"[A story] from the Telegraph, 'Tradition of Christmas in Danger of Dying Out'. Apparently people aren't putting oranges in stockings anymore....er Ed...? I seem to vaguely remember a story about MPs and stocking and oranges but I think that was something else.Now, I love a good sick joke as much as the next person, and to be honest I thought it amusing that the Lib Dem candidate would make light of the sexual practices of a former Tory MP when they had a leadership candidate with, shall we say, "interesting tastes".
Still, Mark Oaten didn't die of course. It does pose an interesting question though. Imagine, if you will, if Boris Johnson had made a joke about an (almost) dead Liberal involved in a sex scandal and taken the mickey out of his sexual tastes? Oh I don't know, Jeremey Thorpe perhaps?
What do you think the Lib Dem and Labour reaction to it would be? Boris would be hounded as a homophobic hatemonger. Meanwhile, Paddick can happily take the piss out of a guy that died enjoying himself with his stockings and oranges, make a party political jibe, and no one bats an eyelid?
Crazy world huh?
23 comments:
paddick so clueless he probably doesn't know what party the mp was from, to be honest, dizzy.
I think you'll find that the lamentable, but as yet un-late, Thorpe is still around, actually - forgotten but not gone.
Foucault described it best. Knowledge = power, and power dictates what is normal and what is abnormal.
Boris, being his normal self, would therefore be abnormal. And that is 'evil'.
Corrected teesbridge. Arse!
Bunnies can, and will, go to France!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the late Stephen Milligan MP for Eastleigh, which is now Chris Huhne's constituency? With such a tiny majority, Huhne had better have words with Clegg about smacking Paddick down a notch. This is the sort of thing that could just get plonked in a newsletter and kill a campaign.
Surely the joke, though it's more just a flippent comment, is on Mr Milligan's misadventure using this items, rather than judging his sexual practices. Paddick is gay, but I don't know what's so extraordinary about his own sex life. If you do Dizzy, do share.
Well, it's somewhat tasteless and also quite old story. However, let's not forget that the victim of the fatal self-bondage was a member of the 'Back to Basics' morality lark back then, just like Edwina and John, who decided that 'basics' also has to include 'instincts'. It's all still kinda funny, in an unappetisingly sad, bitter and sarcastic way -- a classic collection of losers tragic-comically trapped in their own hypocrisies.
Then again, whilst this bit of British humor for once has some logic too it, let's not get carried away about the style and quality of it either...
"Meanwhile, Paddick can happily take the piss out of a guy that died enjoying himself with his stockings and oranges, make a party political jibe, and no one bats an eyelid? Crazy world huh?"
No not crazy Dizz, just relative my friend. You have to be part of the leftist self regarding club before you can make jibes in this way. Remember only leftists have a sense of humour. Non club members using such material must be castigated without mercy and affixed with a pejorative label that can be hurled at them in perpetuity.
You learn something every day; I honestly though Jeremy Thorpe had died years ago.
The point is that the truly scandalous part about the Thorpe business was the alleged murder, not the homosexuality. To call homosexuality a sexual 'taste' IS homophobic - it simply doesn't equate to stockings and oranges. The Mark Oaten comparison, on the other hand, stands, because he paid for it, and because 'it' may well have involved some very unhygienic practices indeed. There is no particular hypocrisy here - it's just a slightly bad taste joke.
Is Jeremy Thorpe really alive ? Coo
Cinnamon - Wasn't John Prescott photgraphed hoisting Tracy onto his shoulders, with his hand up her skirt, at a Christmas party and having sex behind doors in an office of state, and having her driven in a ministerial car to and from assignations on other government property,i.e., his grace and favour residence owned by the taxpayers, for some slap and tickle? - and wasn't Bundling Blunkett having an affair with another man's wife and using his office of state to fix a visa for his girlfriend's nanny, and taking her on taxpayer train rides a part of the corrupt Blair regime? - and wasn't Peter Mandelson fast-tracking a phony 'permission to remain' for his Brazilian boyfriend and lying on a mortgage application?
Like lying Blunkett, didn't he have to resign twice?
And if I'm not mistaken, Cherie Blair "mistakenly" walked through the Green Channel at Heathrow although carrying $15,000 of "gifts" from Donna Karen New York (DKNY)? ("Oh, gosh, here's the Green Channel that is for people who have no purchases over a certain amount and no free gifts to declare! Suits me!" And her people tried to fight it ... she, a barrister, hadn't quite grasped the law in this instance: "Nothing to Declare" - but the Prime Minister's wife finally had to pay up?
Wasn't the corrupt Tony Blair the one who ramrodded the Human Rights Act through Parliament, giving his wife carte blanche for phony cases and asylum seeker claims against the British?
And weren't Blair and his close associate Lord Levy and their taxpayer-paid associates under observation by Scotland Yard for months? For the sleazy crime of selling our honours to benefit the Labour Party?
And didn't Cherie Blair use an international con man convicted on three continents to finagle a deal on some investment property she was set on buying in Brighton?
I'm not sure that a man who died acting out a sex fantasy and John Major's affair with Edwina Currie stack up, frankly.
"To call homosexuality a sexual 'taste' IS homophobic"
Bollocks. A man fucking a women is a sexual taste just as much as a man fucking man or a woman fucking a woman is. Equally, someone likes to pissed on, shit on, or fuck animals, is a sexual taste. Trying to make it sound like I'm being homophobic is pathetic though.
No, it's really not bollocks. Sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality) is prior to sexual 'taste'. Sexuality determines who you want to get into bed with, and doesn't change; your 'tastes' are what you do when you get there, and are much more of a frivolous thing. This is why we don't have laws specifically protecting the rights of people who tie themselves up and stuff things in their mouthgs, but we do have laws protecting the rights of homosexuals.
So if you don't like the word 'homophobic', let me put it a different way - to call homosexuality a sexual 'taste' shows a misunderstanding of what homosexuality means.
And I don't know if I was supposed to be impressed by all the fucking and shitting in your comment, but it struck me as a little childish.
"sexuality determines who you want to get into bed with"
What you mean like who you fancy? And that's not a matter of taste? Again, you're talking bollocks.
to call homosexuality a sexual 'taste' shows a misunderstanding of what homosexuality means.
No it doesn't at all. Sex is a question of who or what you fancy, and what you fancy is a matter of taste. If you want to suck dinkey dick because sucking donkey dick gets your rocks off then that is your sexual taste. It is you that is misunderstanding things not me.
As for your comments on "rights" my views are very well established on this. I don't believe the state confers rights on people, groups, or anything else. I think we tell the state what it is prohibited from doing and everything else we are liberty to do. The gay movement, as my gay colleague said to me, was, quite rightly, about not being treated like a deviant outcast, it was not about getting special treatement as a minority group. Sadly though we live in a society that currently politically feels that everyone needs to be pigieon holed into this or that group and accorded special privilege. That, like your other point is also complete bollocks.
As to the "childishness" of using the words shitting and fucking. Would you prefer I have said defacate and bodily penetration? I don't say these things to impress people, I say what I want to say and express in the most simple to understand way I can.
No, I'm not having that. What sex (as in man or woman) you fancy is not a matter of taste. You really don't get a say in the matter. Who you fancy, as in which individual person, is - and so is what you do with them. So, my point is that the first is not something that should be a target for attack - because it isn't a 'taste', it isn't chosen.
As for your other point: if you think that's what the state SHOULD do, then fine, even though you are probably not in the majority opinion these days. But if you think that's what the state actually does, then you're misguided. And the purpose of legislation protecting gay rights (or any particular minority group) is not 'special treatment' - it is protection in the face of unfair discrimination. Once that unfair discrimination is no longer a widespread phenomenon, then fine, get rid of the law. But until then, gays deserve to get the same acceptance of their sexuality that everyone else does.
Lastly, Dizzy, while I understand that you disagree with me, and that plenty of people might too, saying that my view is 'bollocks' does not make it so - especially when my view happens to be that of the majority (though probably not on this blog).
Mathew,
Brian Paddick, despite being a member of a state protected minority based on sexual intenterest, is expressing disgust for a minority sexual interest.
A queer position indeed.
"No, I'm not having that. What sex (as in man or woman) you fancy is not a matter of taste. You really don't get a say in the matter."
I strongly suggest that you go off and read a little. There remains much diverse academic debate on the nature of sexual orientation and how environmental or physiological factors play a part in it. To make such statements of certainity is highly dubious, both scientifically and logically. As a gayer acquaintenance has just said to me via MSN, "the only thing you need to understand homosexuality is that men like cock"
if you think that's what the state SHOULD do, then fine, even though you are probably not in the majority opinion these days. But if you think that's what the state actually does, then you're misguided.
Again another statement of certainty about the majority. With the added ad populum fallacy that if the majority thinks something it must be right. As de Tocqueville warned, the "tyranny of the majority" is a dangerous thing.
saying that my view is 'bollocks' does not make it so - especially when my view happens to be that of the majority
Oh this is delicous isn't it? To accuse me of a fallacy that is not there and then assert again an ad populum argument in defence really does place you in a silly intellectual position. Once upon a time Copernicus said that all the people in the world who said the sun revolved around the earth were talking bollocks. The majority said no, we are the majority and we are right. As I said before, the tyranny of the majroity is adangerous thing, and thinking that because everyone beleives something to be true it must be true is just... well... it's bollocks.
Firstly, it's hard not to oversimplify when you're arguing in the comments section of a blog! Secondly, while the academic debate might be 'diverse', and while nature v. nurture is contested when it comes to sexuality, it is still not regarded in the scientific community as a 'choice'. And if you really want to play the "some of my best friends are black" game, Dizzy, I can assure you that the gay people I know would agree (yes, the men who like cock - very clever).
Plus, my point was not that the majority opinion must always hold, but that to treat it as if it is self-evidently untrue (by simply calling it bollocks) is silly. Also, the theory that the sun revolved around the earth was not exactly the product of peer-reviewed science - think of a better example next time. And while you're at it, try reading the whole of "Democracy in America" so you can use more than the part that gets used on quote-of-the-day calendars.
"gays deserve to get the same acceptance of their sexuality that everyone else does."
When you say acceptance do you mean the act of "believing in", i.e. people should believe that gay people are actually gay, or do you mean approval of their sexuality in which case do you believe that religions such as Islam and Christianity should be banned because of their profound disapproval of homosexuality.
I don't know who the fuck you think you are but don't go around telling me what I should fucking well approve of.
"To call homosexuality a sexual 'taste' IS homophobic"
What the hell are you on about. Taste dictates preference. Gay people prefer getting jiggy with the same sex.
How is this line of thought homophobic.
If I try a new food and don't like the taste then I will avoid eating that food. If on the other hand, I tasted a cock and loved it, I'm sure I would spend more time in the company of obliging men.
In other words, I would be gay.
Maybe the discussion is moot. One must not forget that homophobia, like racism, is a modern thoughtcrime and those who like to decry people with such epithets are masters of manipulating the meanings of words.
Can anybody tell me what the LibDems actualy stand for?
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