Do you know what the word woke means? It’s not what some people, who are defined technically defined as wankers, seem to think; wankers like, say, the Daily Mail and its angry readers. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, woke is “being aware or well-informed in a political or cultural sense.” Why, I would ask, would you not want to be woke?
The term has been hijacked by the hard right, also referred to inaccurately as the ‘alt right’ (they are not alternative anything: they are just hard right), who use it to define things they hate. Women football pundits? Woke! Pride? Woke! Lauren Laverne on the BBC 6 Music breakfast show? Woke – why can’t a man do the job? Which is where all this nonsense comes in. In truth, these rock hard anti-woke campaigners are simply snowflakes, easily offended, which is just what they call us for being woke.
Take the Daily Mail ‘story’ I’ve shared. It’s not new, although the rag is essentially a daily re-run of what was printed the previous day. “Three-quarters of tradesman discuss their feelings with colleagues.” Yeah … and? There was me thinking, woke snowflake that I am, that it is A Good Thing for your mental health to talk about stuff and not bottle it up. Wait – it literally IS a good thing. But, implies the ‘story’, big, tough tradesmen – all of them – should be above all this discussing their feelings with colleagues. Far better, presumably, to throw themselves under a train and end it all. Office staff, well, it’s okay to talk about one’s feelings. Burly builders on site? Far too woke. Do worry, be unhappy.
“Two thirds shun fried breakfasts.” Fucking hell. One third don’t? I like the occasional full English, where much of the content comes fried. In fact, I’m about to tuck into one later this morning. But it’s not something I enjoy on a daily basis, not least because I am not in a rush to be in the Coronary Care Unit just yet. But for the Mail, which describes a healthy breakfast as something only enjoyed by hipsters (I am not making this up), people generally making less unhealthy choices is far too woke.
And half of tradesmen are “history buffs”? How woke can you get? Actually being interested in history. I have my doubts about this and always go back to Vic Reeves’ famous quote that “88.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot”. When it comes to the Mail, it’s nearer to 100%.
I’ve been criticised before about being critical of Daily Mail readers, but here’s the thing: newspapers attract readers by knowing where their G spots are. I am a soggy left leaning liberal (with a small l) so I read The Guardian because it generally reflects my soggy left leaning liberal beliefs. The Mail knows what its readers want, things to make them froth with anger, especially as we are becoming overwhelmed by wokery and political correctness, the latter being yet another utterly meaningless concept dreamed up by and for the hard of thinking.
Cards on the table time: I am a card-carrying member of the wokerati ™ and proud of it. That’s not to say that I am well-informed and as aware as I could be, so day after day I work to be even more woke because I want to be more woke. And if someone calls me woke, I’ll take it as the compliment it literally is.
