Former England footballer Paul “Gazza” Gascoigne has just pleaded guilty in court to a “racially aggravated public order offence.”
If you didn’t know the details, you might imagine he’d done something serious.
Nope. Here’s what happened:
Gascoigne was speaking at a venue in Wolverhampton, as part of his An Evening With Gazza tour, where audiences around Britain are paying upwards of £30 a head to hear anecdotes about Gazza’s days as a footballing legend.
At some point in the evening, Gazza made an ill-advised quip at the expense of a black bouncer standing in a darkened part of the auditorium. Gazza joked that he couldn’t see whether or not the security guard was enjoying himself because the venue was poorly lit.
Yes, you probably had to be there. It’s not the funniest joke ever told. But nor is it the kind of remark you’d ever imagine getting anyone hauled up before the courts. It’s just laddish banter of the kind you’ll often find when boozed up blokes are gathered together. There’s certainly no malice in it and in the old days – before the era of licensed victimhood and professional offence-taking – that security guard would perfectly well have understood this, in much the same way any white person would have done in the Seventies or Eighties had they been singled out as the butt of a joke by, say, Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy.
I originally reported that the bouncer had complained to the police – but it turns out I maligned the poor fellow. It wasn’t the black bouncer who complained but one of those grisly SJWs – often known as Offendotrons, usually white – whose speciality is to patronise ethnic minorities by taking offence on their behalf. This Offendotron reported to the police and the police, in accordance with the wishes of the rampantly politically correct Crown Prosecution Service, decide to make an example of Gazza.
Gascoigne, the judge claimed, is guilty of the “sort of insidious racism” which needs to be challenged.
Well I’m not so sure about that. My fear is that this kind of case, far from healing racial divisions in Britain is likely to exacerbate them by fostering a climate of mutual resentment and bitterness and a sense that “Britain is no longer a free country any more.” Which indeed it isn’t. In Britain – taking our cue from the identity politics victimhood culture of the US – our minority grievance industry has now become so powerful that you cannot even make a mildly tasteless joke without being dragged before the courts and treated like a criminal.
And it won’t be long – you can be sure – before jokes perceived as offensive to women result in similar court cases.
Already one local police force – Nottinghamshire Police – has declared “misogyny” a hate crime.
Its definition of “misogyny” is worryingly broad:
Nottinghamshire Police is recording incidents such as street harassment, verbal abuse, unwanted physical approaches and taking photographs without consent within the hate crime definition.
It also includes using mobile phones to send unwanted messages, unwanted sexual advances and ‘unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement’, possibly including wolf whistling.
So where would that leave Matt LeBlanc, the Friends star currently being vilified by the left-liberal media for daring to make some awkwardly flirtatious comments about Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) from Game of Thrones at the Emmys?
Well, if you believe the Feminazis on Twitter, hanging is too good for him. Here’s one of the SJWs Buzzfeed quoted in support of its thesis:
Well hang on, just a second.
Number one, Emilia Clarke is a massive fan of Matt LeBlanc as she revealed a while back on the Graham Norton show when she flirted with him quite shamelessly.
Number two, how is the random view of some random female from Brazil – retweeted thus far by a grand total of six people – and a couple of other random females in any way representative of where the real world is on this matter?
Number three, if you’re going to make out that its weird and creepy for men to express enthusiasm for the sight of hot chicks’ naked bodies in Game of Thrones, then you might as well imprison pretty much the entire straight male population and throw away the key.
Number four. Brazil? Hello?? Zika; a collapsing economy; massive crime; favelas; ladyboys; hideous pollution??? Shouldn’t a Brazilian girl have other priorities than thought-policing US comedy stars?
Number five. How in heaven’s name did these nasty, vindictive, narrow-minded, identity-politics-obsessed Social Justice Warriors ever manage to gain such a hold not just over our media but over our justice systems too?
Number six. Free speech, anyone? Anyone??