Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Please try not to be so contemptibly, wantonly, pusillanimously f***ing stupid

If there’s one thing worse than clinging to primitive arbitrary dogma, it’s pre-emptively abasing yourself in front of what you suppose to be someone else’s primitive arbitrary dogma:

A story based on the Three Little Pigs has been turned down from a government agency's annual awards because the subject matter could offend Muslims.

The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children.
But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".

The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".

Speaking as a member of the non-idiot community: I’m offended. And I’m sure a lot of Muslims will cringe to hear of this.

3 comments:

Tom said...

The most irritating thing about this is that it's pretty obvious from clues in the press coverage that the book in question is (independently of its offensiveness or otherwise to Muslims or builders or anyone) shit. If they'd been turned down for the award with the words "Sorry, but your book is shit", nobody would have batted an eyelid.

Anonymous said...

Is there any sect of Islam which suggests pigs are vile creatures that shouldn't even be spoken about, as opposed to just not eating them?

I could understand it if the book came with a free pork steak that must be eaten before the story read.

I think the main problem is not political correctness gone mad but that the CENSOR was exercising prejudiced and dismissive views about Islam.

Matt M said...

Hmmm, according to Becta's website, the book was rejected for a large number of reasons.

Apparently they provide feedback from the 70 judges. I wouldn't be surprised if just one of them made the comment about it being potentially offensive - and everyone's jumping on it because it makes a more interesting story than "shit book fails to win award".