original), because I don't really think of tigers as having toes (although they do) and you wouldn't really want to grab hold of a tiger's toe anyway as it contains a concealed talon that might rip off your head. I don't think a tiger would do any squealing at this point. But the sketch became more about suggesting alternatively inappropriate offensive words, with no understanding of why that wasn't on.
Casual racism pervaded our culture in those good old days and I am not for a second saying that made any of us as individuals bad people or racists or evil. It was so endemic that it's foolish to blame individuals or try to make people feel guilty about it. But it's bound to have a subconscious effect on attitude and it did speak volumes about the way that post-war Britain viewed people who weren't white as inferior or laughable or criminals or at least with suspicion. And the insidious infiltration of these racist ideas into children's rhymes and toys was bound to have some consequences, if not for all then at least for some. I am glad we have grown up as a nation and I am glad things are different and I don't think we should pretend it didn't happen. But I suspect many younger readers would be astonished to know that their parents would be allowed to chant a nursery rhyme with the word "nigger" in it. I am and I did it.
And whilst kids will inevitably pick on people who are different and be cruel and thoughtless, this stuff did go hand in hand with actual out and out racism, which was not challenged back then in the way that it should be (many of you will remember teachers and priests using such language as a matter of course - Stewart remembers the Asian boy in his class being called "The Black Spot" by the teacher - not in a mean way necessarily, just as a matter of course, which sort of makes it worse). My teenage diaries have occasional embarrassing bits of racism (as well as sexism, homophobia and general idiocy) and I recall using the word "wogged" to mean stolen without even considering or realising its provenance. I was 19 years old at University when I used it and Stewart gently suggested that some people might find that offensive. I thought that was crazy as I had never meant it to mean anything to do with black people. But of course it did. It came from a culture where the idea that black people were thieves was so engrained that they used this most offensive word to indicate theft. And again the fact that I could use it without consciously spotting the connection is sort of worse than me doing it on purpose. I defended myself and felt affronted that I was being charged (however considerately) with racism, because that had not been my intention and I suspect that many of the people who defend the old day attitudes feel similarly accused and react in the same way too.
But ultimately the lesson is that it is worth challenging the consensus on stuff like this. Just because everyone says one thing is wrong, whilst another thing is right does not make it so. Sometimes it is worth fighting against. And on this one nearly everyone was wrong.
I hope the sketch I have written makes it to air, mainly because it was pretty much the only thing I had achieved all day - just as I was getting into writing the verdict of the Amanda Knox trial was announced, so obviously I then had to commentate about that on Twitter (it's my job) in an ill-informed and satirical way. It was said that she was looking forward to going back to America, and I commented that she didn't want to do that as they execute people when there's confusion over their guilt or innocence there. Before adding, "Oh sorry, I've just realised she's white... as you were."
It was mildly satirical and I am sure I wasn't the only person to point it out, but of course the fact she's white and wealthy doesn't mean she's guilty either. And the more I read about this case the more I think she probably isn't. Certainly the prosecution case and the evidence has been badly handled enough to make it ludicrous that she (and the other bloke- I am not interested in him as he is not a sexy woman and I am amazed on that basis alone that he has been released). So although we're left in the unpleasantly familiar position where the only person in prison for this crime is a black man, whilst the wealthy, white people go free, it's interesting that the prejudice I (and many others) initially felt today was towards the white defendants. When it should have been clear that she was way too sexy to be a murderess. Though is now significantly less sexy now it turns out that she isn't.
