Thursday, April 28, 2011

Everybody Stopped Kung Fu Fighting...

Pub singer arrested for racism after Chinese passers-by hear him perform Kung Fu Fighting
A pub singer has been arrested on suspicion of racism for singing the classic chart hit Kung Fu Fighting. The song, performed by Simon Ledger, 34, is said to have offended two Chinese people as they walked past the bar where he was singing. The entertainer regularly performs the 1974 number one hit, originally by disco star Carl Douglas, at the Driftwood Beach Bar in Sandown, on the Isle of Wight...

‘We were performing Kung Fu Fighting, as we do during all our sets,’ he said. ‘People of all races were loving it. Chinese people have never been offended by it before. ‘But this lad walking past with his mum started swearing at us and making obscene hand gestures before taking a picture on his mobile phone.  'We hadn’t even seen them when we started the song. He must have phoned the police.’

Officers later called Mr Ledger while he was eating in a Chinese restaurant to arrange a meeting.
The singer assumed it was a prank – but he was later arrested and is still under investigation.
That seems unlikely to happen here in the US; our 1st Amendment is stronger than free speech protections in the UK, but if I looked back 10 years at all the things I thought were unlikely then, but are ordinary today?

Besides, overt censorship in the US isn't as much a threat as rampant PCism, where the urge to keep public discourse and entertainment free of that which offends all the preferred and protected groups is already in full throat.

In protest of stupidity:

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