Everyone and his uncle seems to be pissed about this poster created by Labour to criticise the Tories for what they are characterizing as budget whackiness . . . Labour attacked on Howard poster . . . Labour team tries to cool ‘anti-Semitic’ poster row . . . Tom Watson.

The furor is basically that a whole bunch of folks are saying since the poster shows Michael Howard as an evil hypnotist type character and the pose reminds people of Fagin from the musical version of Oliver Twist and since Fagin is a jew and everyone knows jews are crooked by showing the Tories as a jew is means the poster is anti-semetic.

The anti defamations folks related to some of the more active jewish groups are upset that Fagin and Shylock seem to represent jews to so many peopls and it’s not fair.

Fagin? Fagin was a thief but that doesn’t mean all jews are thieves.

Besides . . . when Fagin was not a hypnotist . . . moneygrubbing crook, yes, but hypnotist, no.

If we’re going to get upset about the poster being anti-semetic (which it may or may not be depending upon how you look at it), let’s at least pick a jewish character that actually fits the image well . . . it’s NOT Fagin, it’s Svengali! Svengali was a crook, he was money hungry, he bilked people out of their savings and stole and did worse . . . and . . . he was a hypnotist!

The poster is more anti-hypnotist than anti-semetic!

Actually, I believe someone was trying to be clever . . . see the Tom Watson page linked above for all three poster images being chosen from at the time. They’re all stupid and sophomoric and make personal attack more than sticking to issues. They’re political gambits and this one came back and bit them on the ass.

I don’t think the poster is anti-semetic, I think it’s stupid. Of course, I also think it’s promulgating myths about hypnosis that are so typical of folks who don’t actually know anything about the subject. Grr, grrr, grrrrrrr.

Gave me a laugh though. It may be stupid, but it is funny . . . and perhaps that was the original intent. Perhaps we should all just lighten up?