You might have thought that given the outpourings from the White House, the material could not sink to such low depths but what has happened in the last day takes ones breath away. A video has been posted depicting the ex-President Obama and has wife as apes and the video stayed current for some twelve hours before it was taken down as a ‘mistake’ The explanation given is that the White House was trying to portray politicians as animals from Disney cartoons with Trump naturally being the ‘king of the jungle’ whereas the Obamas were designated as apes at the end of the clip. Initially the clip was defended by the White House and only when there was complete uproar across the political spectrum including one black American senator was the clip taken down. When Trump was questioned about this, he said he had seen the earlier part of the clip and approved it but conveniently not the later sections including the racist taunt but does one believe anything that Trump says? Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals saying that this is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. She pleaded that the fake outrage be stopped and that the White House should report on something today that actually matters to the American public. Trump himself acknowledges that a mistake has been made but blames it all on an over-enthusiastic White House staffer and had refused to apologise for the content if the clip. Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory. The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president. Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016, Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the US. I personally have only once seen something as completely offensive as this. Early in my career as a teacher of sociology, I taught some ‘Race Relations’ and put on a series of voluntary videos on race and world religions which were shown at lunchtimes. These were completely voluntary but the students flocked to them and the students enthusiastic response to my efforts actually forced a change in college policy and I was happy to explain my actions before a special meeting of the Academic Board of the college of education in which I worked. I do remember, though, that one white member of the Board thought that my efforts were totally unnecessary because the only ethnic minorities that her students would ever meet in small English rural towns were members pf the gypsy and travelling community ( and ‘they were white in any case’) But as part of my researches, I did discover some examples of racist literature attempting to draw comparisons between black people and apes by drawings of caricatures side by side attempting to discern similarities between the two (I did not show any of this material in my own courses) naturally both I and the world have moved on in the last half century, one would have hoped. Meanwhile, I watched some of the opening of the Winter Olympics last night broadcast from Cortina in Italy but the Winer Olympics does not grab my attention as much as their summer counterparts. But I have to say that, like others, I do enjoy the opportunity to watch sports such as curling and the British team (largely Scots I would think) have got off to a flying start by winning each of their first five matches.
I took the opportunity whilst I was on the road this morning to call again at the house of the disabled person whose wallet I managed to restore to him the other day. In my desire to find the identity of the owner I had taken out a membership card to an organisation that catered for disabled people hoping that by this route I could find an address. So I had inadvertently left the card out by the side of my computer so I wrote a little note explaining why I had taken it out of the wallet in the first place. The wife of the disabled person was delighted to see me again and to receive back the precious card so I now feel my task of returning the wallet and its contents is completed. In the afternoon, we witnessed the Wales vs. England rugby match and it is true to say that this rather mirrored the rugby on France vs. Ireland the previous evening where France predominated. At half time England were leading 22:0 but the Welsh did not help themselves by acquiring two yellow cards (and hence down to 13 men) within a minute o so of each other. Cards are issues following an infringement of the rules and these might be either a cynical disregard for the rules or a burst of over-enthusiasm leading to an infringement. Welsh rugby has been going through a lean period for the last few yeas and perhaps a defeat was of no real surprise. The English team were good but against such inferior opposition it was a little hard to judge how effective they eventually turned out to be. The next match is against Scotland for the Calcutta Cup next weekend but Scotland were beaten by Italy so that team might not prove to be any stern opposition to the English pack. I actually missed going to church in the evening as I was rather taken over watching the rugby match and we also have the Winter Olympics in Italy which takes up most of the scheduled broadcast for most of the evening. So far the British team are doing well at curling and there are always a host of other sports with lots of thrills and spills to absorb the attention. n terms of domestic political news, the Mandelson affair will continue to dominate the Sunday newspapers and no doubt the political programmes in the morning. The latest focus of attention is the amount of an enormous pay-off given to Mandelson at the point where he was sacked as the British ambassador to the US and any amount awarded to him suddenly seems massively inappropriate.