[BITList] PC

[HUGH]

I get the feeling Political Correctness will eventually strangle all of us.  A case in point ......

I am contributing articles to a book being published locally on the history of Port Glasgow, and one of the articles describes the games we played in the 40s. One of these games was played with a blunt penknife, on the rare occasions any of us possessed such a luxury as a penknife, even a blunt one.  The end of the blade would be placed on, say, a knuckle, with a finger tip on the other end, and the knife had to be flipped over to stick in the ground. This having been achieved, one moved on to the next bit of the body, and so on, in a fixed sequence.  A mistake gave the honour to the next set of clutching hands.  I was invited to attend a meeting, and heard that the description of this childish game was inappropriate, vis a vis "knife culture", and should be removed.  Apparently all of the material for the book is being hawked round schools and other places, so that it can be examined for sedition, heresy, and such, and my article had caused a flutter of distress in some bosoms.  What, I was asked, would be the reaction to that game of someone who had lost a child through being murdered by someone with a knife? Not being prescient, I hadn't a clue, and told them so.  I did make the point that history was history, and denying the existence of my silly wee childhood game differed only in degree from denying the Holocaust.  This they did not like.  I withdrew the whole article, and I'm considering the others.

Hugh.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20090725/3c1dd888/attachment-0001.shtml