Wednesday 26 August 2009

Victimhood Poker: we have a winner!

Far be it from me to fisk CiF articles (fish, barrel, yawn) but JuliaM has uncovered a corker (in the comments to my previous post).

In response to the whole "it's not fair for Microsoft to doctor a publicity shot that has been staged for one target market to cater for another target market" debacle, some cheeky chappy at CiF has come out with this:

There are those who say it's natural for a multinational company to gear its adverts towards the countries it's targeting. And, yes, if they were promoting themselves in African countries they might have an all-black cast...

Of course, this begs the obvious question: how would cheeky chappy respond if a Polish company had doctored an all-white picture originally intended for their domestic market to include a few non-white faces to cater for the UK or US markets?

PS, I trust you are all au fait with The Rules Of Victimhood Poker (scroll down to The Ace).

PPS, Giles Coren, Times restaurant critic and descendant of Jewish emigrés from Poland reckoned that the Poles are stupendously anti-Semitic, which, hilariously enough and in an actual not a parallel universe, earned him a kicking from, er, The Graun. How so? Well, just go back to The Rules Of Victimhood Poker (US rules) and you will see that 'Hispanic' (which translates roughly as 'Polish' in the European rules) counts as a Jack, but 'Non-christian' (which includes 'Jewish', either under US or European rules, thus ranking below 'Muslim' but above 'Christian') only counts as a Four. It's easy, once you know the rules!

PPS, a cursory reading of the relevant chapter in Martin Gilbert's A History of the Twentieth Century seems to confirm that murders of Jewish people continued even after 1945, so methinks Giles might have a very valid point here.

5 comments:

Ross said...

I would be very wary of getting into a game of victimhood poker with Joseph Harker. He is the Usain Bolt of the sport, look at the masterful way he deploys the race card to trump the homophobia gambit or the sexism manouver.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Ross, indeedy. But seeing as you drag althletics into this, what's cheeky chappy's take on the whole Caster Semanya controversy?

Presumably, she holds all the cards - she's black (Ace, 14 points), African (under US rules 'Native American' = 'African' under European rules, King, 13 points), transgender (possibly, 10), woman (possibly, 8), handicapped (possibly, i.e. certainly a medical curiosity, 6), non-Christian (possibly, 4 points), destitute (probably, as she's from South Africa, 2 points).

In fact, it's almost a pity that Caster ain't a Muslim and a lesbian as well...

Tim Almond said...

My first instinct on seeing Caster Semanya was to affect an Austin Powers voice and shout "she's a man, baby".

Longrider said...

In fact, it's almost a pity that Caster ain't a Muslim and a lesbian as well...

How do you know she isn't?

Julia Smith said...

They should be apologising for their appallingly bad photoshop skills.

It's the kind of thing you expect to see on http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/