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IT’S incredibly easy to have a pop at Jamie Oliver.
A fat foodie who manages to be a health nazi at the same time.
Quite a neat money-spinning trick. Lecture the poor on eating too much fast food while flogging the better off, calorie-laden muck in your overpriced eateries. Hey, but at least it’s organic and fair trade.
So when Labour MP Dawn Butler, below, felt like upping her profile this week our cuddly chef was an obvious target.
Well, dodgy wreath laying and burka bashing were already taken.
Clearly there wasn’t too much going on in Dawn’s London Brent Central constituency last weekend (it’s only one of the capital’s crime hotspots after all). So she turned her gimlet gaze to the altar of Millenials. Or Twitter as it’s better known.
“This is so wrong,” she raged. What, we all gasped. The Brexit mess? Putin? Trump? Celebrity Big Brother?
Nope, the fact that Jamie Oliver has recently launched a product called Punchy Jerk Rice.
OMG, start building that nuclear bunker now – it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Or what the hell are you on about, you silly moo?
Turns out that a porky, white bloke can’t be a jerk. Or maybe I’m getting that slightly wrong.
Aah, that’s right. Dawn thinks that this is that Snowflake beloved creation of “cultural appropriation”.
Which means that only Jamaican folk can have anything to do with jerk dishes. Anyone else and it’s thieving from the Caribbean island’s culture.
“I’m just wondering do you know what Jamaican jerk actually is,” she ranted.
“It’s not just a word you put before stuff to sell products. This appropriation from Jamaica needs to stop. Your jerk rice is not okay.”
God. Give. Me. Strength.
This is up there with the Kardashians being accused of race crime for having their hair in cornrow braids.
Katy Perry wearing a kimono on stage or Ellie Goulding dressing as a Red Indian (soz, native American) at a fancy dress party.
Where is this madness going to end? We have real racism oozing out of the pores of some of our so-called political leaders and the Windrush generation being treated beyond appallingly and we now have a woman, who is Shadow Secretary for Women and Equalities, getting her knickers in a twist over a packet of rice?
And while our Dawn has her knockers (I can make sexist jokes, I’m a girl too and she does have nice boobs) she also has her backers. Dragons’ Den star and jerk Reggae Reggae sauce entrepreneur Levi Roots was roped in to give Oliver a cookery RICE-PUTIN? Oliver lesson. And if you really want to know the history of jerk just Google it. As a white woman I daren’t even try. If you take this PC rubbish to the extreme Jamie should just stick to Yorkshire pudding, fish and chips and – him being a fully paid-up Mockney – jellied eels. Talking of which, as an East Ender, please do feel free to culturally appropriate that last one. They’re disgusting.
Dawn obviously feels she is making a valuable point and I’m sure this paragon of virtue signalling has never gone out for an Indian, had a Chinese takeaway or, heaven forbid, a pizza at Jamie’s Italians.
All of which, really, are equally stealing from other cultures. Though quiz your local takeaway on how much they feel “culturally appropriated” when you pick up your order and they’d look at you as if you were mad.
Because they’re ordinary Brits, trying to run businesses in a country that’s increasingly tying itself in ridiculous knots, while ignoring the huge and growing number of elephants in the room.
Dawn is a big fan of diversity. Which makes it really sad she doesn’t get how most of us are happy to jog along sharing our cultures and lives.
Talking of which I have to say Dawn looked very fetching when she wore a pretty pink sari at a Hindu temple 18 months ago. The perfect outfit for a black woman of Jamaican descent who most definitely isn’t a Hindu. Just saying…