Worst Take of the Week: Detained ‘Child Actors’ vs Alan Sugar on the Senegal Team
Welcome to Angus Take House – a weekly column in which I will be pitting two of the wildest takes the world’s great thinkers have rustled up against each other. This is your one-stop shop for the meatiest verdicts and saltiest angles on the world’s happenings. Go and grab a napkin – these juicy hot takes are fresh from the griddle.
What’s the story? Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy on immigration has come under fire, particularly following the leaked audio of crying children being kept in cages, following separation from their families at the US border.
Reasonable Take: Somewhere between heartbreak and horror.
Bullshit Bap: The nearly 2,000 children who have been split up from their families since April are… faking it.
Comparisons between Trump and Hitler have always seemed a bit on-the-nose. More often than not, they have been hyperbolic comparisons grabbed at by liberals unable to comprehend how such a foul man was running the most powerful country in the world. Yeah, he’s racist, but Hitler? Really? I mean… oh, he’s separating children with Down’s syndrome from their parents at the border. Ah, and he’s keeping children in cages.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he would be signing an executive order to end the separation of families, but by then most of the bad takes had already been made. While it seemed like this was one shit-storm Trump’s legions of acolytes wouldn’t be able to defend, they searched deep inside the cisterns of their souls and found the necessary theoretical acrobatics to rebrand the whole horrible affair. Namely: they accused the children of faking it.
It shouldn’t come as a massive shock that Ann Coulter is coming out with this stuff. For those not familiar with her work, she is effectively Katie Hopkins for America’s rust belt, an incendiary mouthpiece for right-wing vitriol and conservative conspiracy, who this week pleaded with the President not to “fall for” the “child actors” appearing on the news. Sadly, however, she wasn’t alone in peddling this line. Trump confidant Corey Lewandowski mock-cried “womp womp” at the aforementioned story of a 10-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome being parted from her mother, while coiffured scrotum Rush Limbaugh has also called the media out for “faking” pictures of children crying. Nigel Farage even saw an opportunity in his continued campaign to crack America, appearing on Fox News to tell the President to “ignore the cries of the liberal media”. Nigel, it’s not the liberal media crying we’re worried about, more the parentless children.
And as you can imagine, a disturbing number of people have bought it. In a climate provided by a president who fosters distrust and normalises blanket rejection of fact, his supporters are having no problem distancing themselves from the truth. The US this week also announced it was pulling out of the UN Human Rights council, on account of it being a “cesspool of political bias”. While this might seem fitting for a country that keeps migrant children in cages, it’s another devastating step away from accountability. Not that it matters to the dickheads who defend this stuff. They will continue to cry fake, and it will all be fake until it’s suddenly too real. Which, for many, it already is.
What’s the story? Lord Sugar did a big old racist tweet.
Reasonable Take: You’re fired!
Caramelised Onion: Not even racist! If it’s racist, then why are you retweeting it?? You make me SICK.
So Lord Alan Sugar tweeted this yesterday, and a few of us were wondering whether or not it’s racist. He reckons no, but we’re a little bit on the fence. Anyway, have a look and see what you think.
Yeah, seems a bit off, doesn’t it. Twitter thought so, too. Clearly sensing the tide was turning against him, Alan decided to pull off a quick and delicately framed apology:
Yikes! His situation quickly worsening, Old Al started to panic, hurriedly tweeting stuff like “then why are you retweeting it?” and “you make me SICK” at anyone who called him out. Then the inevitable intervention swept across the land and all was still. The tweets were deleted, and a sober apology appeared, stating: “I misjudged me earlier tweet. It was in no way intended to cause offence, and clearly my attempt at humour has backfired. I have deleted the tweet and am very sorry.” (Quick note to whoever it was from the BBC press office who wrote this: the “me” instead of “my” is a bit off. I know he’s from the East End, but that tweet reads like it’s missing a “guvnor” on the end.)
First question about this whole sorry affair is… did he make it himself? Does Lord Sugar make his own racist memes? Was he up at two in the morning, tapping “sun glasses hand bag” into Google images, key by key with one index finger?
Second, let’s marvel at what is the ballsiest, most unapologetic apology for naked racism on record: “Frankly I cant see that I think it’s funny” is quite possibly the most un-remorseful thing I’ve ever read in my entire life. In fact, what Lord Sugar has done here, in a very Lord Sugar way, is cut all the bullshit out of the usual “I’m sorry you interpreted it that way” and gone for a full-throated “actually, it’s funny you wankers” approach. As the big man’s autobiography makes very clear: what you see is what you get. In this case, a racist old goat.
The big question of course, is whether the BBC should give him a taste of his own medicine and fire the jowly rotter. Many people have drawn parallels with presenter Reggie Yates, who stepped down from hosting Top of the Pops following an anti-Semitic comment he made last year. By those standards, they say, surely Lord Sugar’s time in the boardroom should be coming to an end. Others have also pointed out that he’s a member of the House of Lords – a privilege many feel should also be taken away from him.
While I largely agree with the above measures, I would say this: at least his TV show keeps him busy. I worry about the state of his timeline if he has nothing to do with his days. I worry about the uptick in references to Piers Morgan’s “fat ar…”. I worry he will become the Working Man’s YouTuber. I worry he will run for political office/ I worry about the millions and millions of pounds he will continue to furrow into his range of Lord Sugar pens. I worry, above all, about the pens.
As funny as his pathetic apologies are, the whole stupid circus just goes to show – again – how useless we still are at dealing with outbursts like this. What does it mean, what does any of it mean, if all you have to do is trot out a couple of lines about “causing offence” and being “genuinely sorry” to get off the hook – lines everyone and their mums recognise as PR-written anyway. The fact is, Alan Sugar – TV star and Lord – doesn’t give a shit. He’ll be sitting at a marble breakfast bar somewhere, hissing about politically correct bollocks. Nothing will change, people will probably forget, and Lord Sugar’s search for an apprentice will continue.
PRIME CUT: This week’s worst take prize goes to anyone defending the outright racism of the star of TV’s The Apprentice. Either of them.
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.