Billericay Dickie: the mask slips
Johann Hari has called Richard Littlejohn out for the use of a single adjective in the meandering toss about the forthcoming US Presidential election.
A single word? Well, it depends on the word in question. And there's the genius, and the hatefulness, of Littlejohn.
While the word 'uppity' might not have much currency over this side of the Atlantic, it does in the States, I'm led to believe, where it has rather entrenched racial connotations - an 'uppity' black man is someone who's got ideas beyond his station; it implies arrogance on behalf of someone who really should know who's the boss-man. There's a bit of a plantation vibe going on.
Not all English people will know this. Well fair enough. But Littlejohn spends a great deal of time in his gated Florida mansion, where he's sure to absorb a lot of the culture. He spends a large slice of the year in the southern states. He must know this kind of coded language. He must know what it means and what it represents to say such things.
He knows what he's doing.
But, as is so often the case, he's doing it with enough of a handle on deniability to turn around and say "Me? Did I mean that? Oh no, you're just playing the race card, you're just being a PC fascist, it's all in your pretty little head, you see things when they're not there; I simply mean 'uppity' to mean 'uppity' - it's your fault for trying to create antagonism where there is none. It's just a single word - you leftie fools are always trying to stir up a hornets' nest over language; you really are quite pathetic".
Make no mistake: it's a craft, keeping enough of a whiff of deniability about something utterly poisonous; being able to say something but having the option of pulling the lever on the trapdoor if you so much as suggest that he's saying what he's saying.
But he's saying it.
The mask slips every now and then. Just long enough so you see what's really underneath.
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August 18th, 2008 - 04:41
By the standards of the American press (“Obama is a Muslim, Obama is the AntiChrist, Obama is really the reincarnation of Malcolm X” etc etc) that is quite subtle.
But as you say, not subtle enough to see what he really means.
August 18th, 2008 - 11:30
Who’d have thought anyone could describe Littlejohn as subtle. But it is true. I bet he’d love to be as insane as O’Reilly and Coulter but is savvy to know no British editor would allow such sub-standard hate speech even in the most downmarket of tabloids.
Hari is right to take Littlejohn on. Our political culture doesn’t need any more debasing.
August 18th, 2008 - 19:26
Hmmm, interesting link to the background on the words. I notice that ‘sassy’ was used in a similar vein as ‘uppity’.
Now maybe I’m reading too much into this but these days sassy is pretty much universally used to describe women who ‘do their own thing’ etc, its never used for men.
Perhaps a reflection of certain attitudes towards women who are in control of their lives?