The Angry Exile: Advertising race.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Tuesday 12 January 2010

Advertising race.

I just wonder, because KFC was told (by America) that an advert showing a white Aussie cricket fan passing around a KFC bucket to the pile of West Indian cricket fans was racist. Apparently it suggested (to Americans) that black people... er... actually I'm really not to sure what the septics were on about, but according to the Grauniad

The advertisement drew stinging criticism in some quarters in the US, where fried chicken is associated with age-old racist stereotypes about black people in the once segregated deep south.

Not that it was actually shown in the American south, mind you. Or anywhere at all in America for that matter. It just made it's way there via the interweb. But trust the bloody Yanks to get their cocks in a knot about an advert that doesn't relate to them at all but somehow offends the values that they think everyone else should have. Odd how defining people by their colour, which I feel is kind of what you're doing if you associate fried chicken with people from the West Indies simply because they have the same skin colour as some other people, is somehow not racist. I don't understand that myself. I don't understand how the slightest suggestion that a race has a particular trait, even in the most general terms, is racist, but displaying ignorance of a regional culture and cuisine because you've assumed a non-existent similarity based on colour coding people isn't.

So, to go back to the video clip, surely it's racist to portray a whole nation as a bunch of lamb-obsessed barbecue addicts whose reputation for having sex with them is based entirely on myth since no dinkum Aussie would fuck a perfectly good sheep in preference to cooking it? Or alternatively that not eating lamb here somehow makes you un-Australian and by implication inferior? Some Aussies are vegetarians and some don't like the taste* and probably there are a small number who really would prefer to put lipstick on it and show it a good time, and none of that marks them as being particularly Australian or un-Australian as far as I can see. Yet here are these guys from the Meat and Livestock Association having a laugh and implying that 21 million people are more or less defined by their common love of a lamb chop. Racist? Of course it's fucking not. It's just another ad campaign, and compared to the shite churned out by British quangos it's quite a good chuckle**, but if the KFC ad is racist I'm not sure why this one isn't. Is it because they is white? Because Aussies are doing it to Aussies and self inflicted racism doesn't count? Or because it's a silly idea that won't go anywhere because nobody's think skinned enough to take it seriously? If so that raises another question - what is the ethnicity of all these American commenters who decried the alleged racism of the KFC advert? Bearing in mind how a not particularly funny Jackson Five tribute act on a shit TV show here so offended that well known ~~African-American~~ American entertainer Harry Connick Jr recently I'd hazard a guess that many are actually white. White people, taking offence on behalf of black people. Why's that then? Do you think that black people aren't bright enough to know they've been offended or too weak and emotionally fragile to shrug it off, or just that they lack the confidence to say so themselves? Or perhaps you think they lack the maturity both to respect the right of others to hold opinions they themselves might find deeply unpleasant and to treat such people with the contempt they deserve? And isn't that pretty fucking racist too?

Fucking stupid white twats.

Can I say that?

* And they're missing out if you ask me. Never mind, more for the rest of us.
** I'm not sure the MLA is quite the same as a quango since it's 'producer owned' and seems to be funded mostly by levies on livestock. But on the other hand the levies are collected by the federal government, so...

2 comments:

JuliaM said...: I think we (by which I mean the West) have become too successful - we seem to have too many people with too much time on their hands.

Some are harmless and keep Facebook going or increase the repository of LOLcats, and some are malignant and join the ranks of the Professionally Offended.

We need to find out how to identify the latter at an early stage and take action to redirect their enthusiasm.

With a baseball bat, if necessary....; 12 January 2010 at 18:31
Angry Exile said...: I'd say put 'em somewhere they can indulge their love of dictating terms and rules but which doesn't really affect the rest of us. Golf tournament refereeing and cricket umpiring might be a start.; 13 January 2010 at 22:45