Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Subversive Biscuits

You may have seen this; Coles is being forced to rename their 'Creole Creams' largely due to the actions of Mr Sam Watson of The University of Queensland, who probably didn't get the right bikkies with his tea one morning and took exception to the product. Full article here.

Personally, I think it's all a load of w-- well, I'll let you, dear reader, form your own opinion. It may be however, that claiming "This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis" is stretching things a wee bit.

It would be cynical of me to muse though that Mr Watson may be about to release his latest book or film, and wouldn't say No to a bit of publicity right now. I'm sure his motives are honorable, if possibly a little overly enthusiastic.

Genocidal baked goods, coming soon to a supermarket near you... if he'd seen the Redskins on sale in the confectionary aisle he might have had an apoplexy. Who knows what would have happened if he wandered past the cheeses in the dairy section?

Whatever you make of it, what I did find interesting though was that where the story was regurgitated in my local paper (The West Australian), a couple of inches to the left of the article was an advertisement for 'jerry cans' from some hardware joint.

Now as any reader of the old Commando comics or a fan of any WWII film made in the last century can tell you, 'Jerry' is a derogatory term for all things German that gained popularity in the 1940s.

I wonder if we'll see someone from the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung protesting this blatantly racist behavior any time soon.

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