Commentary on the Carol Thatcher business has been predictably superficial and self-righteous. Its real meaning is that racial correctness can only be understood in relation to religion. Bear with me.
Did she commit a serious offence? She referred to someone as a golliwog, obviously knowing that it was a taboo word, capable of causing great offence to black people, and of producing a frisson of disapproval among the white people who were actually present. It was, perhaps, a momentary lapse of judgment, a brief failure of self-censorship – there is no evidence that she holds racist views. For this lapse she has been dropped from a television show, and her reputation has been damaged beyond repair.
It sounds like a shocking over-reaction, political correctness gone Stalinist. She was guilty of nothing more than ‘bad manners’, says Simon Heffer.
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