Reactions: "Ginger rodent" insult
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Commentators look at why Harriet Harman's "ginger rodent" insult directed at Chief Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander created such a storm.
The about why the insult provoked objections:
"Curiously, and unremarked, David Cameron made a weak ginger joke (something to do with Neil Kinnock) during his conference speech. And he was fattist about the justice secretary. So maybe the outcry this weekend was less to do with the insult than the person who made it."
Communications researcher that you can fault Harriet Harman's ginger jibe, but you can't fault her rhetoric:
"Whatever you might have thought about hearing the politically correct Harriet Harman referring to Danny Alexander as a 'ginger rodent', the offending sequence was a technically very effective example of how to use the Puzzle-Solution technique to trigger applause. It's based on the very simple principle that, if you say something that gets the audience wondering what's coming next, they'll listen more attentively and, if it's a good 'solution', they'll applaud it."
that politics needs insults:
"[W]e need our political comedians. In these dry, grey times we shouldn't howl anyone down for trying. Harman's 'ginger rodent' jibe wasn't particularly funny. But the answer is to think a little harder, and try again. The joke that works lasts longer than the politician who makes it."
Harriet Harman was politically incorrect to use the word ginger but defends the "rodent" insult:
"Tories who believe they're born to rule us, that in any case some of their wealth should "trickle down" and that a rising tide lifts all boats even though theirs is a luxury yacht and ours a cobble.
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"But what can you call a [die-hard] Liberal Democrat who spent the last century opposing all of that? Who just weeks ago was denouncing the Tories, seeking to persuade us that they, not Labour, were the real social democrats.
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"You could call them a Danny Alexander. Or, more accurately, you could call them a rat."
he wants to see more cutting comments from politicians:
"If there's a failure here, it's that there isn't enough vigour in the attacks. The art of political invective lies in delivering not only an insult, but one which stings because there is a perceived truth in it. The part of Ms Harman's attack which bit was when she said that the LibDems had 'mutated into something alien to Scotland -Tories'."
that perceptions of the remark as anti-Scottish may harm the SNP:
"Crying 'anti-Scottish' when Harriet Harman makes a silly remark about red hair confirms a view many non-Nationalists have long had about parts of the SNP. That some Nats are obsessive to the point of silliness. They can spot anti-Scottishness even when it doesn't exist."
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