The hideous news cum toilet paper, right-wing, shit-stirring, Hitler supporting Daily Hate Mail has created yet another non story which has fired-up its gammon readership. Monty Python’s Life Of Brian is being turned into a stage show, which may or may not appear on a London stage at some unspecified date in the future and apparently there’s a new scene which involves Stan from the People’s Front of Judea wanting to be known as Loretta in future. 83 year old dinosaur John Cleese says he told an audience at his one-man show that he did a read-through of the script addition and said unnamed actors commented: “We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays.” Cleese then said this:
“So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? But I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later.”
I’m not linking to the Hate Mail site because I don’t want to give that hateful, scummy rag any additional clicks, but you will have to trust me when I tell you that the Mail’s elderly and perpetually angry were seething when they read that. The on-line comments are entirely predictable. It’s “political correctness gone mad“, “the PC brigade“, “the woke brigade“, “the woke wingnuts“, “snowflakes“, the “liberal elite” and of course “the left” who are cancelling free speech. Or something. It’s bullshit.
If Cleese says that some unnamed actors have said “you can’t do stuff about that these days” I can’t say with any conviction that they, whoever they are, didn’t really say it. But this is manna from heaven to the culture war loving Hate Mail, which hates, among any other groups, transexuals. In fact, trans people are at the forefront of the culture wars emanating from the political right and Cleese, as befits an angry old man who is about to start work for far right TV hate channel GB News, has plainly decided it will suit him, probably financially, by making angry old people even angrier. But let’s take a look at what Cleese is proposing to do. He wants to change one of the funniest sketches in the entire film for no obvious reason, other than to stoke-up culture wars. Personally, by Python’s hit and miss standards, Life of Brian is almost flawless, a quite brilliant satire that was loathed by the right-wing gammons of the day who insisted it was somehow “blasphemous” and it was lily-livered, woke, politically correct, soggy liberal snowflakes who insisted it wasn’t and even if it was, so what? No religion, or group of religious people (which is what the film was about) should be beyond criticism and satire.
If I wanted to see a stage show of Life Of Brian – and I most definitely don’t – I’d want it to be as close to the original as possible, not with added culture wars created by an embittered millionaire whose best days are long behind him.
By the way, the “story” being shared on line refers to a Hate Mail article first published on 18th May 2023 and states that his Python colleague Eric Idle is involved in the proposed stage show. He isn’t.
Some people, I fear, just love to be offended by other people being offended but the truth is the culture wars are being created and stoked by the very people they purport to defend, people like the day before yesterday’s man, John Cleese. And here’s another thing: attitudes change over the years.
When I was young, in a previous century, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and all types of prejudice and discrimination were the norm. Most of us have evolved into people who think they are not virtues because we’re better than that. It’s appropriate, then, that the Daily Mail still exists for those who prefer and indeed yearn for the old days.
I’m woke and proud and if you’re not, why not try the Daily Hate Mail? I happen to think most people are good people but if you somehow believe they aren’t then there’s a place for you in the place where Hitler was regarded as a decent chap who we could do business with. Sadly, the Mail has moved even further to the right since then.
