The anger today about Fawlty Towers is derived from a pretty standard argument, Reductio ad Absurdum. Someone saw the news about statues of slave owners being removed & realised they could take it to the extreme to induce genuine (& proper) anger about something harmless. 👇
The point of this is to reasonable people to be angry about something which can be claimed (wrongly) to be in the same vein as the original act, and hence to remove credibility *from* the original act, to make all of this seem an overreaction. 👇
Few people would disagree with removing statues of people who got rich trading in slaves, even if they spent some of their riches in a particular town. Or at least, both of these facts would be made part of the display (people of Bristol tried this & were defeated). 👇
Likewise, most people see the removal of @JohnCleese's Fawlty Towers as patently absurd, mainly because the script is taking the piss out of the things it's been pulled for - you can see Basil's discomfort at the Major's language (if you can still find the original) 👇
@JohnCleese But by taking what was in many views a reasonable act and extrapolating it to the absurd extreme, you get reasonable people on the side of an argument that *all* of these acts are absurd. It's what used to be called "PC gone mad". 👇
@JohnCleese "See this is where we end up when people start complaining about statues of people who got rich through owning slaves - they pull Basil Fawlty".
The implication being that if you want your Basil Fawlty you must have the statues.
I do not think that you need both. ✋
The implication being that if you want your Basil Fawlty you must have the statues.
I do not think that you need both. ✋
