(Deep fried) chip on shoulder

[philmophlegm]

Apparently Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble for referring to our glorious leader as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot".

That Mr Brown has only one eye is not in doubt. I suppose if you were a Labour politician, you might take umbrage at the suggestion that the person that you voted in as the best qualified leader in your entire party might be an idiot, but no, what Mr Gordon Banks, Labour MP for Ochil and South Perthshire, objects to is the "unforgiveable" accusation that Gordon Brown is Scottish.

"Most people here are proud that the prime minister is a Scot and believe him to be the right person to get the UK through this global economic crisis", said Mr Banks.

Now, now...

The Wikipedia entry for Mr Banks says that he was born in England. And of course he shares his name with England's greatest ever goalkeeper.

Methinks he's a little over-sensitive about Scottishness...

EDIT: His own website doesn't even say where he was born, but that he went to school in Alloa. He'd have been 11 during the 1966 World Cup. I wonder if he was bullied for being English...?

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

Um, sounds like it! I strongly suspect that "idiot" was the insult intended, and that the adjectives were just put in to make it sound a bit more colourful. "Gordon Brown is an idiot" sounds a bit tame. "Gordon Brown is a [adjective 1] [adjective 2] idiot" carries a great deal more force, and it doesn't really matter what the adjectives in question are, except that if they also happen to be obscene one can deduce that the speaker is really annoyed. :-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Quite!

I could sort of understand it if instead of the word "Scottish", Clarkson had used some offensive synonym. I can't think of something particularly Scottish, but if say he wanted to insult Neil Kinnock, an equivalent to "one-eyed Scottish idiot" might have been "ginger-haired Welsh idiot" which doesn't sound too bad - whereas "ginger-haired sheep-shagging idiot" would be.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Colour me oversensitive, but without getting into any hairsplitting debate of whether Scottishness attaches to parentage, accent, place of birth, length of residence or place of upbringing, personally I think the "one-eyed" part is obnoxious. (What a surprise, considering the source.) I knew Brown was visually impaired but would not have thought of him as one-eyed and further I do not see the relevance to the statement that he is an idiot, any more than his Scottishness. That he has got where he is despite disability makes it mean and pathetic and frankly just LAZY of Clarkson to choose that as an intensifier.

I may be taking this ever so slightly more personally considering that 10 months ago I thought I might be going blind in one eye.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

At least you're not Scottish! {;-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

By the way, Gordon Brown is literally one-eyed, not just "visually-impaired" - he has a glass eye (although he hides it pretty well, and to be fair to him I don't think he makes a big deal of it).

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about the glass eye, so until you told me about it, the "one-eyed" was just bizarre to me.

[clarienne.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that either!!

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

See my comment

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I rather suspect that Mr Clarkson is using Mr Brown's glass eye to camouflage a snarkier comment, "one eye" being a way of referring to someone as like unto the "one-eyed trouser snake". So there's an underlying theme saying GB is a prick.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Classy...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Gosh that's a clever piece of rather Freudian psychoanalysis.

Remind me. What does your wife teach...?

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I'm a bloke, Clarkson is a bloke (possibly an alpha bloke) it didn't need any ferkin' analysis :p

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

It amuses me - and I'm sorry to say this - that offence has been taken and Clarkson apologised for, the two demonstrably true parts of the statement (the PM is both one-eyed and Scottish and these are not deniable truths) but not the insulting and debatable noun! What is more, there are no PC alternatives for either one-eyed or Scottish, though there are nastier terms for both.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"What is more, there are no PC alternatives for either one-eyed or Scottish..."

Caledonially-challenged?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

*snork*