From: OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO@44444444.COM   
      
   According to the OED censorship means the official suppression of published   
   material on grounds of unsuitability or national security. Gibson's dog's   
   name is censored from the film and your article states this clearly and   
   your   
   approval of it being censored;   
      
   **You may believe that if you want to but you must know  perfectly well   
   that you're misrepresenting my position. Quite clearly i don't wish to have   
   the knowledge of the dog having had that name suppressed. The transmission   
   of a word on live TV is quite different from its appearance in print, or   
   even its use in quotation marks in a description or review.   
      
     and, given the way intellectual life in the   
   West is going, the censoring of the dog's name in a TV screening of the   
   Dambusters seems to me be just another increment on the royal road to   
   censoring it as fact  and you are the first person to bewail the de facto   
   censorship of aspects of British history in our schools.   
      
   **I most certainly am. Which is why you should realise that my stance is   
   not a surrender to political correctness. I could have made life much   
   easier for myself if I had kept this private opinion to myself. I had a   
   specific purpose in mind. It is this. PC's greatest strength in the eyes of   
   most people is that it has helped to end the stupid loutish abuse of people   
   on the grounds of their skin colour.  Unless those who oppose PC make it   
   quite clear that they are not themselves racial bigots, and that their   
   motive is not to protect such bigotry, they haven't a prayer of defeating   
   PC.   
      
      
      
   The fact that a few BNP morons take pleasure from hearing it and wearing   
   insulting badges is neither here nor there: I am surprised to find a   
   conservative like you legislating for a tiny group of fools.   
      
   **Actually, it is here AND there. In almost any discussion of this film,   
   this subject comes up. i receive many mails about it even if I don't write   
   about it. there is a current here. And I am concerned that some of my   
   readers may believe that I applaud this and endorse the view that the   
   n-word should be transmitted on prime-time terrestrial TV. I took the   
   opportunity to put this right. And I am not legislating. I believe such   
   matters should be dealt with by the institutions concerned.just as I   
   believe they should not broadcast the f-word.   
      
     Also, I don't   
   think I can be blamed for the interpretation I put on your words when you   
   said this: 'Who could possibly get any pleasure out of hearing it?' as if   
   the sole purpose of the word being transmitted in the film was to give   
   people pleasure.   
      
   **Where does it say that? About the sole purpose, I mean? You have made up   
   that interpretation out f whole cloth. It says and means exactly what it   
   does say, no more, no less.   
      
      
    Of course, there are a great many people in England who have an antipathy   
   towards ethnic minorities and I think a large factor in this is the   
   dominant   
   media telling them how wonderful a multicultural society is - and also how   
   contemptible anyone who disagrees with this view is - when their own   
   experience of it is often quite different. The censorship reinforces a   
   message: we'll give you a lot of our own licensed obscenity and if you   
   object to that you're a prig, but we shall censorship on the grounds of our   
   own dislikes and hang ups. In other words, when Michael Grade says that   
   programmes will have to contain many elements that are clearly   
   objectionable   
   to the majority of the audience ('we must reflect society as it is') then I   
   say that, with a prefatory warning, it is right to transmit a film   
   un-censored that shows - to an extent - society *as it was*. When I think   
   of   
   the gratuitous (and that is the key word) violence and sex on tv each week,   
   it makes me laugh out loud sardonically about the preciousness over The   
   Dambusters (incidentally I agree with you about Andrew Roberts - he ought   
   to   
   see a few more war films before gushing so ridiculously about the film).   
      
    **Well, I'm not one of those,. I consistently oppose oafish coarseness and   
   crudity, from wherever it comes, as you ought to know..   
      
   When I said 'so close to the war' I meant that the type of film you clearly   
   thought The Dambusters should have been would have been a slap in the face   
   to audiences of the early 50s and struck me as being a sort of agitprop   
   dream. However, I don't disagree about your comments about the feebleness   
   of   
   the British army and foreign policy of the 30s.   
      
   **I made no suggestions about what sort of film the Dambusters should have   
   been in 1955. My remarks about the failure of the excellent 'Dunkirk" (too   
   honest too early) clearly show that I am aware of the problem you mention.   
   My comments were clearly directed at the attitudes towards it now.If you   
   agree with me about our defence and foreign policy in the 1930s, you can   
   surely see that continuing to glorify our war record into some sort of   
   schoolboy myth is dangerous. In the final years of the Soviet Union, the   
   middle-aged were likewise glued to fairytale war dreams of the Great   
   Patriotic War, which helped to sustain them in the fools' paradise which   
   has now come to such an abrupt and nasty end. Indeed, it was while I was   
   living in Moscow that my doubts about this sort of thing first formed. i   
   noticed the parallel and couldn't deny its truth.   
      
      
   I don't think that my referring to your 'hardcore toryism' is facile, since   
   the type of conservatism you mourn the decline of could reasonable be   
   construed by an educated member of the public as being a much tougher form   
   of conservatism than has prevailed in the tory party for many years - after   
   all it is one of your amusing swipes to say that the tories have been   
   stealing socialist policy for fifty years.   
      
   **Well, longer if you really go into it. And I cannot discern any era in   
   which the Tory Party much appeals to me, though I do have a soft spot for   
   the Iron Duke, more for his glorious honesty than for his conduct of   
   government.   
      
   Such a comment doesn't make me   
   classify you as a liberal monetarist tory of today. I understand that given   
   your position and history you will be made uncomfortable by having the word   
   tory used to describe you (your 'new party' proposal is a good way of   
   avoiding it and a good idea in itself). Facile means ignoring the   
   complexities and I think I'm well aware of them, having read and enjoyed   
   your books.   
      
   **I still think the phrase 'hardcore Tory" is meaningless. I prefer   
   'Fundamentalist Anglican' myself, but most people don't get the joke,   
   including my poor brother who has taken to describing me as   
   a'fundamentalist' after I unwisely described myself as such in his   
   presence.   
      
      
      
   Hope this clarifies.   
      
   **Likewise   
      
   c/o   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)