Why the world laughs at Lefties
Again and again, well-meaning progressives set themselves up for ridicule by championing ridiculous causes that alienate the average person, writes David Penberthy. And now Fireman Sam has copped a roasting.
Rendezview
Don't miss out on the headlines from Rendezview. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It’s a good thing that when the terrified residents of the Sunshine Coast rang triple-0 this week to save Peregian Beach they didn’t have to rely on the Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service in the UK.
They may well have found the fireys were too busy attending a course about gender identity and sexual stereotyping run by the local university’s sociology department to do anything so onerous as actually fight a fire.
Forget the genuine policy challenges of equal pay and career progression. In a major victory for women everywhere, it emerged this week that something has at last been done about that paragon of misogyny, the children’s cartoon character Fireman Sam.
The Sun has reported the Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Service has decided to take the fire axe to Fireman Sam as its mascot because he perpetuates the stereotype that only men should fight fires for a living.
MORE FROM DAVID PENBERTHY: How can one street contain so much violence?
Fireman Sam was invented in 1980 by two London firefighters — possibly in a sinister plot to stop women from joining the fire brigade — but he has now been given his marching orders in Lincolnshire.
This is despite the fact the wholly innocuous children’s program also features other characters who are female as well as some who have mixed ethnic backgrounds.
Lincolnshire is having none of it. They have instructed their staff to stop wearing Fireman Sam costumes, stop using his image in promotional material, and have instead introduced three new mascots, fire hydrants who in addition to being more inclusive also look quite stupid.
It’s a development that will have major repercussions for that other noted macho bigot, Bob the Builder, with his overtly masculine ways, strutting around with his tool belt as if to say women need not apply.
And if you move beyond the world of sexism to broader questions of body image, the Teletubbies and the Fat Controller from Thomas the Tank Engine might also have some explaining to do.
The Fireman Sam story is a bit of silliness but it also has a serious side in that it again underscores the capacity of well-meaning progressive people to hold themselves up to ridicule. This has the effect of setting back their cause in the eyes of the average person, and is more counter-productive to their long-term intentions of social change than any external right-wing attack.
MORE FROM DAVID PENBERTHY: The Left are now doing the Coalition’s hard work for them
It’s a self-generated setback for those who want to create a more equitable and fairer world.
In a more jaw-dropping vein, the best example of politically correct absurdity came this week from The New York Times. It has only taken 18 years, but it seems the most venerated liberal newspaper masthead on the planet has finally worked out exactly who was responsible for the terrorist attacks that happened just down the road on September 11, 2001.
It was the Wright Brothers.
Publicising its special report on the anniversary of 9/11, The New York Times published this tweet: “18 years have passed since airplanes took aim and brought down the World Trade Center. Today, families will once again gather and grieve at the site where more than 2000 people died.”
Those pesky airplanes, taking aim like that.
The astonishing thing about this tweet is it’s rooted in a noble belief we should never forget such a despicable atrocity, while tying itself in knots to ensure we ignore an absolutely fundamental part of it. That, or we are at least polite enough not to keep bringing up key facts again for fear of hurting people’s feelings or engaging in stereotypes.
The other thing this tweet does is give ringleader Mohamed Atta and his crazed Islamist chums a massively generous discount to the tune of 977 human lives in chronicling the death toll.
MORE FROM DAVID PENBERTHY: Don’t underestimate the dork. He may win
Perhaps the journo was too lazy to look up the figure on Google. It is particularly bizarre coming from a media organisation based in New York City, where you would assume a sense of justified moral outrage at being the targets of this attack would ensure it is always described with total candour.
There is of course a polite way of describing what happened that day — a group of men sharing a common theological belief commandeered planes and interfered with navigational equipment while loudly affirming the greatness of their chosen deity.
Even that might be getting a bit too close for comfort in the politeness stakes. Perhaps it’s easier to describe them as merely s — t pilots who liked a bit of religion on the side. No, best leave the religion out of it completely.
You don’t change the world by getting out the airbrush to erase hard but actual facts from the historical record. You don’t change it by holding hand-wringing meetings about the subliminal hegemonic undertones in cartoon characters.
Or actually, maybe you do. All this PC stuff is what helps make people like Scott Morrison Prime Minister and Donald Trump President, in that the combined effect is to unfairly paint everyone on the Left as laughable, living in la-la land, and detached from those tangible and meaningful day to day issues that affect people’s lives.