Someone told me today they think Boris Johnson shouldn’t apologise for writing it was “absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes” because we have free speech in this country. Rowan Atkinson says Johnson shouldn’t apologise because it was a joke and it was funny. I’m a little worried about Atkinson’s sense of humour, but that aside we are missing one important fact: Johnson is not a comedian. He’s laughable, but that does not make him a comic.
Comedians make their livelihoods by making us laugh. Many don’t self-censor, even when they know it is going to get them into trouble. Ricky Gervais, Jack Whitehall, Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr have all said things that have got them into trouble with someone. The thing is, we know they are comedians. We know they don’t necessarily believe what they say, but it will make us laugh. Jimmy Carr openly says when jokes are offensive and he probably shouldn’t tell them, but he’s going to anyway. Frankie Boyle just tells them.
Boris Johnson is not a comedian. He is an elected official of Great Britain and until recently the Foreign Secretary – someone you would hope is knowledgeable and tolerant of other countries and cultures. He is not.
Under the guise of a blustering buffoon, Johnson is at best an ignorant racist, a product of a privileged, rich, white, male life. At worst he is just a racist.
In 2010, he described members of the commonwealth as “piccaninnies”. Not a word used very often in Britain and I’m pretty sure my only previous experience of the word was in something like an Enid Blyton novel. There’s a good reason for this; it’s a racial slur that most people would never dream of using. Johnson not only used it, he managed to insult the majority of the commonwealth by doing so. He later apologised for saying this and acknowledged it was offensive. Quite how he couldn’t tell this before hand is uncertain.
Johnson seems to think he is unable to be racist due to some Turkish ancestry of his own and his mother-in-law’s Indian heritage: “My children are a quarter Indian… You can’t out ethnic me.” It’s like the man down the pub being racist and then claiming “I can’t be racist I’ve got a black friend/colleague/neighbour/ex-girlfriend.”
A comedian tells an offensive joke in a way that sets the audience up to oppose them, to be the good guys. You can sometimes hear the shocked gasp from the stalls as a comic delivers something offensive.
The difference is that the comedian’s audience knows the joke is offensive and that the comedian only told it to make them laugh.
When an elected official who has held high office (as well as being Foreign Secretary, Johnson served two terms as mayor of London) makes a statement people aren’t laughing. It isn’t funny. But people are listening. Those people who have a dislike of different cultures or religions are listening. Those people who don’t like that “foreign family” are listening. The EDL are listening. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is listening. The bloke down the pub who reads and believes the Daily Mail is listening. What they are hearing is that it is okay to be offensive to people of the Muslim faith, particularly women. What they are hearing is that they can be openly offensive to Muslim women. The bus driver in Bristol thinks he has the authority to ask a Niqab-wearing woman to get off his bus. Teenagers in London think it’s okay to taunt a woman in a niqab with a bunch of letters waved in her face. It’s okay to do all this because an elected official said so. He legitimised open racism.
Had a comedian said it, and actually made it funny, the audience would have gasped and then laughed. They would never have taken it seriously.
A comedian didn’t say it. One of our leaders said it and where leaders lead, people follow.
Yes, Johnson should apologise. If we let him get away with this, we too are legitimising racism and colluding with those who are pushing soft fascism into our lives.
It’s not about free speech, it’s about fighting the encroachment of soft fascism and blatant racism. Neither have a place in twenty-first century Britain.
