Anne Marie Morris, British MP: Clueless or Worse
Anne Marie Morris, MP
Her gentle-ladyship was discussing the exit of Britain from the European Union when she said:
“Now I’m sure there will be many people who’ll challenge that, but my response and my request is look at the detail, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Now we get to the real nigger in the woodpile, which is, in two years what happens if there is no deal?”
N*gg*r in the woodpile?
No one will ever accuse conservatives of being cutting edge, but Ms. Morris had to reach way back (and way far) for that one.
“N*gg*r in the woodpile” is a circa 1800’s American phrase, considered to be a reference to enslaved blacks escaping to freedom on the Underground Railroad, hidden in a pile of stacked lumber.
As a figure of speech it was once used to indicate something hidden or suspicious.
Almost immediately she issued a statement saying, “The comment was totally unintentional. I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused.”
What she is really saying is that she is either so clueless or so inclined to the casual use of incendiary language that she is not at fault when she does.
Neither explanation is acceptable.
Language is chock full of abusive words used to describe others in a demeaning way; we can wonder what Ms. Morris would think (or feel) of a few disparaging phrases hurled her way grotesquely describing older women.
Would she be satisfied with “The comment was totally unintentional. I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused.”
I doubt it.
We can also infer that Ms. Morris’s “niggers” (see blacks) are so far beneath her class and station in life that they have no right to be offended for as she said, she meant no offense.
Just how clueless do you have to be to employ such a word in 2017?
In 1940, even W. C. Fields knew the phrase was out of bounds when during the filming of My Little Chickadee, he changed it up to there’s an “an Ethiopian in the fuel supply”.
Fields
Morris and her ilk, on either side of the big pond, are especially dangerous in their lofty cluelessness.
The unrepentant racist is much preferred; at least they know what they are doing and we know what we are getting.
Racism, alive and well in 2017.