We’re too easily offended
The Starkey brouhaha follows a well-trodden path says John Kampfner. Curmudgeonly man says something crass. Somebody gets cross.
Ditching the Y-word
As a new campaign targets anti-Semitism in football, Brian Glanville asks if getting Tottenham fans to ditch the self-referential “Yid Army” chant will solve anything
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New Zealand: TV presenter resigns over race row
A breakfast show anchor for Television New Zealand has resigned after being accused of racist behaviour. Paul Henry was shown laughing at the mispronunciation of the name of the Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, which should sound more like “Dixit” in English. The Indian government lodged a formal complaint, calling the presenter’s comments “racist and bigoted”. Henry had already been suspended over accusations of racism, after suggesting that Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand, who is of Indo-Fijian descent, was not really a New Zealander. The television host said he was “astonished” and “dismayed” at the uproar his comments had caused.
Tintin ban is tantamount to “book burning”
A court case in Belgium has heard lawyers representing Georges Remi, the cartoonist behind the children’s sleuth Tintin, attack calls by critics to ban the stories as “like burning books”. Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man based in Brussels, has been pursuing Tintin’s publishers and copyright holders in the civil and criminal court since 2007 . he claims Tintin in the Congo, the book documenting the character’s adventures in the former Belgian colony, contains racist images and dialogue which are offensive to black Africans.