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Tintin in the Congo

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anotheoldgit | 12:36 Sat 14th Jul 2007 | News
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Is Tintin in the Congo a racist book, libel to incite racial hatred or is it political correctness gone mad yet again?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles /news/news.html?in_article_id=467757&in_page_i d=1770
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AOG

You're not racist...but you are absolutely obsessed by race.

I have run out of energy to keep up with your many takes on 'It's so unfair for white folks'.

I hereby give in.
By the way AOG...regarding my untrue statements...

Do you think that church attendances over the past 20 years have increased by 20%, or decreased by 20%?

Sunday openings have resulted in a massive expansion of commercialism on the 'day of rest'. These two factors are (I believe) linked.

Re: Tin Tin...it's a load of old donkey. That's why kids don't read it any more. It's poo. Even at school, we used to read Asterix, because Tin Tin was so...so...rubbish.

For God's sake - the boy wore plus fours!!!
Oh...and try not to think of 'uncivilised' and 'uneducated' as synonymous...they aren't in the same way that 'civilised' and 'educated' aren't synonymous.

You may think that they are linked, but that's specious reasoning.
well they better start doing this censoring properly cos that there othello by that bloke from stratford is full of racist stuff, tut, they best change all the copies and in future change the stage play too, can't be avin none of that!
Question Author
I hereby give in? ? ? but you know you can't can you my old sparring partner sp1814.

Yes I have become obsessed by race, It is because as a white man it is forever being pushed into my face, just when all I want is a level playing field for all no matter what colour skin one has.

We all want to be treated equal skin colour should not make any difference, we constantly hear coming from mouths of those not white. Then at the first chance they want special treatment because they are black or brown.
for example the wish to have their own associations, police, lawers etc etc, They are always refering to the black community or the Muslim community with their own leaders. Today I hear that Trevor Phillips has threatened to resign if Gordon Brown doesn't promote a Black MP onto the front bench, no mention of ability to do the job.

Now can you see why as a white person, I along with many others are just about fed up with this colour problem. I was born white nothing I can do or wish to do about it, but I do wish to be treated equal, and to forever not to tread on egg shells in case I offend someone who is of a different colour, religion or heritage.
AOG

Ah - but isn't that what everyone wants? A level playing field?

We all know that racism simply ain't gonna disappear. Look at what happened to the Jews in WWII?

You would've thought after that level of suffering, that the whole world would renounce anti-Semitism...but no, it's still around.

So, I reckon there will never be a time when everyone's happy. There will always be the perception of unfairness.

But this Tin Tin thing...the bookshop chain in question absolutely took the right steps. They didn't ban the book - they just moved it to a more appropriate section of the bookshop.

I honestly don't see what the problem is with this.
AOG
True I am not a man but I am white - I do not understand, how is an issue of race being pushed in your face every day?
Equality would be lovely but some people are disadvantaged at the word go, and it is not, never has been white men in the grand scheme of things.
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No I haven't finished with you yet sp1814.

Church attendances may have dropped but they haven't dropped 100% as you stated. And are you telling me you have never popped out to the supermarket on a Sunday? or mowed the lawn etc. on your day of rest?

Tintin was set in the 30s, so his clothes would be different, what did you expect him to wear jeans, trainers and a baseball cap one of those that has it's peak at the back? And there you go again kids don't read it anymore, you know this for certain do you? I don't know what school yiou attended sp1814 but I don't think Asterix would have been appropriate at my seat of learning, what depths has learning sunk to, one must ask?

To answer your last posting, if one is uncivilised, it must be obvious that one must be uneducated, but if you really want to split straws, by uneducated I mean academically.

Food for thought sp1814, so go into a dark room and have a lie down.


I'm a white man - race issues are not being forever pushed in my face.

What was that about learning not to speak for everyone else?
I've seen films from the 30s...and no-one, but no-one wore plus-fours...apart from the great Bob Hope...and he wasn't a cartoon character...neither was he a 16 year old international spy.

I also recall a scene in 'High Society' where Bing Crosby may have worn plus-fours, but I may be wrong because I spent most of the film yawning and wishing that I was watching the far superior Philadelphia Story, on which this poor, poor 'musical' was based.

16 year old kids certainly didn't run around in plus-fours.

Re: the day of rest...I welcomed the expansion of Sunday opening hours. I have no problem with it, because as you know, I'm a Godless soul who will be carrying his luggage on the 'down' escalator when I die.

There's little chance of 'my people' ever being let into heaven, so I may as well use my Sundays stocking up on food and going to the cinema.

Furthermore, I have never mown my lawn on a Sunday. That's a Saturday job.

Re: 'uncivilised and uneducated' - I just do not see them as synonyms. Here's why:

Say for instance you or I were dropped off a plane and told to live in the Gobi desert for a month...there are tribes there who are educated in ways that we aren't.

You and I would be dead within a week because our education has taught us how to wire a plug, how to conjugate the Spanish verb 'estar' and the names of the great kings and queens of Europe.

However, our education hasn't taught us which plants will kill us, and how to find underground sources of fresh drinking water.

Therefore the ideas of 'civilisation' and 'education' are, in my opinion, not interchangeable.
sp1814 if you take the down escalator it will be because you do not recognise the beauty of Cole Porter's music for High Society which imho is the only thing that makes either film watchable. Apart from that it's just a vehicle for putting down Hepburn for being an uppity woman (and Grace Kelly in her turn). The business of the philandering father reproving Tracy for heartlessness - for not forgiving him for his womanising - sticks in my craw particularly. But then I am politically correct and I think that Tintin in the Congo doesn't stand up well either. <hasty effort to put this post back on-topic>
"I along with many others are just about fed up with this colour problem."

You're not though, are you AOG? You absolutely love it. It defines who you are. You'd be lost without it.

Every day you scour the news searching desperately for a racial angle to the day's news. You actually look for reasons to be offended by the "colour problem". You can't get enough of it.

A couple of days ago, for example, you read that the police in Manchester had publicised the grief of a black family who had had three family members murdered. You had a go at spinning it to suggest that they were being treated differently because they were black or that the police were acting as they did as a kind of black-friendly PR exercise. Nice try.

On this thread, you're up in arms at the treatment of Tin Tin when even the author admits that the book's content is racist and an embarrassment. So it's being moved away from a children's section - not even banned. Good effort again.

Now, you're angry about special treatment. Associations just for ethnic minorities have got your goat. Note - the chief constables of the Manchester and London Metropolitan Police have both admitted that their forces are 'institutionally racist'. So have many other public bodies. That's why these associations exist, not to create a race war with us white folks.

Hmm, what else? Mosques being built? You ended up ranting that it would lead to churches being closed down or destroyed? Is that special treatment? Or supply and demand? Do you think that churches would be closing if they were supported by thriving christian attendances? No, you ignore that and try to suggest that muslims are receiving special treatment at the expense of these hard-done-by christians.

I look forward to tomorrow's installment.

Don't you think it's funny that Lewis Hamilton is doing so well in Formula One this year? Maybe he's been
....given a special car because he's black.
NJOK

Blimey - this is gonna be good!

jno - Cole Porter is a genius...I accept that unreservedly. However, I stand by my earlier statement that High Society is quite poo-ish.

And I really hate the Sinatra/Crosby version of 'Well Did You Evah'.

Yes the book is racist.

Whether it would incite racial hatred I don't know since as Splat pointed out earlier it is merely ridiculous in this day and age but I guess that would be subjective to who read it.
If you're a bear of very little brain it just might incite you to some hatred... or possibly a very bad hair do. The book is offensive.


Other things to note that have been touched on or I've noticed i this thread...

Asterix was always better than Tintin. And the dogmatix (?) in Asterix is cuter than Snowy.

I now have grave concerns about the musical tastes of jno as well as Splat.

Why after reading Splat's 'my people' can I not get images of an army of maniquens dressed in stripey tops and plus fours marching along to the tune 'I just can't get you out of my head in a robotic dance form'?!

I think NJOK just won either 'answer of the week' or 'answer most likely to get a very long response'. Please send us 29.99 plus postage and packing to collect your award.

Oldgit - I do suspect you of being on the wind up at times.

China Doll

Cheers...you just made me laugh so loudly that half the office is now giving me a dirty look and the other half wants to see what I'm reading.

Oh, and Cole Porter wrote some of the greatest songs of the last century, but if I recall correctly, you like Foo Fighters, or some other 'noisy boys', don't you!
I don't think the book would incite racial hatred; it's not an inciting sort of book. What it does do is assume that Africans are pea-brained fuzzy-wuzzies, and does so in a children's book. That is a pernicious message for any child.

Asterix is more widely read because it's funnier (and the Hockridge and Bell translations are very witty). Tintin is primarily an adventure character; the humour is an aside and rather laboured, though the artwork is beautiful. Personally, though, I get tired of these French guys drinking magic potions and beating everyone up. The series began after the second world war, and you can just see how the French were desperate to believe they could thrash everyone really, they'd just been a bit unlucky in the war.
Splat... at least you did not guffaw in to your coffee while wearing a white shirt, paybacks a b1tch eh?! ;-P Glad it tickled you tho.

I'm still chuckling at 'noisy boys tho' (so many answers, so little time).

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