Erindipity Column No 5

Sunday Tribune
16/12/07

Most racist ad

HERE’S a question: what do cribs, David McWilliams and mobile phones all have in common? Answer: they proved over the past week-and-a-half what a hyper-sensitive race we’ve become.
Let’s get the crib thing out of the way first. By now, you’ll know that Catholic publishers Veritas had to remove the word ‘crib’ from a Christmas radio ad on RTÉ. This, the station explained, was because advertising the sale of cribs could be seen to promote
Christianity, which is against broadcasting rules. No-one had complained about the ad, it was just that RTÉ was afraid the Broadcasting Commission wouldn’t like it.
This PC lunacy provided a nice backdrop to what happened to head boy of the Pope’s Children a few days later.
David McWilliams was slaughtered on Monday for a joke he made during a speech in Dublin where he described Mercedes drivers as “knackers”. Some newspapers picked up on the comment and decided that it was “offensive”, although they didn’t actually name any offended parties. It also wasn’t clear who was more “offended” – the Merc drivers or the knackers. And who were the knackers referred to? Were they the people who take old farm animals away to remove their hides?
Balls, anyone? ‘Knackers’ is also slang for testicles, which are, indeed, very sensitive.
One “shocked” paper appeared to give the impression that Macker’s knackers were people from the Travelling Community. This use of the word IS grossly offensive and should, obviously, never be tolerated.
McWilliams wasn’t referring to Travellers when he made his joke. The word ‘knacker’, when used by southside boys like the economist, refers to the anti-social types who hang
around outside shopping centres drinking Blunden Village Extra Skanger cider and abusing passers by. The type that revel in their lack of respect for everyone else. The type
that are in permanent danger of staticelectrocuting themselves every time they lift a metal can to their lips due to the amount of polyester they wear.
But David is not the first famous Irishman to use the ‘K’ word in public.
Actor Patrick Bergin did and the public loved it when he wrote the . . .

Second most politically incorrect
(but well-meaning) song title

This ditty was premiered on The Late Late Show in 2003 and was called, simply, ‘The Knacker’. Patrick’s knacker entered the Irish charts at number 16 and festered there
for two long months. Its apotheosis was number 11, where it stayed for one week. People actually bought it.
His song, as we said, is only the ‘Second Most etc’. Top slot in the non-PC charts goes to singer Linda Martin.
Linda has enjoyed unprecedented success over the years in the Eurovision Song Contest – a competition designed to promote harmony among the peoples of Europe.
She has represented Ireland twice in it – winning in 1992 and coming second in
1984. All that ‘hands across Europe’stuff would count for nothing if the PC police knew about a song she recorded in 1978. (They’re just about to find out.)
Unlike Patrick’s ambiguous title (he could have been singing about meatrendering
or balls) there can be no mistaking the subject of Linda’s warblings.
The song she hit the charts with was called … ‘Liffey Tinker’.
Erindipity has tried – admittedly not very hard – in vain to source the lyrics, but can recall that the tune’s heart was in the right place. It may or may not have told the story of a poor Traveller girl begging on O’Connell Bridge. Then again, maybe she was named ‘Liffey’, and ‘Tinker’ was her surname.
It really doesn’t matter as – and let there be no mistake about this – it was a craptastically cloying, sentimental piece of sludge which should have been named ‘Liffey Stinker’.
Younger readers may be surprised to learn that it was commonplace for settled people to refer to Travellers as tinkers back in the 1970s in a non-pejorativesense (although not always, of course). This was the age when Irish folk collected little tokens off tea boxes
to enter a competition for a car. It was the age of the…

Most racist, but least offensive,
racist advert

‘Buy Lyons Tea (da-dah-de-dah-dedah), drink Lyons Tea (da-dah-de-dahde-dah)… Lyons the (something, something) tea’.
This was the jingle that accompanied Des O’Meara’s animated advert for that brand of beverage. For 26 years the nation smiled as the ad’s little, spindly-legged black and white
minstrels danced across our TV screens. Nowadays, of course, they would (rightly) be considered a racist stereotype. In their defence, they didn’t set out to offend and, as there were far fewer African people in Ireland back then, there were less people to take offence.
There were plenty of old people, though, who might have been unimpressed with the…

Most ageist of ads

Monday’s Liveline switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree with irate callers complaining about phone company Meteor’s TV ad which features an old woman being thrown out of a Christmas party. Sounds horrible on paper, doesn’t it?
The old lady arrives at the house and has her present put through a scanner while the hosts examine it to discover it’s a tea cosy. She’s shown the door with her ‘son’ and leaves, saying “stuff your turkey”. The implication is that if you want to make someone happy at Christmas give them a Meteor phone.
It’s mean-spirited, unpleasant and a little shocking at first viewing but – and this is where Joe Duffy’s listeners missed the point – IT’S A JOKE. It’s supposed to be all of those things to make the viewer laugh. Even the 92-year-old English actress who played the granny phoned in to say it was all just a “bit of fun”.
The following day, it was the turn of that actress’s compatriots to take offence at us Paddies and, in particular, Des Lynam, who played a central role in the…

Most sexist of Paddy ads

Limerick man Des appears as Santa with a curvy Big Brother contestant as his helper in sports channel Setanta’s Christmas advert. One visitor to the grotto is clearly enraptured by the lady’s cleavage and mumbles that he’d like a “couple of puppies” for Christmas. As “puppies” is slang for breasts, more than 20 people complained to the British Advertising Standards Authority that the ad was sexist and offensive. Whether it is or isn’t, the Big Brother contestant didn’t look too unhappy about it.
(Anyway, surely the important message from this should be that “puppies are not just for Christmas”?)
Staying on the subject of English sensibilities, we finally arrive at the…

Most racist of Irish ads

In February, bookmakers Paddy Power took a trouncing over a newspaper ad it ran before the historic clash at Croke Park between Ireland and England. The Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland (ASAI) upheld two complaints about the ad, including
one that it could incite racism.
The advert showed paramedics carrying a ‘player’ dressed in the English kit off the field with the heading: ‘Coming for to carry you home’. This was a reference to England’s unofficial anthem ‘Swing low sweet chariot’.
This, one complainant said, could incite racism. The other told the ASAI that the ad appeared to be relishing the prospect of injury.
Newsflash: just about everybody on this island was relishing the prospect of John Bull getting his arse kicked that afternoon. It might be something to do with 800 years of racial intolerance directed at us on our home turf.
Incidentally, the ASAI may not know that ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ is an 1862 African-American slave song. It was also an old standard of the Civil Rights movement of the Sixties.
Where else could you find an ad deemed to be ‘racist’ for using a line from one of the great anti-racism anthems?
There you have it. Almost two weeks of people taking offence over nothing and giving offence for fear of causing offence.
So, David McWilliams, if you’re reading this, say ‘knickers’ to the knacker-knockers.
And we’ll leave you the way we came in – with a Christmas-themed question.
What’s the difference between the Baby Jesus and someone who doesn’t want you to enjoy yourself?
One’s the God in a manger and the other’s a dog in the… (etc, etc, etc).


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