Bongo Bongoland and the Mail
The Mail last year, reporting on a BNP candidate:
Race hate remarks... like what?
"Can they not be nice people in the fucking Congo or... bongo land or whatever?" If that's race hate, then I wonder what this letter is, in today's super soaraway we're-not-racist-and-we-don't-like-the-BNP-oh-no Daily Mail?
It was the ever-lovely Tabloid Watch who found this rather unpleasant letter first - and thanks to John for the photo. (I also like the 'the woman on the One Show' letter below, claiming that a perfectly understandable Northern Irish accent is 'indecipherable'.)
The original Bongo Bongo Land came from Alan Clark, I'm led to believe, and it's since become a bit of a byword for "that bit of the planet below Europe" for all thick and mildly xenophobic types. I've even used it myself (ironically, please note) for a kind of wearyingly ignorant attitude towards foreigners. Speaking of which, let's never forget this absolute classic:
Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them.
Beautiful empathy and concern for the genocide in Rwanda, there. And the author? Of course, it was Richard Littlejohn, now the Mail's star columnist.
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June 10th, 2010 - 12:52
When did Littlejohn publish that hateful remark?
June 10th, 2010 - 13:04
Back in 1994, at the height of the genocide. Don’t think he was working for the Mail at the time and may still have been at the Sun – but they knew full well, thanks to articles like that, the kind of journalist they were employing. Johann Hari covered it here:
http://www.johannhari.com/2005/06/12/richard-littlejohn-racist-and-homophobe
June 10th, 2010 - 23:53
Yeah, he definitely wasn’t working for the Mail at that time. Would have been The Sun.
June 10th, 2010 - 12:55
God, Littledick is such a contemptibly inadequate piece of shit… Though I’d love to see this one day:
“Does anyone really give a monkey’s about what happens at The Daily Mail? If all sentient beings wish to wipe out Richard Littlejohn then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them.”
June 10th, 2010 - 12:55
And way to belittle an eating disorder with serious physical side effects too! “The Former Soviet Republic of Bulimia” … hilarious!!!
June 10th, 2010 - 12:57
I went to Bongo-Bongo land on holiday once. Beautiful flora and fauna, though it was a bit odd how all the natives wore thongs and had bones through their noses. Except the paramilitaries, of course, who needed somewhere to keep their machete.
Contrary to popular belief though, they actually don’t drink ‘Um Bongo’ there: it’s made primarily for the export market, and technically the things they play are congas.
June 11th, 2010 - 11:09
Are you sure that was Bongo-Bongo Land, Alex? It sounds like Edmonton to me.
February 5th, 2011 - 10:49
Well, of course not. If you want to find Um Bongo drinkers, you should have gone to The Congo.
June 10th, 2010 - 13:00
If you don’t like it, just don’t bloody watch it. why is this so hard to understand?
June 10th, 2010 - 13:24
Because it isn’t a matter of taste. It’s a matter of Morals. This means it is not just a question of what I like but also, and much more importantly, of what other people – possibly less level-headed than myself – may be exposed to.
I thought it was Wonga Wonga Land, myself.
June 10th, 2010 - 13:27
Because ignoring something is much less fun than moaning about it. My favourite is the type of person who goes on a comment board about a particular subject (it’s usually, but not exclusively, a tv programme) to inform everybody how he/she has never watched said tv programme because its inferior quality makes it completely unworthy of his/her attention. Such a person attempts to simultaneously moan about and ignore something. I comfort myself with the thought that this mind-boggling act of pompousness and stupidity is such an impossible contradiction that it rips open a hole in the fabric of existence, through which the moron is pulled by the force of his/her own self-regard, and is never seen again.
June 11th, 2010 - 08:21
“If you don’t like it, just don’t bloody watch it. why is this so hard to understand?”
Sage advice, after all that’s what the entire world did while the Tutsis and Hutus slaughtered each other in Rwanda, and look how that turned out?
Ignore everything unpleasant, you know it makes sense.
June 14th, 2010 - 11:03
eek – i think (hope) SK meant that the letter writer doesn’t have to watch every single football match of the world cup if he doesn’t want to, makin his letter even stupider! after all, there isn’t a law forcing you to watch the world cup, you can turn the TV off…
June 10th, 2010 - 13:58
The phrase Bongo Bongo Land was around, on both sides of the Atlantic, long before Alan Clark used it c1984.
The Evening Independent (St Petersburg, Florida) contained the following on 2 March 1967:
“You’d have to go to bongo-bongo land to find a road more backward than route 60 to Tampa Airport,” a driver grumbles, “It takes 5-10 minutes to cross the feeeway because there’s no traffic light. In backward countries, this is taken care of by putting in an overpass or underpass or light. Wouldn’t this area like to catch up with the 1840s?”
Memory is never to be totally trusted, but I am sure the phrase was in quite common usage in the 1960s.
June 10th, 2010 - 14:06
Sk – it isn’t about watching the football, it’s about the racist letter…
June 10th, 2010 - 16:22
That Littlejohn bloke talks some rubbish doesn’t he.
Why do people read the daily mail? How do they get away with printing racist stuff like that?
The guardian is a far better read for more intelligent people who only talk facts
June 11th, 2010 - 08:23
“The guardian is a far better read for more intelligent people who only talk facts”
Except for the cunts who post comments there.
June 10th, 2010 - 22:30
Cracking.
In response to Bernie above please research PCC and the editor of the Daily Mail. Comparision should produce a chuckle of horror.
http://www.twitter.co.uk/CjEggett
June 11th, 2010 - 07:19
The letter below it seems to be continuing the racist theme too.
June 13th, 2010 - 11:36
Just catching up on the reader backlog. Am surprised that the contemptible little knob didn’t call them Mbongo and Mbungo, thereby displaying some paltry connection with the real world, even if it is only a long-gone forerunner of Sunny D, marketed entirely on casual racism. From the 80s. For kids.