Pissing in the gene-pool

There’s some jolly good stuff in the Daily Telegraph still. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s shrunk to the size of a goblin’s foreskin, the good old Tellywag is still the last bastion of all that’s uprighteous in the world.

I cast my monocle over their internectical website thingy every so often in order to get a balanced view of humanity. Uncle Justin inculcated me with this habit before he "went away". Every Lent he would eschew the cosy familiarity of the chukka and board an "omnibus" to go to watch a game of "football", as the hoi-polloi are wont to call the brutish pastime of soccer. He would come back with wondrous tales of meat pies and painted faces - of tribal chants about the testicular hypertrophy of someone called "Chris Moyles", and startling revelations about bizarre sexual practices involving one Stan Collymore and his dog.

So the Telegraph is honoured with an occasional squizz from me now and again, and the following letter to the Editor caught my eye recently:

Sir - I’m puzzled. If Barack Obama’s mother was a white American (Ann Dunham) and his father a Kenyan (also known as Barack Obama), why is he persistently referred to as black (for example in John O’Sullivan’s comment piece in Issue 865)? The Swahili have an apt term for what Obama actually is, namely "nusu-nusu" (half-half). But to do my part in redressing the balance, henceforth I will be arguing around the dinner table that he is white.

Mike Wood, Knysna, Western Cape, South Africa


Silly, silly man. Don’t y’know that being called "white" is privilege you have to EARN?

All those millions of white folks out there weren’t called "white" when they were born. They had to work hard for it. Like Michael Jackson.

He’s got a point though. As a bit of a nusu-nusu myself I’ve got a problem with our relentless social habit of trying to compartmentalize people, whether or not we attach any different value to the people we put in those different compartments. I’m a fucking chocco and proud of it!