The Tiger Who Came To Tea [split topic]

[Kankurette]

Is it the book where the tiger shits in daddy's bed and the sheets were too rough on his anus, then shits in mummy's bed and the sheets were too soft and fluffy, then shits in the baby's bed and the sheets were just absolutely perfect for wiping so he just shits and shits and shits from his bummy bum bum until the house falls down?

That's Goldianus and the Three Bears' Arses you're thinking of.

[jamiefairlie]

it's unsustainable and built on the suffering of  the working class.

If wealth redistribution via taxation worked properly then we'd all be middle class.

[thenoise]

The tiger asks very politely, although he does mention that he is very hungry. Mummy doesn't heed his warning and invites him over the threshold, whereupon he eats/drinks everything. He then says "thank you very much for my nice tea" before leaving. Maybe this encourages young men to gaslight or lovebomb or something? They're always up to something, you know, men with their willies.

In my sexist ignorance I was more concerned with the tiger being depicted pouring tea down it's throat straight from the teapot, and eating straight out of a saucepan on the stove by putting his tongue in it. How many boys aspiring to be tigers burnt their mouths long before they had the chance to grow up and indulge the rape fantasy that Nigel Kneale's wife had inadvertently planted in them?

[katzenjammer]

And, predictably, all this outrage is based on the fact that a single person (or group, perhaps it was more than one person) with no power whatsoever to ban a book, might perhaps have mused aloud about the subject matter and themes of the book from a modern day perspective.

It wasn't even that.  In the interview[nb]which autopsy linked to but either didn't listen to or chose to ignore[/nb] Rachel Adamson doesn't mention the book, the interviewer does once but there is no discussion about it at all.

[idunnosomename]

it's unsustainable and built on the suffering of  the working class.

new Berenstain Bears quite a departure

Of course they're more a little house of the prarie rural utopia. So more colonialist.

[Buelligan]

new Berenstain Bears quite a departure

Of course they're more a little house of the prarie rural utopia. So more colonialist.

I don't know about the later life of Laura Ingalls Wilder (the LHotP author), she probably was a terrible human being but certainly, her books about her life as a child record a life that was far from privileged, dunno about the telly stuff, that was just some telly shite. 

She wrote about girls (and women) as active actual humans who didn't always conform to the mores of the day.  No one sane could deny there was colonialism at the very root of the "pioneer" thingy (and sexism underlying the culture of the time - as there is now) but, I'd say, having read her books extensively as a small child, she was a standard-bearer for working class female children and empowered underprivileged[nb]by western standards[/nb] girls to believe in themselves and to recognise intelligence as something to be respected.

[Autopsy Turvey]

It wasn't even that.  In the interview[nb]which autopsy linked to but either didn't listen to or chose to ignore[/nb] Rachel Adamson doesn't mention the book, the interviewer does once but there is no discussion about it at all.

I also linked to the Indy100 story, criticising the criticism of the criticism, which I'll do again: https://www.indy100.com/news/tiger-who-came-to-tea-rachel-adamson-b1907972. This states:

"We know that gender stereotypes are harmful and they reinforce gender inequality, and that gender inequality is the cause of violence against women and girls, such as domestic abuse, rape and sexual harassment," Adamson told an interview with BBC Scotland, cited by The Telegraph. She added: "I know this will make a lot of people unhappy, but one of the books is 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea'... Judith Kerr is a wonderful author. However, it is reflective of a society that we need to think more closely about."

So I'm not sure if the YouTube clip was a different interview or an edit, or if Indy100 have just quoted an incorrect account from the Telegraph without checking its veracity, which is certainly plausible. In that account, she brings up the book, albeit in a feebly mealy-mouthed way.

A couple of women does not = all feminists.

Nobody thinks they do, nor has anyone said anything to make you think they think that, but obviously uncharitable conclusions are jumped to because 1) it's still fun to boil the intricacies of an argument down to saying 'PC gone mad!!' in a sarcastic way and 2) why would anyone give this shit their full concentration?

Although the point remains, if this is just "a couple of women" and their wacky overzealous grifting, why wasn't there any attempt at principled feminist pushback to her argument from the Indy100 article writer or the BBC Radio Scotland interviewer, or indeed here?

If I went on Twitter and said 'Idris Elba should be Bond', the Mail would deem it newsworthy, evidence of an entire culture gone loony.

Google "Idris Elba" "Daily Mail" "James Bond". There are dozens of stories, all basically supportive in tone, not one of them even remotely from a "the entire culture has gone loony" perspective. Question your sources.

If I went on Twitter and quoted Enoch Powell at length - nowt.

What, your friends and family wouldn't be all like 'what's up with you today you nutter'? Other than that, yeah, nobody would notice or care that some nobody is cut and pasting speeches by a controversial politician.

However, I suspect if any major twitter celebrity started quoting Enoch Powell at length, with no wider context, we would pretty quickly start to see articles about it on HuffPost/BuzzFeed/all the other online content provision stables written by pseudo-progressive college kids, expressing their outrage and disgust, and possibly a letter-writing campaign to his employers/sponsors.

You should see all the casual white supremacist comments under any old footage of London. But the moment someone comments disapprovingly on a video of a celeb in blackface, John Cleese commissions an investigation.

'Casual white supremacy'!! What a concept. Exaggeration is a lot of fun, but it doesn't serve your argument well here.

You can't even radicalise a load of beetroot-faced bigots these days without the looney left jumping down your cock.

I do love when the word 'radicalise' is used to describe people being drawn to milquetoast conservative talking points on the internet, especially when the word is used by people who are avowedly radical in a revolutionary left wing sense. It's a hoot.