Thursday 12 July 2018

"I can't be the censor. It's not for me to decide what's in good taste or bad taste."

From The Daily Mail:

Sadiq Khan has defended his approval of a giant 'baby Trump' blimp which will fly above London during a visit by the US President...

"My views are irrelevant. The issue is 'Do they have freedom to protest, freedom to assemble and should they be allowed to do so? If it's peaceful and it's safe they should.'

Piers Morgan asked the mayor if he would have endorsed a giant black baby blimp of Barack Obama in protest during his presidency, or an image depicting Mr Khan as a pig despite that being offensive to Muslims.

Mr Khan said: 'If it's peaceful and if it's safe. Look, I can't be the censor. It's not for me to decide what's in good taste or bad taste.'


Piers Morgan came up with some really good suggestions there, although he chickened out of suggesting that Obama's balloon would have been a monkey with Obama's face on it, that would have really got the crowd going. I'm all in favour of the Trump balloon, and would have been equally delighted by a pig with Khan's face.

Returning to the main issue, Khan has made it his job to censor stuff, like adverts with pictures of slim women and adverts for affordable ready cooked meals. Pity Morgan didn't confront him with those examples.

2 comments:

Lola said...

I quite like satire. Spitting Image for example. But as MW points out would Khan have been so 'understanding' had it been an anti-Obama balloon?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sadly, I had to wait in for the landline to be fixed so didn't get to see the balloon. We did hear about a million people marching through London in the afternoon though.