My Bite

I am very aware that most of my posts could be described as ‘lacking in edge’.  I do not have much bite.  I scour each post before publication and excise anything that I think might be offensive.  There are many many people out there who should be roundly offended, I just don’t feel that it is my job to do it.  Occasionally I do build up sufficient bile that it spills over into a post, but by the time I have ‘moderated’ myself, I doubt that anybody else ever notices.  For that select little band at which it is aimed (the usual suspects) I have nothing but contempt, which is watered down to disdain by the time it hits the page and mild aversion before I hit ‘publish’.  I wish I was more hawkish, but if ever I attempt to ‘go for’ somebody, I am always reminded of what Denis Healey said about an attack from Geoffrey Howe – it was like being savaged by a dead sheep – although I also remember that, in the end, it was the dead sheep that brought down Margaret Thatcher.  I can bleat quite effectively…

Having spent a lifetime searching for ‘The Lighter Side*’ I find it quite difficult to deliberately annoy – although I fear that I am probably in a class of my own at doing it inadvertently.  Most of my favourite comedy is, at heart, silly.  That doesn’t mean that it can’t make a point, it just means that by and large, those at whom it is aimed don’t see it coming and, more often than not, don’t notice when it has gone.  Cast your mind back a thousand years to Monty Python’s ‘Upper Class Twit of the Year’: everybody thought it was hilarious, but nobody thought that they were the Upper Class Twits.  Least of all the Upper Class Twits.  It is possible to land a perfect punch without your opponent even feeling the wind of it.  It doesn’t stop them beating the sh*t out of you later of course, but at least everybody knows that you got in first.

Like everybody else, I get incensed by man’s inhumanity to man.  It comes in so many forms and – take a look around you – it surrounds us all, but I no longer have the faith that I can do anything about it.  I have brought up my children to be good people and they have done the same for my grandchildren, but honestly, look at Putin, look at the Taliban, look at Chinese democracy.  Look at our own soulless politicians.  Look at all the people with the complete conviction that they know best…

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword, never had to fight a duel did they?  ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,’ is much nearer the truth.  Do you think that Putin ever takes offence at words?  No, he takes revenge.  He has the biggest sticks and the stones.  All I have is consonants, vowels and subordinate clauses, and telling him (and his like) to ‘F*ck Off!’ doesn’t seems to bother them much at all. 

If my teeth weren’t so fragile, I’d bite them…

*For which I must thank the incomparable Dave Berg