The seasoned BBC veteran obviously feels that at this stage he has little to lose.
That’s the only possible explanation of why Michael Buerk broke ranks. Moreover, he practically broke the BBC Royal Charter by saying something that’s sensible and, much worse, at odds with his organisation’s deepest convictions.
This is a figure of speech: the BBC’s convictions aren’t really deep. They are a tasteless cocktail of silly, faddish shibboleths, of which feminism is so firmly entrenched that one questions it at one’s peril.
Yet that’s what Mr Buerk did, by saying that those who get their jobs solely because they look good shouldn’t complain about getting sacked when they no longer do.
By uttering this blasphemous statement, he struck at the very foundations of the feminist agenda. Its cornerstone is the belief that a woman should have it both ways.
First she’s entitled to fire every arrow in the traditional womanly quiver, densely packed with weapons of mass seduction. This would include wearing in business situations the kind of clothes that would have got a Victorian woman arrested, flirting and occasionally sleeping with powerful men, in general exploiting her sexuality to its limits.
I’ve know even brilliant women who sometimes did that sort of thing, mainly because in our sexualised, paedocratic culture they were expected to. Yet many women who exploit their looks to get ahead aren’t brilliant, though they’re clever enough to know how to capitalise on their more jutting assets.
The brilliant women, who may have given themselves a little extra boost on the way to the top, stay there in their mature age because they never really needed the boost in the first place. It was their way of cutting a few corners on the way to the destination they would eventually have reached anyway.
But when the other type’s assets stop jutting and begin sagging, they really have nothing else to fall back on – except of course the whole feminist ethos, these days propped up by all sorts of laws, domestic or more usually European.
Reaching in their quiver, now bereft of Eros’s arrows, they fumble for sharp verbal missiles, those labelled ‘ageism’, ‘misogyny’, ‘discrimination’, ‘rights’, ‘fairness’, ‘tribunal’ and ‘the European Court of Human Rights’.
Sometimes these weapons misfire; more often they hit the mark. Political correctness is a bloodless form of fascism and, like any other fascism, it demands unquestioning obedience, with any revolt put down mercilessly.
One is amazed that Mr Buerk has been allowed to get away with similar remarks for quite some time now.
In 2005 he spoke out against the general feminisation of society, with “life being lived according to women’s rules”, masculine traits marginalised and men “becoming more like women”. (With the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ already being pushed out of legal documents and increasingly everyday speech by the androgynous ‘spouse’ or ‘partner’, how long before the very words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ become infra dig?)
Six years later Michael Buerk broadened his attack by aiming it against PC fascism in general, not just its feminist manifestation. Specifically he argued that “giving people jobs purely on the ground that we need another six Asians, or we need another six lesbians, or we need another six pensioners” is “almost worse” than age discrimination.
This sort of thing goes beyond the realm of the BBC or the entertainment industry in general. These days every aspiring political leader has to promise that the sex, age and demographic composition of his cabinet, parliamentary party or any institution he staffs will reflect the make-up of the nation at large.
Any sensible voter would much prefer being governed by people of intellectual and moral integrity, regardless of any other characteristics. But this same voter would know that such preferences can’t be voiced in polite society – by anyone who expects to remain its member.
We all breathe the same ambient air, and it has become poisonous. The antidotes are few and far between, but Michael Buerk has supplied one by appealing to the common sense that has become very uncommon indeed – and may soon become illegal.
One just hopes Mr Buerk won’t be flogged too painfully. Of course his approaching retirement age may do for him what a magazine stuffed into his trousers used to do for a naughty schoolboy about to be caned.