Writerings

Whenever a celebrity or sportsman is ‘cancelled’ for ‘historic tweets’, I immediately have to search out the offending tweet. It feels grubby and I know I am feeding the clickbait outrage machine, but I feel I need to know. I want to see just how offended I should be by the tweet. Or rather how offended I need to pretend to be to rile my dad up. Sometimes they blur letters or words and I struggle to work out what the slur is supposed to be. It’s like solving a crossword clue. A slur against Asians, 6 letters, beginning with W. Except it is the opposite of a crossword clue in that not getting it something to boast about. I’m so woke I don’t even know what this racist slur is.

As well as the obviously moronic, there is something rather oxymoronic about the phrase ‘historic tweets’. No matter how many times a history teacher tells a bored class of students that we are living through history, I still think some time is needed to describe something as ‘historic’. The term also lets the perpetrator of the hook somewhat. We see the term and think ‘oh, they’re not actually racist, they just said something that is now being reinterpreted as racist’. Sure, it’s a different climate now, but we knew racism was bad in 1996 let alone 2016. But of course, time is a great fudge and a humble apology can make us all feel good about what ultra-enlightened times we now live in. Although, in the case of the cricketer Ollie Robinson, he helpfully added #racist to his tweets, demonstrating both stupidity and honesty.

The other interesting thing to note from the Ollie Robinson incident is that it was that ultra-woke publication that is the Daily Mail that first dragged up the tweets. A good reminder that most of this ‘culture war’ is manufactured. If they can keep us angry about the opinions of a person who throws a ball really fast, then we won’t notice all the systemic stuff (that changing would cost capitalists money.

The classic curveball interview for politicians at the turn of the century was the ‘pot question’. Bill Clinton infamously said he used it, but never inhaled. It seems times have moved on from then though and now old social media posts are the currency of gotcha journalism. I scrubbed all nine of the Facebook statuses I ever made back in 2014. There was a trend for a while at uni of dragging up cringy old statuses by commenting on them. So I think I am safe, not that I know any racist slurs anyway, you know.

EDIT: I’d like to end by saying that I regret the opening lines of this post. Times have moved on and I regret those comments. Clearly we are in different times now, things have moved so quickly. My behaviour was wrong and I apologise. But, I feel I am a different person now. With my head held high I can post again.