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11 April 2008
Pauw and Witteman offer a platform for the usual cowardly anti-Catholic bigotry
Bart Peters is supposed to be an all round funny guy and entertainer from Belgium. He is opening next week in a one man show in Amsterdam's major theatre, Koninklijke Theater Carré. Last night he appeared on the Pauw and Witteman talk/interview program to promote his show which according to the website blurb is "an evening full of lovely funny and moving Dutch songs".
I have seen Peters occasionally in television quizz programs and the like. For me he remains singularly unfunny. He has that sort of expressionless face that cannot engage me. I also have to admit that the Belgian accent will often be a barrier for me as one used to Dutch spoken with a Dutch accent. For those who don't know, Belgian Dutch differs from Dutch Dutch roughly in the way a Scottish accent differs from a standard London accent.
In promotions like this the program will usually run vision of the best of the entertainer's craft. In Bart Peters' case, they ran vision of a skit that was highly offensive to Catholics. In fact, it would have been difficult to conceive of something more offensive to put on television.
What impresses me about these occasions on Dutch and Belgian television is the casual air that accompanies the bigotry, as if ridiculing and insulting Catholics and the Catholic Church was the common task of those who held the public microphone. No doubt, there are many in the audience that rejoice over the appearance of such casual bigotry and are even more pleased when a Catholic like me says he is offended. Get Catholics is the motto of Dutch liberal society.
But do you think there would be stand-up comics and other entertainers who would get Muslims, homosexuals, blacks, women, in brief, all those groups protected by the dominant PC-class in the Low Countries? Not on your life. The hypocrisy is stunning. The cowardice is equally stunning. And I have to say it again, the Dutch media gets away with the sort naked prejudice that would not be tolerated in English-speaking countries.
comment: gerardwilson01@optusnet.com.au