Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley got the ball rolling when he apologised for saying that white lives matter as much as black ones.
I don’t know how closely you follow US politics, but saying something like that could end the career of any presidential candidate. By ‘something like that’ I mean anything that in any way, no matter how inoffensive, may be perceived as ‘insensitive’.
Insensitive, that is, to any faddish passion consuming any mob, provided that said passion is febrile, widespread and, above all, politically correct.
In this instance the politically correct passion wasn’t just febrile but downright explosive. It was set off by the activist movement Black Lives Matter, meaning the lives of black criminals shot by white policemen.
An officer may be returning fire, saving a hostage’s life, trying to protect himself from a knife thrust – the circumstances of each such case are unimportant. If the policeman is white and the criminal is black, America will be consumed by fiery riots expertly whipped up and stoked by professional rabble-rousers – such as the Black Lives Matter group.
Speaking at a rally of leftie (‘liberal’ in American political slang, where words tend to mean their exact opposites), Mr O’Malley was greeted with the thunderous braying of “Black lives matter!”
The candidate, erroneously feeling amply protected by his impeccably ‘liberal’ credentials, decided to expand the notion. “Black lives matter,” he agreed – and then added the potential career-ender: “White lives matter. All lives matter.”
You what!?!? White lives?!? All lives?!?!? Who do you think you’re talking to? Where do you think you are, you insensitive whitey? This is a LIBERAL gathering! Context, man! In this context ONLY black lives matter, and if you don’t apologise you won’t get away with your own white life, at least its political incarnation.
Following a nation-wide fit of hysterics, a grovelling apology ensued. “I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or to communicate,” wept O’Malley, “that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to the issue.”
Especially those of us who seek the Democratic presidential nomination, which Mr O’Malley can now kiss good-bye. Upholding the sanctity of human life, whatever the colour of the body housing it, isn’t just insensitive or archaic. It’s borderline criminal.
Our lot wouldn’t be outdone in the apologies stakes. We have our own context, much more advanced than the Yanks can boast. There the typological answers to the Black Panthers and the Weathermen of yesteryear provide the deafening din to accompany politics, but they don’t yet control either major party.
In Britain, our second largest party, Labour, officially called Her Majesty’s Opposition, is already in the hands of the extreme, loony Left. Obviously, in the course of their distinguished careers, all its senior figures have said publicly things that a civilised person wouldn’t even utter at a boozy dinner party.
A short catalogue of their aphorisms would make the party unelectable even in the likely conditions of a financial meltdown come the next general election. Hence it’s important to get the mendacious apologies in early.
Shadow Chancellor (Labour’s second in command) John McDonnell led the way. He didn’t mean to say back in 2003 that IRA terrorists should be “honoured” for their “armed struggle”. Presumably he meant to say they should be hanged, but his tongue committed one of those Freudian slips that can be ever so embarrassing.
Neither did Mr McDonnell refer to Bobby Sands, him of the chicken supper fame, as a hero. Or, if he did, it was another slip of the tongue for which he apologises most abjectly, “from the bottom of my heart”. He was actually giving his recipe for a hero sandwich, and Bobby’s name came up inadvertently.
While at it, Mr McDonnel also apologised for his “appalling joke” about Margaret Thatcher. The humorous aside had been an expression of his heart-felt desire that he could go back in time for the sole purpose of murdering Mrs Thatcher, as she then was.
What he really meant was that he wanted to perform this unlikely backward leap in order to honour Mrs Thatcher and rebuke those IRA consumers of hero sandwiches who almost succeeded in murdering her with that Brighton bomb in 1984, which was one thing you can’t pin on Bobby Sands, who died in 1981, but wasn’t a hero anyway, while Margaret Thatcher was.
The joke, said Mr McDonnell (or should one call him ‘Comrade’?) has “ended my career in stand-up”. He really shouldn’t give up so easily: I’m sure his full economic programme will be a laugh. And if he ever becomes our Chancellor, we’ll all be rolling in the aisles – of the airliners taking us as far away from The People’s Republic of Britain as one can get.
Now, in the spirit of the time, I’d like to apologise unreservedly yet insincerely for any offence my remarks might have caused. I don’t know what came over me.