Sim-O

WTF?

An early day motion calling for the US government to slap the wrist of one of it’s talkshow hosts made a throw-away joke that featured the Sikh Golden Temple. BenSix reports…

Johnny Carson’s unfunny protege made a joke about Mitt Romney’s wealth a few days ago, which involved suggesting that the Sikh Golden Temple was his “summer house”. No biggie. Damn, I forgot! We’re living in a world where things that should be no biggy are treated like biggies – hugies, in fact. Indians are furious; a bloke is suing Leno and in England an MP has proposed this motion…

That this House notes with concern the sketch on the NBC Jay Leno Show where the most sacred Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple, was disrespected by Jay Leno when it was referred to as GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s summer home; expresses concern and regret that this depiction of the Golden Temple as a home of the rich shows a complete misunderstanding of the Sikh faith and is derogatory to Sikhs across the world; believes that these comments are not acceptable to all those who believe in respect for all religions; calls on Jay Leno and NBC to apologise to all Sikhs for this disrespectful depiction of the Golden Temple; and further calls on the Government to make representations to the US government that while recognising principles of freedom of speech there should be more understanding and respect shown to the Sikh faith.

There’s so much to laugh at here. The claim that it was a “depiction of the Golden Temple as a home for the rich” misunderstands the joke – it’s not “isn’t it funny that rich people live there” but “wouldn’t it be funny if they did”. The idea that Leno was implying something about the nature of the Temple itself suggests that viewers of a prime-time American talk show would be aware of what it was. I’m not the only one who thinks that’s funny, no? Then there’s the cry that his jests were not acceptable to those “who believe in respect for all religions”. Well, deal with it. The sponsors of the motion might feel that offending religious sensitivities is beyond the pale but that’s no reason to insist that we follow their lead. They don’t seem to have grasped this, though, as evidenced by their breathtaking call for our government to lecture a nation because of a wisecrack that one of its comedians voiced. I’m no fan of the U.S. state but I have to admit that they’d be richly justified in sending back a note that reads, quite simply, “GTFOI”. Depressingly, this motion has gained the support of 6 MPs: Virendra Sharma; Jeremy Corbyn; John McDonnell; Kelvin Hopkins; Alan Meale and Peter Bottomley. May the Gurus frown on them.

I’ve posted about the drinkaware campaign before.

This time, well, see for your self…

To enter and get to the goodies of the site you need to be able to subtract eighteen years from todays date. This, apparently, show commitment to responsible drinking.

What fucking good is this little exercise? Anyone of the age of seven can do the maths and when was an age limit on reading about booze imposed?

[stops typing whilst thinking of the words ‘patronising’, ‘pointless’, ‘they’ (in the sense of ‘look what they’re doing’]

While browsing The Sun website for something to blog about (I try not to leave it all to Septicisle, honestly) I spotted this (istyosty link)…

FRIENDS of Jo want a national two-minute silence in her memory on January 31 at 6pm.

… and thought ‘eh? Really?’ I tried Googling and there are a couple of results but no links directly to the campiagn and the relevant results seem to be articles published today that have a variation of the above quote and a bit of a filler explaining who Jo Yeates is. Or was.

One result mentioned it is a Facebook campaign and after having a search on Facebook came up with nothing aswell. OK, I didn’t try very hard but I’d have thought putting ‘jo yeates 2 minutes silence campaign’ would’ve brought *something* up.

But anyway, 2 minutes silence. A national 2 minutes silence. Why?

I don’t meant to disrespect Jo, but why should there be a national 2 minutes silence for her? National silences are usually reserved for remembering stuff and people that has involved or had an effect on the nation. Like wars. Not for a single murder victim that no body had heard of before becoming famous in a such a tragic fashion.

Think I’m being harsh? Well, no I’m not.

We used to have one minute silences when I was a lad, and then, probably after Diana, Princess of Wales (to give her her proper title), I think, I crept up to 2 minutes and in the last couple of years 3 and 5 minutes have been bandied about. I think two minutes silence for Diana was two minutes too long, and she was the mother of our future king. She has had a little bit of an influence on Actually, probably not.

So, friends of Jo Yeates, if it is a real campaign, two things, 1) you’re probably better off usuing your energy on helping the police find Jos’ killer and 2) if you want to be slightly less disappointed with how may people observe a national two minutes silence in memory of Jo, you want to make your campaign a little easier to find. If it’s a Facebook campaign and I can’t even find it on Facebook, it’s just gonna be you guys silent on in a couple of Mondays time.