It’s okay: Mr Bean will explain it to you, using as an objective correlative current British law:
[Rowan Atkinson] criticised the “new intolerance” as he called for part of it the Public Order Act to be repealed, saying it was having a “chilling effect on free expression and free protest”.
Mr Atkinson said: “The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.”
Police and prosecutors are accused of being over-zealous in their interpretation of Section 5 of the Act, which outlaws threatening, abusive and insulting words or behaviour, the Daily Mail reported.
What constitutes “insulting” is not clear. It has resulted in a string of controversial arrests.
They include a 16-year-old boy being held for peacefully holding a placard reading “Scientology is a dangerous cult”, and gay rights campaigners from the group Outrage! detained when they protested against Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir over its stance on gays, Jews and women.
Mr Atkinson said he hoped the repeal of Section 5 would pave the way for a move to “rewind the culture of censoriousness” and take on the “outrage industry – self-appointed arbiters of the public good encouraging outrage to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react”.
Speaking at the Westminster launch of the campaign, he added: “The law should not be aiding and abetting the new intolerance.”
He was joined by Lord Dear, former chief constable of West Midlands Police, and former shadow home secretary David Davis.
Mr Davis said: “The simple truth is that in a free society, there is no right not to be offended. For centuries, freedom of speech has been a vital part of British life, and repealing this law will reinstate that right.”
Evidently, Mr Atkinson and his cohort didn’t hear about the OUTRAGEOUS MISOGYNY of Mitt Romney, who reduced women to “binders” in an utterance of such concentrated hatred that it should have brought with it a bolt of lightning for emphasis.
Would he allow such clear intolerance to stand — the reduction of women to the binders containing their resumes?
Because that is hate speech, and no, we shouldn’t tolerate hate speech, which is speech that needs to be exempted, in a civil and tolerant society, from hiding behind the shield of free expression.
And besides: everyone knows women can’t be reduced to binders. If you truly wish to show respect for women — and aid in their empowerment — the proper tack is to reduce them to their rubbers consumption and their willingness to scrape inconvenient fetal lumps out of their uteri.
Duh.
(thanks to JohninFirestone)
Black Adder was brilliant.
The State of Texas has an opportunity to invest in Feminism (quick, put out a call for binders full of giantesses), but what’ll we name her? Big Texeena?
What happens when progressives love your cities to death for your own good. Hi Detroit! Enjoy the Series.
“[E]veryone knows women can’t be reduced to binders. If you truly wish to show respect for women — and aid in their empowerment — the proper tack is to reduce them to
their rubbers consumption and their willingness to scrape inconvenient fetal lumps out of their uteriSex objects.”Just ask Amynda. She’ll tell you.
Should’ve used Trapper Keepers.
Oh, wait…
Yes, I’d prefer to think of the Elizabethan Edmund Blackadder or perhaps the Georgian Edmund Blackadder as answering these taunts.
Silly rabbit, Romney’s comment was about binders full of women. You don’t fill binders with binders, you fill binders with paper.
So logically*, Romney’s comment reduced women to paper.
* (“logically” within the progressive mindset.)
… and you just know those misogynistic Rethuglicans are thinking up degrading “three hole punch” jokes as we speak.