Daniel Thwaites | Obscene signs of the times

First, let me establish my credentials. When I was perhaps five or six years old and my teachers were struggling to teach me to write basic words, one of the first things I settled upon to record was a list of the all the delicious curse words I was learning from the guys down the road.

Then my mother discovered the list hidden in my sock drawer and that led to various rounds of explanation. I know what you're thinking: "Him shoulda get beatin'!" True. But she was never one given over to violence, so the lesson wasn't learned well.

Anyway, the point is that the power and majesty of cursing was not lost on me at all, and I wanted to make sure that I remembered all the secret knowledge. Little did I know then that those are the last words you are ever likely to forget, and in fact, at least in my case, one among them is the last word you will probably say on God's earth.

You see, having been raised Catholic, I'm aware that one ought to leave this life in the odour of sanctity, and that doesn't admit of foul language. That's why I've had to give the issue serious consideration. The trouble is that I have a brother who is the absolute worst driver in Jamaica. Therefore, while enduring many motor-car accidents, I have had opportunity to reflect on what my last words would have been had the accident been fatal. On too many occasions, that last word would have been unrecognisable to St Peter unless he had been schooled in the nether regions of Jamaican Patwa. Either that or he might take it as a reference to the time prior to the birth of Christ, referred to in proper English as 'BC'.

So from early on and to this day, I'm especially attuned to obscenities.

Last year on the way to Thailand, it was Google that delivered me some indecent knowledge that pretty much saved my life. For example, I found out by searching about Thai customs and manners that they absolutely detest if you put your hands on their heads. It is an act of consummate rudeness because so far as they're concerned, the head houses the soul and there's no reason you should be touching a person's soul, now is there? I also discovered that you can't give someone the thumbs up over there unless you intend to tell them to "eff off", since that's what it means.

ANNOYING TAXI DRIVER

That information served me fantastically when I met upon THE most annoying taxi driver in the history of the Far East. After an evening of deliberately reprising scenes from the splendid movie The Hangover, I was in the uncomfortable position of having to take an exceedingly loooong journey into the countryside to see some Buddhist Temples and take elephant rides. The sun was baking, his car wasn't air conditioned, and it was seriously in doubt that I could make it back to the Western world alive. But this guy kept yammering away in severely broken English despite my begging and begging him to keep quiet. Nothing worked.

That is, until I hit upon putting my hand on his head, smiling, then giving him the old thumbs up. I figured that was essentially conjuring his soul to tell it the great obscenity. I'm alive to tell you it worked. Message sent; message delivered; message understood.

So having established myself as a credentialed and internationally recognised obscenity expert, let's talk about last Tuesday's parliamentary non-debate about Cornwall Regional Hospital. There was a great deal of incivility and the public outrage consequent to that is in some instances warranted. But there's also a danger of breaking too far in the other direction and forgetting the use of irony, humour and a little ribaldry. Yet that's the overreaction that could, foolishly, become the accepted view.

Here I have in mind the idiotic focus on Peter Phillips' jovial flipping of the bird in what was obviously a humorous gesture. I've watched the video of it, and it arose out of him raising the 'V-sign' while requesting two minutes more for Dr Campbell's presentation from the speaker of the House. It was quickly pointed out to Phillips, by Bobby Montague, that he was unwittingly making the JLP symbol, after which he comically offered his index and little finger, and then the birds. While doing it, he actually articulates that he's trying to signal the number two, but had been caught in the net of multiple meanings being assigned to various hand gestures.

So Phillips' allusion to the fact that gestures may contain multiple meanings has been dumbed down into the accusation that he was flipping the bird at the Government. This is what I mean about the lowering of the IQ and dumbing down of the country.

A few points. No offence was meant, and none was taken, meaning that the gesture cannot be counted as an obscenity so much as a playful reference to an obscenity. For it to count as an obscenity, there would have had to be the requisite intent. Consider Everald Warmington's famously long middle finger that he gave to the press. In that instance you had intent. Warmy meant to tell dem to "eff off". There was no confusion.

That's why I don't even use the term 'flipping the bird' or 'give him the finger' any longer. I just say: "Yow! Hol' a Warmy!" By the way, recall that Horace Chang argued that Warmington was meaning to show the press the V-sign for victory. That was convincing. Not.

NO WOUND

In the Phillips case - and I invite you to inspect it, in context, for yourself - there was no wounding offered, and none received. The irony is that a lighthearted moment in an otherwise unrelentingly disgusting tribal face-off has been deliberately misrepresented. No obscenity sent; no obscenity delivered; no obscenity understood.

The worse irony is that those who were seeking to disrespect the Parliament by shutting off debate on a matter of pressing public concern are now whimpering about a comic gesture as disrespectful to Parliament.

There was a lot to complain about in that parliamentary sitting, but we can't collapse the distinctions between incisive debate and raw garrulousness; between repartee and base abuse; between nuanced jocularity and leggo crassness; between banter and obnoxiousness; between a mild and friendly ribbing meant to foster congeniality and outright calumny meant to destroy someone's reputation.

Is there anything more stupid than political correctness? It's where people go over the top to not cause offence, and where others go out of their way to take offence. It leads to no end of absurdities, like the (truly offensive) one which arises when the media and the social media mob get into the act of generating supposed "outrage" at this kind of harmless incident.

That absurdity? You may poison the nurses, doctors, and patients of CRH if you like, but don't you dare be comedic about asking for two minutes to pursue questions about it! Which one of those scenarios is truly "obscene" in the real meaning of the word: "offensive to moral principles; repugnant"?

- Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.