Pie Fight

Wanta go for a Chinese? [Cue laughter, gurgling]

Comedian Jeremy Hardy asks if it's ever ok to make the sort of joke that just got the whip removed from Tory MP Ann Winterton's hand.

Here's the joke:

"Two sharks were circling round in the Atlantic and one says to the other, 'I'm sick of eating tuna'. The other replies, 'Fancy going to Morecambe for a Chinese?' "

A lot of people, including Jeremy Hardy, say this is racist. Is it? I'm not sure, so I'll have to work it out here.

On the one hand, I don't think it is. Doesn't a racist joke have to denigrate a particular group, either overtly or by implication? If so, this one isn't racist. On the other hand, Chinese are distant, remote, faceless, the Other. We can ask ourselves if someone would find humour in a "closer" group's sufferings. For example, would Comedy Ann make light of the deaths of 20 Yorkshire miners? As a Tory, she just well might - in being poor, they are the Other - but I suspect that she and other similarly minded yuksters would be less likely to have a chuckle at the deaths of "real Englishmen". She certainly wouldn't laugh if it were 20 of her peers. On the other hand, I would be more likely to laugh at an unfeeling joke about the drowning of 20 yachtsmen.

It's about distance. And lack of empathy, I fear.

I found the joke funny, by the way. Cruel and unfeeling, but funny. But then I find most jokes funny. What I'm more appalled by is the stupidity and us-them mentality that would lead a woman in Winterton's position to think that this is a joke you tell in public.

Of course some people would argue that there should be no difference in the jokes you tell privately and those you tell publicly. I'll take up this interesting debate later.

A spanner in the works of the sex machine

One of my favourite features of the week is the Guardian's Private Lives. This week's dilemma:

I am 46 years old and happily married with two beautiful girls under the age of five. However, since my first pregnancy I have lost all interest in sex. I am increasingly distressed and depressed by this since I have always loved sex and prior to my children, my husband and I had very good sex life. At first I thought it was all due to childbirth and the stresses and exhaustion of bearing and raising babies and toddlers. However, the children have grown and now sleep at night, but my libido has if anything waned even further.

My husband is kind and understanding and generally puts no pressure on me at all but of course he feels sad, puzzled and inevitably rejected and unattractive. He wants so much for us to be back where we were before children when we had sex four or five times a week.

I feel as though I could not care less whether I ever have sex again. Do we now need sex therapy? Could this be hormonal and can it be treated (I've not yet hit the menopause)? Or is it still plain exhaustion from the children and might it pass? I feel the intense emotional closeness I've always had with my husband and ultimately our marriage is at stake. What can we do to resolve this?

I've read that this is a common problem after preganancy.

To answer the woman, I can only say: YES! For god's sake woman, get some therapy or some pills or some sex toys or some something as quick as you can! Sex isn't just a physical act; it helps us express our emotions for each other. Not only that, but it helps us bond emotionally. We need it. If she doesn't sort herself out, her marriage - which I think she's lucky to still have - is doomed.

And though I wouldn't say she would be to blame for the failure of her marriage, it would be her fault. Life can be so damn tricky, complicated and downright unfair sometimes, can't it? Surprise hands are dealt all the time, hands that are often so tricky that the only thing we can do with them is lose.

The free market isn't meeting middle class America's health care needs

As the free market in health care grows less and less able to meet the needs of middle class Americans, it becomes more and more likely that the US will end up with nationalised healthcare. So writes the ever-intelligent Kevin Drum.

He doesn't mention one thing that I find particularly galling: no cover for previously-existing conditions. I was diagnosed with benign skin cancer at the age of 30. Am I supposed to not have coverage for that the rest of my working life? How catastrophic could that be to my finances.

On that note, a commenter on Kevin's site writes that major medical problems are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US. If true, this is an absolute scandal, and bad for business to boot. Would like to see a study.

Will Eastern Europeans flood the EU?

Not likely, honky cat. Tha's what the learned contributors at A Fistful of Euros say, though not in such erudite language.

Sharecroppers versus socialists

Are residents of Mississippi better off than those of Sweden? Only when the former are tucking into catfish and hushpuppies, I'd say. But via A Fistful of Euros, a revisiting of an earlier debate looking at who's got the better life, Americans or Europeans.

You lucky cow, sir

CT's Chris Bertram, who came up in the (quite recent days) before British academics had to have PhDs to become professors, muses on the current climate, in which a doctorate is almost always necessary. How much better, he wonders, does hyperspecialisation and several years of serious penury make an academic?

I'd guess it depends on what that academic's goals are. To Chris, all I can say is what a lucky man. A few years of schooling, then you slide into being a professor. Nice one.

"I'm the scout who got Greg Maddux"

"I really believe that this boy would be the number 1 player in the country if only he looked a bit more physical." That's what scout Doug Mapsen wrote about the 155-pound Valley High right-handed pitcher Gregory Maddux in 1984.

To mark Maddux's return to the Cubs, a lovely story about the scouting and signing of the most intelligent pitcher of his generation, and one of the ten greatest to ever play the game.

I think that this year my ever-shifting allegiances (if you'd attended as many games with Atlanta's lifeless, mediocre fans as I have, you'd have trouble truly loving your hometown team too) will be with the Giants (as usual since I immigrated) and the Cubs.

Democratic electability

According to Pandagon, Kerry's ability and willingness to counterpunch makes him more electable.

What do you mean giving me LIP?

Via CT, a discussion of three aspects of communication: Locution, Illocution and Perlocution (LIP). Locution is the literal meaning of the sentences you string together. Illocution is what you are trying to convey with those sentences. And perlocution is the effect you are hoping to have.

Example: Gorilla Monsoon wore pink panties.
Locution: A large wrestler with a unique name covered his bottom (and front) with women's underwear.
Illocution: Gorilla Monsoon wore panties, and there's something wrong with men who were panties.
Perlocution: He was a crossdressing pervert not deserving of my former respect for his masculinity. In fact, despite my small size, twerpish demeanour and desk job, I'm more manly than him, because I don't wear panties.

Tag teaming poverty

Via CalPundit, an intelligent article on problems the US (and many other nations, I expect) has fighting poverty. The primary weakness, the author argues, is our patchwork approach to what is a multifaceted problem. Poverty isn't a set of unrelated conditions - eg bad housing, poor medical care, negative role models; instead, the article argues, it's an ecology in which these problems and far more are interwoven, influencing each other. The solution? He says it's for those battling the symptoms of poverty to join forces. For example, when children sign on for free school lunches, the process should automatically apply them for Medicaid. (Currently, 30% of those eligible for medicaid don't take advantage of it.)

This joined up thinking would help treat problems at their root rather than merely addressing the symptoms. As another example, he cites a child who had chronic asthma, causing him to miss a lot of school and his mom to have to take lots of time of work. You can see the cycle, can't you? He's destined to do terribly in school; she's destined to lose her job. Luckily for the mom, her pediatrician sent someone to look at her apartment, and this observer discovered a bad pipe and mite-infected carpet that were contributing to the boy's ill health. The mother, of course, wasn't able to get the landlord to do anything about it, but the pediatrician has lawyers on retainer for just such a problem, and after two calls from his soliciters, the landlord fixed the pipe and carpet. Now the boy rarely misses school, and mom rarely misses work. Cycle broken.