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April 15, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
29:04
This Week in Stupid (15⧸04⧸2018)
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Hello everyone and welcome to this week in Stupid for the 15th of April 2018.
Who the fuck are you?
Alright, calm down, shut up, right?
Listen.
The bad news is, if you were expecting Sargon, then you're guided.
I'm afraid he's touring the colonies for the next few days, but that's okay, we'll still have some fun and you can meet the man in person next week if you come along to the Free Dankula protest march on Monday the 23rd of April.
A kickoff is at midday from Leicester Square in London.
Please consider taking part if you believe in free speech, even if you don't really, I mean, it's a lovely walk.
Follow the link in the description to register your interest.
I hope you can all make it.
We begin this week with an old favourite, Owen Jones.
For those of you unaware, Owen is the nine-year-old Corbynista who occasionally appears in chocolate adverts.
And he woke up on Wednesday morning asking, Mummy, if the BBC is politically neutral, how does it explain Andrew Neal?
Imagine this.
The BBC appoints a prominent radical leftist, a lifelong Bennite, the chairman of the publisher of a prominent left-wing publication, no less, as its flagship political presenter and interviewer.
This person has made speeches in homage of Karl Marx, calling for the establishment of full-blooded socialism in Britain.
Look, can we just cut to the chase here?
The answer is no.
I do not think you would make a very good presenter, Owen.
This would never happen.
It is unthinkable, in fact.
If the BBC establishment somehow entered this parallel universe, the British press would be on the brink of insurrection.
And yet, the strange case of Andrew Neal, the ultra-Thatcherite former Sunday Times editor, who is the BBC's flagship political presenter, is an instructive example about how our media works.
God, would you like some cheese to go with that wine, Owen?
The policy of neutrality applies to the coverage of events.
As far as I'm aware, there isn't an additional policy whereby the BBC are only allowed to employ robots.
Absent of their own opinions, Andrew Neal is on the right, just as Andrew Maher is on the left.
A man who distributed so much Marxist propaganda when he was at Cambridge, people used to call him Red Andy.
But provided he does his job and gives a fair hearing to every side of any given argument, I don't really have a problem with that.
His firebrand right-wing politics aside, Neil skins politicians alive across the political spectrum, comes the inevitable retort.
But as a general rule, while Neil will fillet politicians on both left and right on the basis of competence, he reserves his ideological assaults for the left, ridiculing Corbyn over Russia, which one would expect on US TV networks where impartiality rules do not apply.
Bullshit!
That's errant nonsense.
It wasn't an ideological assault, first of all.
Jeremy Corbyn said something objectively idiotic about the Salisbury poisoning that wasn't related to general labour policy, his economic plan, or anything like that, and Neil mocked him for 20 seconds over it.
If Theresa May had said something as naïve as essentially, just ask the Kremlin if they did it and they can confirm one way or the other, he'd be making fun of her, believe me.
The bottom line is, the internet is full of public exchanges between Andrew Neal and conservative representatives where he goes after them.
And with far better questions than Owen Jones would be capable of asking, I can assure you of that.
Our press overwhelmingly supports the Tories and is intolerant of even mild deviations from right-wing orthodoxy.
The BBC itself is dominated by social and economic liberalism, which is why it provokes ire from left and right.
But that isn't neutrality either.
Its daily news priorities are set and framed by the front pages of conservatives supporting newspapers.
Well, that depends quite a bit on your definition of those words, doesn't it, Owen?
I mean, I understand that you personally are so far over the progressive cliff that just about anybody who doesn't advocate for the criminalisation of rich people is a conservative to you.
But the evidence doesn't jive to your tune, my friend.
Not the statistical evidence, which shows that the BBC is twice as likely to cover left-wing policy proposals than those that are right-wing, but also the testimony of people who've actually worked there.
It's a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society.
As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the Earth is flat.
If someone says, no, no, no, the Earth is round, they think this person is an extremist.
That's what it's like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
I absorbed and expressed all the accepted BBC attitudes.
Hostility to, or at least suspicion of, America, monarchy, government, capitalism, empire, banking, and the defence establishment.
And in favour of the health service, state welfare, the social sciences, the environment, and state education.
And this is the best one.
I want Owen Jones to get a tattoo of these words.
By far, the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The Guardian and The Independent.
Producers refer to them routinely for the line to take on running stories and for inspiration on which items to cover.
In the later stages of my career, I lost count of the number of times I asked a producer for a brief on a story, only to be handed a copy of The Guardian and told, it's all in there.
Give it up, Owen.
We all know that in addition to you being completely crackers, you're also writing this vindictively because you're still sore from the spanking Andrew gave you all those years ago.
In fact, I have to say, the best part of this story was the response from Neil himself.
I understand Owen Jones has written yet another attack.
He's clearly campaigning to have me fired from the BBC.
So be it.
I don't intend to respond.
I'll just have a chuckle watching this again.
What a great idea.
You said in the script that this budget hands a majority of the cabinet a cheque worth £40,000.
How do you work that up?
Well, the average top-rate taxpayer will save £10,000.
£14,000 millionaires will get over £40,000.
And the number of millionaires is 23 millionaires in this cabinet out of 29 ministers.
And the majority of those will get up to £40,000.
But they don't earn a million pounds a year.
Well, it depends on who you're talking about.
There's no one in the cabinet earning a million pounds today.
Well.
So how George Ols will earn the £40,000.
Where would the £40,000?
You're assuming that because you're worth a million pounds, that you get a million pounds a year.
This is a tax on income.
No one in the cabinet's making a million pounds a year.
They may be worth a million and more, but they're not earning a million.
These are papers.
Correct.
Well, it depends.
£40,000.
Well it depends actually because a lot of them themselves as puppies are earning fusion but the fact is they're written separate terms.
If you look at the Conservative Party over half of Conservative funding comes from the city, it is a party which is funded largely by many men.
I'm basically saying, can you are you is it your claim tonight that there are many people in the cabinet who are as we speak earning a million pounds a year?
In other news, popular American sitcom The Simpsons is the latest cultural treasure to come under fire from the usual gaggle of idiots with far too much time on their hands.
Thankfully, the reply from the show itself proves that the writers still have a bit of steel in their spine.
Don't have a cow.
The Simpsons response to Apu racism row criticised as toothless.
The Simpsons has responded to controversy over Indian character Apu in an episode aired in the US on Sunday night with a short message to its audience, Don't Have a Cow.
The character of the Quickie Mart owner, Apu Nahasapima Petalon, has been voiced by white actor Hank Kazaria.
Good to meet you Hank.
What do you do for a living?
I'm a white actor.
Thanks for asking.
It's actually on my sad card.
Has been voiced by white actor Hank Khazaria since he debuted in 1990 during the show's first season.
But a recent documentary by Indian American stand-up comic Hari Kondabolu, The Problem with Apu, criticised the character as an example of harmful and widespread stereotyping of South Asians on American television, which reflected how America viewed us.
Servile, devious, goofy.
And which has fueled bullying of and racism towards people of colour.
Uh, excuse me, I think you mean brown people?
I don't want to be a dick about it, but if Hank Azaria is a white actor, then these people complaining about him and his white acting are browns.
Okay?
So the central complaint here has always been that Apu, one of the more popular characters in the show, is a stereotype.
A stereotype within a comedy programme that features, amongst others, the useless husband, the dutiful wife, the rebellious son, the perfect daughter, the incompetent cop, the maniacal millionaire, the corrupt politician, the Italian mobster, the washed-up entertainer, the comic book geek, the sanctimonious Christian, and the chain-smoking schoolteacher.
Psst, if you haven't cracked it yet.
Stereotypes are the whole show.
The whole show.
The entire programme is about presenting and mocking caricatures, stereotypes, over simplistic exaggerations of American people because it's funny.
Sunday night's episode, No Good Read Goes Unpunished, was the first time The Simpsons creators acknowledged the controversy, but their response has not gone down.
Well, what controversy?
The controversy of not understanding humour.
You know, there was a time when comedy only needed to be explained to children and imbeciles, but these days it would seem that about half the population at this point has undergone some sort of terrible joint lobotomy so nobody is actually capable of seeing the wood from the trees on this and needs to have it explained to them through YouTube videos.
It's like a bloody episode of the Twilight Zone.
Now, the response from the creators was, as I say, fairly good.
They basically told the Marxists to piss off, which, without wanting to be mean, is probably the funniest thing they've done in a while.
In the scene, Marge Simpson wants to read Lisa a book she loved when she was a girl, but realises it is filled with racist stereotypes.
She then edits it to feature a cisgendered girl named Clara who fights for horse rescue and net neutrality.
But Lisa complains that by making the story inoffensive and its lead character perfect, Marge has stripped Clara of her emotional journey.
Well, what am I supposed to do?
It's hard to say.
Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect.
What can you do?
Some things will be dealt with at a later date.
If at all.
Naturally, the Twitter warriors took to their keyboards, including the original offendee, Hari Kondabolu.
In The Problem with Apu, I used Apu and The Simpsons as an entry point into a larger conversation about the representation of marginalized groups and why this is important.
The Simpsons response tonight is not a jab at me, but at what many of us consider progress.
On what planet could singling out a group of people, in this case Indian Americans, drawing a motor round them and saying, right, these guys over here, off limits.
You can't joke about them, you can't joke with them, you can barely speak to them.
How could that possibly be viewed as progress?
Creating a protected class of people who are beyond satire is what I would do if I wanted to inflame tensions between communities.
But no, this is progress, apparently, because everybody wants to rub along with, befriend, and stick up for the one person in the room who can't even take a fucking joke around here.
I think the fact that they put this argument in the mouth of Lisa's character, the character who usually champions the underdogs and is supposed to be the most thoughtful and liberal, is what makes this the most ridiculous and toothless response.
Lisa's response is the liberal one, okay?
The liberal response is, we will not have our art policed by the immoral majority.
We reserve the right to make people laugh in any way we see fit.
We aren't strapping you to your chairs and prying your eyes open like Malcolm McDowell undergoing the Ludovico technique in a clockwork orange.
If you don't like the show, don't watch it.
Go and play with your kids or something.
Jesus.
Aren't ISIS still an issue?
Go sort them out.
That's really terrible.
They have completely betrayed Lisa's beautifully defined character.
We all know she would not have made such a comment.
Well, actually she would.
And she did.
The writers of her character and the show in general disagree with you.
And I'll take their word over yours, to be frank.
You will never write a show as good or as popular as The Simpsons.
And do you know why?
Because your name is Francis Skelton at Skelton's Head.
That's why.
That's the exact reason.
So disappointing.
Tell me about it.
Right, lines for everybody after class.
I will try not to be such a pompous and humorless douche.
Political incorrectness.
Can we just bitch about that for a while?
Oh, awful, isn't it?
It starts out as a halfway, a halfway decent idea.
Right.
And then it goes completely wrong.
It's taken to add absurdity.
I used to go out and do these racial jokes.
I'd say, French, you know, why do the French have so many civil wars so they can win one now and again?
Why are Australians so well balanced because they have a chip on each shoulder?
You know, I used to do these jokes and then I say, and that there were these two Mexicans and the whole place would go.
Right.
I want to say, what?
What?
You make jokes about Swedes and Germans and French and English and Canadians and Americans.
Why can't we make jokes about Mexicans?
Is it because they're so feeble that they can't look after themselves?
You see, it's very, very condescending there.
And the other concern, of course, is that it never ends there.
You begin by crusading against a bit of good-natured ribbing, and you end up with problematic phrases, British values and Islamist, banned in the classroom by political correctness-obsessed SNP.
The Scottish National Party has been slammed over guidance which claims that supposedly offensive terminology like British values could inspire terror attacks.
This story for me really highlights the desire of sections of the British establishment to basically set fire to their own island and stand solemnly by as the flames consume everything that once made my country of birth a pretty great place to live.
The concept of British values can cause offence and could play into the hands of groups who seek to assert that there is an inherent conflict between being British and being Muslim, Scottish teachers have been told.
Defending the move, a spokesman said using the wrong words in the classroom could amplify the rhetoric used by terrorists and violent extremists.
So there are really two arguments being advanced here.
The first is that, as they say, the concept of British values in and of itself can cause offence, which, to be honest.
Jog on.
I mean, what do I even say to that?
Look, if you're concerned about offending British kids through the teaching of British values, then do me a favour and take this down.
Could you find a hostel, go there, and take a fucking overdose of arbitrators?
What interests me more is the second claim, and we keep on hearing versions of this, and it's that seeing as how we're creating terrorists by existing, the solution is to not, essentially.
I mean, that's what they're saying.
You can't be British anymore because we've imported a minority into our culture that will murder you because of it.
You have to be something else now.
Teachers should refer to shared values rather than British because pupils must be molded into responsible citizens who respect other people, different beliefs and cultures, said the Scottish document, which called to mind the SNP regime's enthusiasm for PISA's announcement that international education rankings would begin testing for how well schools are nurturing globalist attitudes.
So it's the label that's the issue.
It's the fact that we call them British values.
If we change that, if we call them shared values instead, the Islamists will just pack up and retire.
Yeah, okay.
Let me explain to you how that conversation is going to go.
Mohammed, are you for the British value of respecting people of different beliefs and cultures?
No, definitely not.
That's not what the Quran says.
It's not what my parents or my Imam teach me are my values.
Get stuffed.
I see.
Well, let me ask you a different question.
Are you for the shared value of respecting people of different beliefs and cultures?
Still no.
You're not actually solving the problem.
Do you understand?
All you're doing is changing the noun.
So that now, instead of there being an inherent contradiction between being British and being Muslim, there's an inherent contradiction between being shared, whatever the fig that is, and being Muslim, you fucking idiots.
Education spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives Liz Smith warned that parents would be astonished and very angry at the edicts, asserting that British values are part of our history and are important to this country's culture.
Well, duh, of course, but more importantly, affirming that and regenerating a strong sense of British identity is about the only way to summon the strength and community spirit to deal with radical Islam.
Policies like this one are the absolute negation of what's needed.
The Scottish authorities should be saying to the public at large: Look, this is Britain.
Join in or GTFO, snivelling before the altar of the extremists and offering concession after concession after concession, will do nothing but convince them of the weakness of our society and the need to cleanse it through Sharia and theocracy.
You don't show fear in the face of a mad dog.
And that's what we're dealing with here.
Vicious, possessed, highly confident people who will never run out of reasons to hate us.
Now, what are some of the items of the Al-Qaeda bin Laden manifesto?
Well, oddly enough, and this was to my surprise, I thought it would be lower down.
Item three in the charge against the West is that it reversed course on East Timor, tried to undo the genocide, brought East Timor to a referendum on independence, sent Jose Vera de Miello, one of the greatest, sorry, Sergio Vera de Miello, one of the greatest UN civil servants, to East Timor to supervise the transition to independence and the election, and made East Timor the newest member of the UN.
Bin Laden says, For this, we will never forgive the Christian crusaders and their imperialist friends.
They took away a republic from a Muslim land, Indonesia.
Most of the people of East Timor, by the way, are Christian and speak Portuguese.
A detail.
For this, we will never forgive them.
For this, that was the reason they gave for blowing up the UN office in Iraq, because that's where Namelio was sent next, with a truck bomb of explosives so enormous that it must have been borrowed from the former Iraqi army and Ba'ath Party.
That's the reason they gave for blowing up the Australian tourists in Bali, in Indonesia, and the Indonesian taxi drivers who were servicing that resort, because they couldn't forgive the West for its behaviour in East Timor.
In other words, if you want to avoid upsetting these people, you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor.
Otherwise, they'll be upset with you.
You'll have made an enemy.
If you tell them they can't throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi, they will be annoyed with you.
If you say, we insist we think that cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Muhammad, you've just made an enemy.
You've brought it on.
You're encouraging it to happen.
So, unless you're willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture, get used to the compromises you'll have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you.
But bloody well, don't do that in my name, because I'm not doing it.
You surrender in your own name, leave me out of it.
I'm going to fight these people and every other theocrat all the way.
All the way.
Given that the bar for insanity is set so low these days that it really has become impossible to tell the difference between what's real and what isn't when it comes to the news, I thought we'd wrap up this week with a quick game.
I'm going to read you four headlines, okay?
Two are genuine, and two have been made up by me.
Can you sort the wheat from the chaff here, I wonder?
See, I told you we'd have some fun.
Right, here we go.
Barber facing human rights court for not cutting a young girl's hair.
Hmm.
Diversity of thought is just a euphemism for white supremacy.
Fear of Japanese knotweed which strangles other plants is xenophobic.
And finally, police probe columnist over hate crime after he mocked the Welsh.
place your bets?
Well?
You're right, of course.
I'm totally trolling you.
They're all fucking real.
Let's see how quickly we can do this.
I love the first one.
A woman in Australia has taken barber, Sam Raheem, before a human rights tribunal for refusing to cut her daughter's hair.
This is completely bananas on so many levels.
Firstly, the guy is a barber, right?
He cuts men's hair exclusively, which, as a representative from the Australian Hairdressing Council confirmed, is quite a different skill that comes with separate qualifications and everything.
On these grounds, not only was he right to refuse the woman her request, but if he had cut the girl's hair and messed it up, she probably could have sued him for malpractice.
Secondly, he was a total gentleman about it, refusing politely and then going out of his way to recommend a number of qualified hairdressers in the area that she could take her daughter to instead.
And thirdly, of course, how entitled do you have to be to believe that having your daughter's hair cut by Mr. Sam Raheem is a human right?
This sort of thing really pisses me off.
The guy has to get a lawyer and go to court and everything.
Not only should the judge assigned throw this case to the birds, he should fine this crazy bint for harassment and wasting everybody's time.
Diversity of thought is a euphemism for white supremacy.
This article introduced me to the root for the first time, which was a treat, I can tell you.
How best to describe the experience?
Well, I suppose it's similar to how a detective must feel after stumbling across the diary of a psychopath.
There's the usual stuff in there, religious symbols, pictures of women with knives in their faces, and this utter drivel.
If a printed version existed, it would be written in shit.
You know what I mean?
Needless to say, if favouring diversity of opinion makes you a white supremacist, I'm a white supremacist.
And proud of it.
Your move.
Gardening is racist now.
Okay, so I understand that the SJWs are poisoning just about every academic discipline out there at present, but I thought it would take them a little longer to get around to botany.
If I'm perfectly honest, this surprised me just a tad.
And I love the idea of these 60-year-old grandmothers pottering around their gardens being like, filthy Japanese knotweed, coming over here, stealing our son, raping our tulips.
And last but not least, it's illegal to make fun of the Welsh in Britain now, so let's do some of that.
Any Welsh people in?
Any Welsh?
Just one.
We seem to have contained the problem.
Have you ever been to Wales, Baldrick?
No.
But I've often thought I'd like to.
Well, don't.
It's a ghastly place.
Huge gangs of tough, sinewy men roam the valleys, terrifying people with their close harmony singing.
What's interesting about the Welsh is it said they have an accent.
I don't think they do.
I think they have an attitude with all due respect.
Every time a Welsh blog opens his mouth, he sounds as though he's dying of some inner fucking hurt and torment that he hasn't figured out yet.
Whatever it is, even on his wedding day, the happiest day of his life, he sounds pissed off, doesn't he?
This is the happiest day of my life!
I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you, the most beautiful woman I ever was in in Cardiff!
Because I know they've got their own language in Wales, it's called Welsh.
They're not on the roads, it says slow, and then the Welsh is slow, which is slow.
Arrah!
Did Doug's write some of the language?
You need half a pint of phlegm in your throat just to pronounce the place name.
Never ask for directions in Wales, Baldrick.
You'll be washing spit out of your hair for a fortnight.
And of course, my personal favourite, what do you call a sheep tied to a lamppost in Wales?
It's a leisure centre.
Thanks, everybody.
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