Dear me, he did say the N-word

The other day I wrote about the ordeal of MasterChef presenter John Torode, sacked by the BBC for having used a racially derogatory term six years ago.

This saga is continuing, and let me tell you: there’s nothing sagacious about it. The worst culprit there isn’t Mr Torode, but whoever shopped him to the management ex post facto.

When I read about it, I thought of Ivan the Terrible whose secret police (oprichnina) encouraged voluntary grasses to report every injudicious word they might overhear. However, and there I think Ivan was on to something, the snitch was the first one to be tortured within an inch of his life, to make sure he hadn’t borne false witness.

As for Mr Torode’s transgression, the social media sources I consulted the other day agreed that the criminal word he used was ‘wog’. I took those sources at their word and said the presenter was lucky he hadn’t used the N-word, in which case he might have been drawn and quartered, rather than merely sacked.

Now it turns out he did use the N-word, which, according to the BBC’s Richard Osman, is “the worst racial slur there is”. ‘The worst’ is a superlative, an absolute in other words, but I think there should be room for some relativism here.

I can, without straining my memory too much, recall at least a dozen pejorative terms for blacks, which is an easy task for someone who has lived in Texas for 10 years. I’m even prepared to bow to Mr Osman’s expertise and agree that the N-word is the worst of them all.

Yet it probably wouldn’t be considered “the worst racial slur there is” by a Jew called ‘kike’ by a Labour MP, a Mexican called ‘wetback’ by a redneck, a Spaniard called ‘dago’ by a Briton overcharged at an Ibiza boozer, or an Italian called ‘wop’ by a jostled tourist in Rome.

What supposedly makes the N-word worse than any racial slurs aimed at any other ethnicities is the consensus within the glossocratic elite. They see it not as merely an insult of a single person, but as an assault on the glossocratic ethos they are enforcing.

Anyone saying that word in any context isn’t just someone who uses a bad word, but an enemy of glossocracy. Off with his head.

When Hermann Göring was told that one of his deputies was a crypto-Jew, he replied: “At my headquarters I decide who is a Jew and who isn’t.” In the same spirit, our glossocrats decide which words should be criminalised, and which obscenities admitted to acceptable use.

According to them, the N-word (or its equivalents) isn’t just “the worst racial slur there is”, but the worst word, full stop.

For example, back in 2012, England footballer John Terry was banned for calling an opponent “a f***ing black c***”. The two outside words of the triad were perfectly acceptable, if still sometimes regarded as rather uncouth. It was the stylistically neutral middle word denoting a colour that proved Terry’s undoing.

We are beginning to edge back towards Mr Torode and the unfair treatment he has suffered. You’ll notice that Terry was censored for using a word I described as “stylistically neutral”. However, it’s not stylistically neutral in all contexts.

When modifying, say, the word ‘tie’, ‘black’ is indeed as stylistically neutral as any term can be. But the way Terry used it, ‘black’ was, and was meant to be, offensive, which was emphasised by the words bookending it.

The context matters, and Ludwig Wittgenstein built a whole philosophical system on this simple proposition. “In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use,” he wrote and, in most cases, one has to agree.

However, while applying contextual interpretation to Terry’s chromatic adjective, our irate glossocrats want to crucify Torode regardless of any context.

Yet, reading new reports, one finds out that Mr Torode allegedly “used the N-word twice” while singing along to Kanye West’s hit Gold Digger at an after-work drinks party.

Suddenly I changed my mind: the punishment meted out to the presenter was just. Listening to Kanye West should be an ipso facto sacking offence.

However, neither the BBC nor any other citadel of modern culture would hold such an innocent pastime against anyone. After all, more people like rap than real music, and that’s all that matters. Vox populi and all that. We are all democrats, aren’t we?

Still, since Mr Torode uttered that offensive word twice while singing along to Gold Digger, any airtight indictment should include evidence of what it was he sang along to.

The refrain of that vocal masterpiece goes like this: “Now, I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger/ But she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas/ Now, I ain’t sayin’ she’s a gold digger/ But she ain’t messin’ with no broke niggas.”

Twice, did you say? Well, here it is, the N-word uttered twice in the same refrain. I’d suggest this is exculpatory evidence, and if I had to defend Mr Torode in court, this is what I’d say:

We all agree, m’lud, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr West’s oeuvre is universally popular and widely acclaimed as a work of genius. This status confers on Mr West’s songs a stamp of critical approval and therefore wide acceptance. Singing along to one of them is therefore paying homage to both his artistry and public taste. No one should be punished for doing so, even if the same words would be proscribed if used in a different context.

I’d then quote Wittgenstein and make a sweeping arm gesture to the jury. Open and shut case, ladies and gentlemen.

Except that Torode wasn’t tried in a court of law. He was tried in the court of public opinion, which these days means by the laws of mass woke hysteria nefariously whipped up by the glossocrats the better to impose their tyranny.

They are prepared to crucify (figuratively, for the time being) anyone breaking their unwritten, and until recently non-existent, law. That the unfortunate word was uttered six years ago makes no difference. In Britain, the statute of limitations applies only to minor crimes. Which this one isn’t.

P.S. Speaking of language, answering the accusation that he had once sent to Jeffrey Epstein a scabrous letter illustrated with a lewd image, Donald Trump wrote: “I’ve never wrote that picture.” I wonder if he has ever went to school to learn how to draw in English.