Racism is a weapon of mass destruction

This is a very self-indulgent post about stuff in today's Guardian. Best you don't read it, really.

Marina Hyde is reassuringly sanctimonious as ever about the Anton Du Beke racism row (her final paragraph is very good, mind), but oh no, not Lucy Mangan too! I love Lucy, it's fair to say. She is very probably my ideal woman and future life partner, she just doesn't know it yet. Sadly, today has seen our first fight.

I don't think Anton should have been sacked. Leaving aside the rabid attempts in some quarters (Charlie Brooker today calls them "repugnant vested-interest newspaper scumbags") to denigrate and slur the Beeb, this all boils down to whether you should condemn a person utterly, and thereby cost them their job, on the basis of one single mistake. Ok, two mistakes - he also mentioned something about Leila possibly being a "terrorist" at one point. But he did apologise. If you believe the scurrilous rumours then Marina Hyde once shagged Piers Morgan. Eurgh! But this doesn't mean her judgment is so universally poor that one should completely disregard everything she says. I kind of do anyway, but that's not the point.

Lucy suggests the BBC doesn't consider Anton's remarks as bad as Carol Thatcher's - the difference is that she didn't apologise. And, I suspect, Carol is less popular than Anton. So yes, he's been given more leeway but so what? He's earned the right by generally seeming like a nice bloke. If there turns out to be a Mark Fuhrman-style secret tape of him lurking around then I'll be the first to condemn him.

"Where do we all stand on laughing at someone's skin colour?" Lucy asks. Now of course, the Grauniad is a proudly PC left-wing paper and most of its writers will be seen to take this position, but seriously, have you never laughed at a racist joke? Not ever? Not even a guilty chuckle? It comes to something when I'm taking Simon Hoggart's side over yours - I disagree with a lot of his Saturday diary column most weeks, but today he's pretty spot on when he says it's not a black-and-white case of Du Beke being either a racist monster or utterly blameless, but rather that he's just not that bright. As much as I like Anton, I'm afraid this seems to be the truth.

Anyway Lucy, sorry about all that. As I've said above, I'm not going to go off you just because you've said one thing I disagree with. Let's not fight again. At least not until we're married.

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