John Cleese -- and imperialist humour

["James Daly" <james.irldaly@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paddy writes: "Others seem to have misunderstood John Cleese's humour
and taken him for the racist chauvinist-pig-ignorant characters he
plays".

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This other has not. And John Cleese is only one of the "team of social
chauvinists" I referred to in the first line of my first contribution
to the thread, which includes the scriptwriters. They wrote the part
of Manuel, taken up enthusiastically by Andrew Sachs, as a real idiot,
not just a Spaniard being treated with prejudice -- that wouldn't have
been "funny". (Nobody from Barcelona whom I have met is like Manuel).
They showed Fawlty's gullibility and greed in relation to the Irish
builders -- but they were still criminals. They wrote the sneering
passage about the splitters. And they wrote the unforgivable passage
about the lack of gratitude from the imperialised (a caricature of the
people who in historical fact were massacred soon after the date of
the setting of the film).

I am providing a chance for people to become aware of the reality of
imperialist humour, which is just part of imperialism and of social
imperialism. Ironically, in some quarters it seems to be something of
a thankless task.