Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse (3 page)

I don’t think those ministers really want to damage or destroy the BBC, but they’re willing to risk it on the outside chance of saving their political skins. I, for one, find that very difficult to forgive. But then I’m easily offended.

A statement from Madame Tussauds has been causing offence. The world’s most famous collection of wickless candles announced: “We proactively encourage our visitors to interact with the waxworks should they so choose.” No surprise that
caused a stink, you’re probably thinking. It’s one of the most horrible sentences ever written. Why “proactively encourage” rather than “actively encourage” or just “encourage”? And what’s that “should they so choose” doing there? If the visitors have so chosen, you’re not encouraging them actively, proactively or otherwise, you’re just letting them. That’s the opposite of proactive: antipassive, presumably.

That’s not why the statement is controversial, though. It’s because it defends tourists’ right to stand beside a waxwork of Adolf Hitler doing Nazi salutes. An Israeli couple visiting the attraction (“attraction” is the word people use, right? Rather than “museum” or “racket”. “Attraction” as in: “I really can’t understand the …”) were horrified both by the fact that there was a likeness of Hitler at all and that people were posing next to it doing fascist gestures. It was their complaint that elicited Tussauds’ assault on the English language.

I’m not doubting for a moment the sincerity of the couple’s distress. Well, all right, maybe just for a moment. There. It’s over now and I’ve concluded they were properly upset. God knows, they’d just queued up to get into Madame Tussauds on a summer’s day in London. They’d be tired, hot and £57.60 poorer. Of course they’ll have been disgusted and horrified by what they saw inside. And then, to make matters worse, they notice people saluting next to Hitler’s waxwork.

They wrote in their complaint: “We are the grandchildren of concentration camp survivors – the very people that Hitler tried to kill.” Of course I can understand why they might consider tourists frolicking with his likeness to be a display of inappropriate levity. But their complaint went further than that, claiming that the Nazi gestures and cries of “Heil Hitler!” were “an unequivocal demonstration of antisemitism and bigotry”.

I just don’t think that’s true. The couple actually photographed two young tourists heil-Hitlering next to the waxwork, and one
of them is doing the moustache with her other hand. I’m pretty sure that neo-Nazis don’t do the moustache. They certainly didn’t do the moustache at the Nuremberg rallies. What those kids in the picture are doing, I’m willing to bet, is taking the piss out of Hitler.

That’s why I think it’s a shame that Tussauds’ reasonable response created a stir. Having apologised for any offence caused, Tussauds continued on the subject of interacting with the waxworks: “We absolutely defend the right of our visitors to make such choices for themselves, as long as they behave themselves responsibly.” The repeated “themselves” isn’t great but I completely approve of the sentiment. And I was disappointed that Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, did not. He said: “I’m appalled at Madame Tussauds’ insensitive comments defending such activity, as surely they have a responsibility to ensure visitors behave appropriately and respectfully at their museum.”

Respectfully of what? Hitler? Does he think the girl shouldn’t have done the moustache? Or does he think Madame Tussauds should ban a specific arm gesture when people are standing next to the Hitler waxwork? Or ban it in general so they can’t do it next to Margaret Thatcher, Sting or Timmy Mallett either? After all, Germany has banned it throughout the whole country. What a stereotypically German solution to a stereotypically German problem. Given the chance, they’d ban authoritarianism.

When you ban something like this, you only dignify it with significance. You spoil the harmless piss-takers’ harmless fun and you justify fascists in their feelings of oppression. You take a stupid gesture out of the realm of mockery and you give it illicit cachet. Whereas, in general, freedom engenders freedom. If you let people do what they like, human decency usually prevails. Anyone doing a Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler” for reasons other than a joke is unlikely to garner sympathy. There are always evil, oppressive
forces at work on any society but they’ll be found wanting in guile if they come at us goose-stepping and shouting “Sieg Heil!” for a second time. The only thing that could make that seem attractive or worth following, even to an idiot, is if it were banned.

It appears that Lord Janner and I fundamentally disagree on the importance of solemnity where discussion of Hitler is concerned. He seems to think that, since the murder of millions isn’t funny, there is nothing to laugh at about the Nazis. I think that’s nonsense. One of the attributes of the British of which I am most proud is our reaction to Hitler and his regime: both during the war and subsequently, we’ve always found them so funny, so ridiculous.

It beggars belief, it is positively hilarious that a whole country fell so completely in thrall to a posturing little prick like Hitler, who needed no help from our propagandists to look daft. There he is in the footage, making his speeches, all weedy and sweaty and cross – and there are the thousands of people cheering him as if he’s Elvis. It makes you laugh like Titania falling in love with Bottom.

It’s perfectly possible – and important to our understanding of the human condition – to find that amusing, to laugh at the goose-stepping, the shouting and the pomposity, while simultaneously holding in our heads the tragic murderous consequences of Nazi power. That’s what makes the joke bite and also what reminds us that the massive disaster was human.

Churchill got this. It was no accident that he insisted on mispronouncing Nazi as “nar-zee” and referred disparagingly to “Corporal Hitler”. He wasn’t underestimating the scale of the threat or making light of people’s suffering. But he knew it was vital to remember that the evil men who were jeopardising civilisation were also risible little twerps.

Many second world war veterans were accustomed to joking about Hitler. Spike Milligan and his contemporaries founded a
comic tradition of making fun of the Nazis which has given us Peter Sellers’s performance in
Dr Strangelove
, “The Germans” episode of
Fawlty Towers, Dad’s Army, ’Allo ’Allo!
, endless YouTube resubtitlings of
Downfall
, and Prince Harry’s party gear. Just because the wartime generation has largely gone, we mustn’t lose our comic nerve. While we must never forget the scale and severity of Hitler’s crimes, we will have lost something precious if we start taking him seriously.

In the tense presidential election campaign of 2012, feelings were running high …

Robert De Niro has got into trouble for telling a joke. When introducing Michelle Obama at a Democratic fundraiser, he said: “Callista Gingrich, Karen Santorum, Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?” It went down well at the time but the next day Newt Gingrich seemed unamused: “What De Niro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologise for him. It was … beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself.”

That’s a tough response. Gingrich reckons that De Niro’s remark is so offensive that he can’t even apologise for it himself. The apology has to come from the head of state. Not even Russell Brand ever went so far that Her Majesty was called upon publicly to atone. So I doubt that De Niro’s half-hearted attempt to say sorry will have quite slaked Newt’s thirst for contrition: “My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone – especially the first lady,” the actor said.

Gingrich is attempting a particularly ambitious scam here, but it comes amid a thriving apology extortion racket in public life.
Those who wish to silence others have noticed that expressions of offence and demands that people say sorry are the best way of doing it. Once you’ve demanded an apology, you can logically continue to demand it until you receive it. Often those called upon to apologise will do so just to silence the clamour – they can’t match the complainants for bloody-mindedness.

Not even Jeremy Clarkson can. He’s a man accustomed to causing offence and yet even he said sorry for a remark he made on
The One Show
, purely to silence apology-extortionists’ demands. I say “purely” because, when seen in context – even a
tiny bit
of context – there was nothing offensive about what he said. On the subject of public sector strikers, he spoke the words: “I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families,” but he was clearly not advocating any such thing, or even using it as an off-colour superlative of disapproval. It was a comedic dig at the BBC’s requirement to represent all opinions. I’d be surprised if I agreed with Jeremy Clarkson’s views on the trade union movement, but not as surprised as if I discovered that they were that strikers should be shot. He’s a Tory, not a Nazi.

But we live in such lamentably literal times that those who understood the joke were shouted down by an alliance of the stupid and the opportunistic – which meant the government called for an apology, and so did the opposition; the BBC gave way and then Clarkson also caved, saying: “If the BBC and I have caused any offence, I’m quite happy to apologise for it alongside them.” Like De Niro, he covered his pride by saying sorry for the offence caused rather than the remark itself – but you can feel the frustration, the shrug: “So we surrender to stupidity, do we?” Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.

It reminds me of being made to apologise as a child. I remember a specific occasion when my parents were furious with me for some reason. And I was furious with them. It was a standoff. They were demanding an apology or else, as I recall it, basically
nothing was to be allowed in future: food, sleep, not eating all my food, not immediately going to sleep, going outside, being allowed inside, contact with the cat – all banned. It was a massive campaign of sanctions and I was livid. And so I apologised. And then my mother said: “Say it like you mean it.”

“But I don’t mean it!” I screamed, trying to reason with her.

“Well, it doesn’t count if you don’t mean it.”

This was evil, I immediately felt. They might be able to force me to apologise but surely it was inhuman for them to attempt to make me mean it. It was none of their business what I meant. Was I to be punished for a thought crime? My insincere apology was the best they were going to get.

What they tried to explain was that such an apology was worthless to them. They wanted me actually to be sorry, not just to say it – to understand that I’d done something wrong. Only that sort of apology meant anything. They didn’t want to humiliate me – they wanted me to learn something.

The same cannot be said for Newt Gingrich. If he were acting honourably in this case, then an extorted apology, one that he’d demanded, whether it came from De Niro or Obama, would have no value for him. If he or his wife were really hurt, or if he felt genuine concern that the joke, as he complained, “divides the country”, then he should say only that. And if, in consequence, Robert De Niro felt sorry and said so, then it would mean something. Or if, bizarre though it would be, Barack Obama felt guilty that this epoch-endangering quip had been made at an event in aid of his cause and was moved to express contrition at having been so thoughtless as to allow an Oscar-winning actor to make an unvetted remark at a dinner, then that would have some power to soothe poor Newt’s bruised soul.

But that’s not the situation. Clearly Gingrich isn’t hurt. Nor is he worried that a gag at a fundraiser will have any negative impact on American racial harmony. It would take a bigger
fool than him to think any such thing. He merely sees this as an opportunity to humiliate an opponent and boost his fading chances of the Republican nomination in the process. That’s how politics is played these days, both in Britain and America.

Such vindictiveness offends me and I demand an apology. Also, as a pale person, I consider Gingrich’s phrase “beyond the pale” to be deeply racist. It’s inexcusable, in fact. The least Newt could do is get down on his knees and pray for forgiveness – preferably to Allah. And I want Robert De Niro to say sorry too, just for being in the same sentence. And I want an autograph. Anything less would be disgraceful. I mean it. I’m as genuinely upset as Newt.

The police have been going through a rough patch. First they were implicated in the phone-hacking scandal – though they managed to escape most of the blame when we collectively came to the surprising conclusion that it was more serious for tabloid journalists to neglect the public interest than officers of the crown. But while they deflected a lot of that responsibility, their attempts to deflect it over Hillsborough have been catastrophically counterproductive. And while senior officers have been caught dining with Murdochs or maligning the dead, officers on the ground have been getting shot and called plebs. Or not called plebs, depending on whom you believe.

Meanwhile, the Police Federation’s attempts to extract retribution for the disputed p-word, in the form of Andrew Mitchell’s sacking, have been roundly slagged off by former Labour minister Chris Mullin, who described the organisation as “a bully”, “a bunch of headbangers” and “a mighty vested interest that has seen off just about all attempts to reform the least reformed part of the public service”. He didn’t call them
plebs, though. Then again, some police have taken to wearing “PC Pleb and Proud” sweatshirts, so perhaps the insult has lost its sting? Maybe they’ll soon be sporting “Sergeant Headbanger Will See You Now” riot shields or stab vests with the slogan “You Needn’t Try Stabbing
This
Mighty Vested Interest”.

Another accessory which the Police Federation advocates is the Taser. It has written to the prime minister asking for the number of Tasers to be trebled so that every frontline officer can have one. “They need to have the proper equipment to do the job,” says Paul Davis, secretary of the Federation’s operational policing subcommittee. And officers certainly seem to be getting a lot of use out of them. While, in London, Andrew Mitchell was pondering whether he could continue as Chief Whip, or would be reduced to private self-flagellation, a policeman in Lancashire Tasered a 61-year-old blind man as part of an operation to check whether his white stick was a samurai sword. It wasn’t.