A Brief Sense of Humour Bypass

A number of bloggers - Mr. Eugenides, the ever-readable Reactionary Snob, Holyrood Watcher, everyone's favourite Tartan Hero Grant, and Clairwil over at TerryWatch - have read Terry's latest outburst, which managed to get him in the papers. The consensus appears to be for bloggers to be paralysed with laughter.

I'm afraid to be the one to break the consensus, but I'm feeling po-faced tonight, so here goes.

Firstly, Terry claims, and asserts that most other people accept, that he was joking. I don't dispute that: it probably was a joke. But jokes aren't necessarily funny. And jokes can be sexist. Take the late Bernard Manning: he was a comedian, but he was also a bigoted Neanderthal. And if this is Kelly's idea of humour, then it shows him to be the vicious little bastard that we all knew him to be anyway.

Secondly, I've always said that his claim to oppose all forms of discrimination - and he names sexism specifically (though not homophobia, but that might simply be because it doesn't end in 'ism') - is complete and utter shite. The only time he can bring himself to attack homophobia is when he's accusing Brian Adam of it, and he appears to find sexist humour appropriate. Neither of those is opposing discrimination. The first is the attempted exploitation of the LGBT Community for party politics, and the second is actual support and encouragement of sexism. Lawyers, can I sue him for false advertising?

I feel vindicated this week. But I'm not laughing.

And I bet the women of his ward (to say nothing of LGBT residents, and maybe even members of ethnic minorities in the area) aren't laughing either. They're stuck with the knuckle-dragging bastard representing them (when he can be bothered to show up for Council meetings, that is) until the next election, after all.