Today the BBC sacked a radio presenter for a daft joke Tweet that some people wildly misinterpreted as racism.

Danny Baker – football fanatic, radio presenter and (to me) former Daz TV ad bloke – posted the following tweet (since deleted) after the birth of the latest royal baby.

The offending tweet in question

A posh couple with a chimp in a bowler hat. Not particularly cutting edge comedy sure, but a monkey in a suit is always whimsical enough to raise a smile for those of us with a sense of humour that skews towards the daft.

Unfortunately, the permanently-offended brigade seized on this image and declared it to be racist. The reason for this being Meghan Markle, the mother of the monarchical tyke in question, is ‘half black, half white’ (her words, not mine).

Given the sad historical racism of black people being likened to apes, many saw Baker’s tweet as another manifestation of that appalling characterisation. Unfortunately, they seem to have attributed racism to the tweet without actually contemplating what the intent was behind it.

As Baker himself tweeted shortly after deleting the post:

“Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased.”

Precisely.

What those jumping up and down about this tweet get wrong is the assumption that everyone is hyper aware of race. It’s an extension of the warped thinking that everyone is a little racist, whether we know or admit it or not, and thus that needs to somehow be beaten out of society.

What these people can’t comprehend is that, when it comes to race, some people, most people, the vast majority of people, just couldn’t give a monkey’s.

For those that immerse themselves daily in the identity politics mire, everything is seen through that prism, and thus an innocuous gag involving a chimp in a suit must have some racism in it somewhere. For the overwhelming majority of the population though, it never occurs to them because, well ‘mind not diseased.’

It further speaks to the problem we apparently have with no longer taking into account the intent behind what people say or do. There are multiple, downright scary cases of people being put through the wringer because of a joke or comment that has been stripped of all intent and context in order to paint the instigator in the worst possible light.

When did this Barthesian approach become the norm? When did we stop dealing with our fellow human beings in good faith? When did we decide it was perfectly reasonable to assume that a man who has spent most of his adult life in the public eye, has been able to keep a burning white-hot racism successfully hidden during that time, but decided to post something with potential racist connotations anyway, rather than just taking it at face value?

Or, as the esteemed Helen Pluckrose puts it:

Others have also pointed out that Baker immediately deleted the tweet and apologised when the possible connotations were explained to him, and yet the BBC unceremoniously gave him the boot from his Radio 5 gig anyway.

Personally, I think it’s a shame he deleted the tweet. The correct response so far as I’m concerned would be to tell those screaming racism that of course it’s not meant to be racist, the bloke is not racist, and if you’re drawing that conclusion despite the obvious, non-racist intent of the tweet, then you need to give your head a wobble.

To be clear, I’m not some raging Danny Baker fanboy. I don’t even follow him on Twitter, nor do I ever listen to Radio 5 Live. From what I understand he’s a big Labour supporter so we likely don’t see eye-to-eye on anything politically either. But I’m increasingly troubled by the proclivity to always ascribe the worst possible motives to our fellow primates. How do we expect to function as a society if we immediately assume everyone around us is an evil bastard?

The abandonment of our critical faculties in pursuit of some kind of cleansing of the world of anything that could remotely be considered offensive is a fools errand. Some of us are able to engage our brain when interpreting words, pictures and images to understand what the intended meaning is behind them.

Those that are seemingly averse to that practice – or worse, immediately jump to the worst possible interpretation in an attempt to virtue signal their way to a Grievance Olympics gold medal – would arguably be better left to converse with chimpanzees themselves.