Lord Tebbit sparked fury today by suggesting ministers were responsible for Aids and obesity by "undermining marriage". Tory leader Michael Howard faced calls to withdraw the party Whip from the peer after he accused the Government of "promoting buggery".
The former party chairman's remarks came in a radio discussion on rising obesity rates with Conservative frontbencher Boris Johnson. Ministers were to blame for "persuing the breakdown of family life", Lord Tebbit told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Families now so seldom eat together. They don't prepare meals properly," he said. "Wives are virtually pressurised into thinking they ought to go out to work instead of looking after their children. And it is the breakdown of family that is at the root of it and very poor education in these matters in schools."
Marriage was being undermined by tax and social policies such as the "gay marriage Bill" currently before the Lords, he continued. "We not only have an epidemic of obesity ... we have a huge problem of Aids and the Government's attitude is to do everything it can to promote buggery. Maybe those two are somewhat intimately connected."
Yep. That's right. All the fat people in the world: we did it. We snuck into the house of each and every fat person everywhere -- including the gay ones, because we wanted to make sure that nobody realized the depths of our cunning plan -- and injected pounds and pounds and pounds of fat under the skin. Oh, not all at once, of course, oh no no no. We had to keep doing this slowly, a few ounces at a time, night after night, around the world.
At the same time, we changed the face of society by promoting women's rights. Once we got all those women out of the home, and out and working, we knew that people would start eating badly, thus aiding our goal. Between the fat injections and eating badly, we the gay people estimated that all the straight people would be spectacularly overweight -- yes, each and every one of you -- no later than 2006.
And then, of course, your skins taut and bulging, you'd all just blow up. It would be messy to clean up, but we'd just make the Fab Five from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" -- all of their various incarnations from around the world -- take care of the mess. After all, they and their crew do that week after week, but once all the straight guys blew up real good, they wouldn't have jobs any more, now would they? So they'd be free to handle that little problem. (Oh, yes, some of y'all would die of heart attacks and other things like that, but really, we were counting on the whole kablooey factor, just for the pure visual spectacle. Some of the fat we injected was time-released, so that it would grow more fat cells itself without injecting, and thus we could ensure that all of the straight people went kaboom at the same time.)
But alas, Lord Tebbit has discovered our Cunning Plan. Whatever shall we do now?
(Yes, I know. It's not nice to make fun of the sincerely stupid straight people. But really, what else can you do with such sincere, epic and thunderous stupidity announcing itself from the ramparts like that? He's not elected -- and not here, in any event -- so getting mad about it would be kind of pointless. The British are actually stuck with the guy, which just might be one of the problems with having an hereditary house of government.)
To be sure, Lord Tebbit asserts that he never suggested the connection. Given his plain words, this would seem to be somewhat disingenuous, to put it mildly.
Then again, he does appear to be ... well, not the brightest bulb in the box. Maybe he just mixed up his words a tad. (Although that leaves him being utterly and absolutely inarticulate about what he meant, rather than being articulate but stupid. Neither choice would strike one as particularly good.)
Posted by iain at June 02, 2004 08:20 PM
