Yes, really.
For a poster advertising a primary school parents’ meeting, it is certainly unusual.But...?
Using models, it depicts scientist Charles Darwin surrounded by an angry mob wielding flaming torches and makeshift weapons.
According to the school governor who created it, City executive David Moyle, it is a satirical joke about pushy middle-class parents demanding higher standards.
Yet when black headmistress Shirley Patterson saw it, she believed it represented her surrounded by white parents.Do fucking what? What, did she think it was supposed to represent?
She reportedly compared it to a scene from Mississippi Burning, a film about the Ku Klux Klan’s racist lynchings...Starring Morgan Freeman as Charles Darwin? Oh, wait, no.
... saying it left her ‘fearing for her and her family’s safety’.Oh, please. Anyone with a torch is evocative of Deep South Klansmen lynchings? Really? Indiana Jones? The Statue of Liberty? The Fellowship of the Ring? Shall we go on?
Torch and a scale model. Also bearded. RAAACIST! |
Although the police realised Darwin was white, and said no crime had been committed, Southwark council insisted it had ‘appropriately’ investigated the ‘deeply disturbing’ poster.Seriously, guys, the only thing that's deeply disturbing is how quickly some people are able to see a race issue in something so patently unrelated to anything to do with race, and even a fairly cursory investigation should have found that out simply by asking David Moyle.
He found the image on a website mocking ‘creationists’ angered by Darwin’s theory of evolution...And a few minutes googling backs this up since I've found the same scene photographed from a different angle in a piece dated March 2009 about Darwin and the creationist/evolution argument. So you'd imagine the investigation would be over pretty quickly, eh?
I'm kidding. Of course you wouldn't. Not only is it a local council and almost certainly shot through with political correctness, but it's a Labour run council and likely more prone to PC bullshit anyway. And so inevitably...
‘A two-week investigation was carried out into the toy Charles Darwin’s ethnicity, before it was ruled “indeterminable”.I doubt it's justifying its assessment of the image as disturbing either. Oh, sorry, not just disturbing but
[...]
The Labour authority refused to reveal details of its inquiry – which involved half a dozen officers at a time when 500 jobs are set to be cut.
And it will not discuss how a model of a white, bearded, Victorian scientist could be confused with a black 21st century headmistress.
“deeply disturbing and damaging to children”Altogether now: Won't someone think of the chiiiiiiildren?
Fucking twats.
And the poor sod painted as a racist by this collection of idiot offence seekers, self righteous arsewipes, and bullying pricks? What of him? Well, having been suspended as a school governor over this lunatic claim he's not surprisingly thinking of taking his kids out of there and sending them to another school. Personally I think he has another lesson to learn.
"[...] as an ardent supporter of local government, I was taken aback by the reaction of the council, who not only fully endorsed the disproportionate reaction of the school management, but also contrived additional charges about the poster that had no relation at all to the original complaint.An ardent supporter of local government, eh? Mr Moyle, I think I've just spotted your mistake.