Clothes shop sells clothes

September 4, 2017 2:02 AM

John Lewis (the British one) have taken the decision to remove gendered labels from all children's clothes. There has been some backlash. Piers Morgan weighs in, whilst others point out that this isn't new.

The other other John Lewis probably thought he was safe until Christmas.

posted by threetwentytwo (59 comments total)

As some have pointed out, there are some issues with the labelling. The stores still have boy & girl sections as well.
posted by kariebookish at 2:06 AM on September 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Outraged types on Twitter have been turning purple over the thought of dinosaurs appearing on toddlers' dresses, because a girl wanting to be a paleontologist is clearly unthinkable. As for putting a toddler boy in a dress, we would never have stood for it during the Empire.
posted by rory at 2:39 AM on September 4, 2017 [7 favorites]

There's some pretty unnecessary non-binary erasure going on with the "boys & girls"/"girls & boys" labeling, as well as the way it still genders the clothes. Why not just "kids"?
posted by Dysk at 2:45 AM on September 4, 2017 [26 favorites]

There is a particular brand of outrage associated with this sort of thing which I find very infuriating.
It's a bit hard to describe, but very distinct, and mainly features people bemoaning how stupid it is, how there's no need to make silly changes and quite often talking about how it's self evident that biologically boys and girls are different harumph.
I mean, it's the same (or very similar) group of thoughtless dopes who hate all the other things I think are good, but there's this odd distinct theme that runs through them. I wish I could put it into words.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:49 AM on September 4, 2017 [11 favorites]

> mainly features people bemoaning how stupid it is, how there's no need to make silly changes

You know the funny thing? Brexiters moaning about "needless silly changes".
posted by runcifex at 3:02 AM on September 4, 2017 [41 favorites]

From the twitter thread kariebookish linked to:

Daughter loved lion shirt from boy's dept. Wore it to nursery school. Boy wearing same shirt. She refused to wear lion shirt ever again.

I suspect there will be quite a bit of this. But anything that upsets Piers Morgan is probably a bold step forward for humanity.
posted by rongorongo at 3:07 AM on September 4, 2017 [25 favorites]

For confused Americans, back in 2010 I explained what John Lewis is.
posted by Hogshead at 3:10 AM on September 4, 2017 [14 favorites]

As for putting a toddler boy in a dress, we would never have stood for it during the Empire.

Neither would we during ours.
posted by sukeban at 3:24 AM on September 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

But anything that upsets Piers Morgan is probably a bold step forward for humanity.

That's it! I was debating with myself why I even bothered to click the Piers Morgan link, since it said what I expected it to and I was annoyed in exactly the way I was expecting to be. In the future I'll tell myself that I'm merely clicking for guidance on where to direct my energies towards.
posted by Harald74 at 3:54 AM on September 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

There's a great portrait in the Museum of Edinburgh of Field-Marshal Haig as a child, complete with Victorian ringlets and dress. He looks adorable.

I once got passive-aggressively told off by a woman in Mothercare for dressing my weeks-old baby girl in blue. (To the baby: "Oh dear, poor little thing! How's anybody supposed to know you're a girl if Mummy puts you in blue!" No comment on fact that Mummy was wearing blue herself.) Baby and child clothing seems much more gendered than it was in my own childhood (as a pink-and-dresses-hating girl), and there's a bleedthrough to all other consumer goods too, not just toys but buggies and bouncers and paint schemes and furniture. I find it incredibly frustrating.
posted by Catseye at 3:54 AM on September 4, 2017 [16 favorites]

There is a particular brand of outrage associated with this sort of thing which I find very infuriating.

Absolutely, and it almost entirely comes from people who will not be affected by the change in the slightest. There is no conceivable scenario in the known universe where the fact that John Lewis have removed a label from some clothes will have any sort of impact, negative or otherwise, on the life of Piers Morgan or any of the other mouth-foaming commentators. Why the fuck do they give a shit?

Well we know why. Because outrage sells newspapers and generates clicks. The problem is however that it then spreads to their viewers and readers. Who will be equally unaffected by this change and have no skin in the clothes game (or for the most part in the children game by this stage of their life), yet they feel the need to comment and to tut about the state of the country.

They've been consistently told to get outraged by things that will not change their lives but which, in reality, could have a positive effect on some people in society. But because it's not them they don't give a fuck and just bemoan political correctness gone mad. It's exhausting.
posted by jontyjago at 4:17 AM on September 4, 2017 [16 favorites]

We went to B&Q to look at lampshades for the redecoration of our little bedroom into a nursery and was shocked at the fact that there were obviously boy and girl lampshades. We've painted the walls a sea green and I was wanting to find a lampshade with fishes on it, but everything was either superheros or princesses.
posted by koolkat at 4:23 AM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

Because outrage sells newspapers and generates clicks.

I'm pretty sure that Piers Morgan is, in fact, an unreconstructed asshole who sees literally any form of change as bad, and not just someone who plays one on TV.
posted by Etrigan at 4:54 AM on September 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

To Britsplain, for American readers: John Lewis is the most successful high street department store chain in the UK, with revenue in the billions and a rapidly growing grocery supermarket subsidiary (Waitrose) that has more or less eaten the niche Whole Foods Market occupies in the US.

It also happens to be worker-shareholder owned and caps its CEO's pay at 60 times average staff salary (and no sweetheart stock option bonuses on top) — compared to an average multiplier of 130 for CEOs in the UK and 373 in the USA — and pays staff an annual bonus based on the group-wide profits.

They're by no means perfect but the usual quality of customer service is head and shoulders above their competition and people actually seem proud to work there.

(In other words, their attitude to HR is closer to CostCo than WalMart, and it shows.)
posted by cstross at 4:54 AM on September 4, 2017 [39 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that Piers Morgan is,

... a giant bag of poo carefully constructed to resemble a human.
posted by Fizz at 4:56 AM on September 4, 2017 [11 favorites]

@Fizz, speaking as someone with two dogs and as such a person who handles bags of poo on a regular basis, I can assure you they are much more pleasant to be around than Mr Morgan.
posted by auntie-matter at 4:58 AM on September 4, 2017 [9 favorites]

But anything that upsets Piers Morgan is probably a bold step forward for humanity.

This goes against my moral code, and quite possibly the guidelines, but you'll be pleased to know that he's broken 3 ribs.

This might be the one time I'd like to see him laughing.
posted by ambrosen at 5:08 AM on September 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

"Boys" and "girls" are considered separate markets so the designers and marketing folks are creating brands and lines to clearly identify they belong in one market or another so as to prevent cannibalizing their market shares.

Basically our binary genders have been weaponized against parents of children to maximize profits for clothing and toy lines. That's probably in service to some other fucked up thing (like programming hypermasculinity into AMAB children in order to ensure a perpetual pipeline of "military ready men")

Here's hoping we can eventually tear this shit down for good, and given the situation at hand, a brand even attempting to de-gender clothing and not getting it perfect is still a respectable and rather daring move. Here's to hoping more follow suit.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:51 AM on September 4, 2017 [13 favorites]

And people with Twitter handles like @UKIPNutter are, predictably, already screaming “Marxist social engineering”. Could somebody point out exactly where Marx mentions gender-neutral childrens' clothing?
posted by acb at 5:56 AM on September 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

Its so strange to see, even when my kids were small, it wasn't as extreme as today. And when I was a child in the 70's, my grandmother bought the same clothes for my cousin (a boy) and me in a shop where a lot of the clothes were gender-neutral. We both liked blue and pink, and actually once we were allowed to choose new towels, he chose pink and I chose blue.
posted by mumimor at 6:25 AM on September 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yeah, the increasingly obnoxious gendering of children's clothing is all about turning a profit for the clothes manufacturers, by cutting the incidence of hand-me-downs approximately in half. My cousin actually threw out a bunch of perfectly serviceable, worn-once-or-twice, onesies when she found out her second child was going to be a different flavor of human. (She was originally going to donate them, but apparently the thrift stores don't want onesies.)
posted by basalganglia at 6:33 AM on September 4, 2017 [9 favorites]

We both liked blue and pink, and actually once we were allowed to choose new towels, he chose pink and I chose blue.

And, of course, the colour gender assignment used to work the other way round - but back then it was ♂️ "knave-girls" vs ♀️ "gay-girls" anyway. Not sure how Piers would like that idea.
posted by rongorongo at 6:44 AM on September 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Twitter makes me feel so old and out of touch. There is so much writing in that Piers Morgan thread, but there's almost nothing that conveys any meaning to me. Is it just comfort and commiseration for the outrage-is-my-hobby crowd, or is there depth there that I don't percieve because I'm not British and I have no idea who Piers Morgan is?

If you don't have dresses with dinosaurs, then you're going to have some dino-crazy girls wearing (gasp) boys clothes. Horror shock horror. So is that what those people would prefer? Probably not? Is this as incoherent as it sounds?
posted by Western Infidels at 6:45 AM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

As has been pointed out, into the early 20th century toddler boys and girls both wore dresses, witness the many old family photos from that era. Also at some point pink was for boys and blue was for girls. Times change and stay the same. I can't imagine anyone getting really upset over this. Yes, I would buy a girl's outfit with dinosaurs for a little girl. Or trucks, or dragons or whatever she liked, if she were old enough to care.

Trying to shop for my toddler grandson, what I have noticed is how tacky and inappropriate
so many baby and toddler outfits are, unless you go to a high end store. My daughter-in-law dresses him mostly neutral colors and classic styles, most could be worn by a boy or girl. No big deal.
posted by mermayd at 6:47 AM on September 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm surprisingly ok with this. I think the hypersexualization of girls clothes after puberty is far more of an issue. Sproutlet is 11, and purchasing clothing for her has become far more tedious in the past year, as the inappropriateness of most choices has increased, decreasing the available options.
posted by MikeWarot at 6:52 AM on September 4, 2017 [7 favorites]

One thing I don't see mentioned much (and a particular dislike of mine) is toddler clothing with words on which supposedly evoke opinions that the toddler is supposed to be having, or saying.

It always seems a bit disrespectful to foist your opinions onto a child without their agency. That might just be me though.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 6:55 AM on September 4, 2017 [21 favorites]

I hope this means a reduction in the amount of offerings meant for little boys that are grey or black. There's nothing sadder than a small child wearing grey clothes. I can sometimes find red; give me yellows, oranges, greens; vibrant colors. And while we're at it, please offer clothes made for kids, not smaller versions of adult clothes. I don't like to dress my toddler boy in clothing with skulls, or that angry "No Fear!" face, or small sizes of adult brands like Nike or Adidas or Body Glove or what-have-you. I'll take the cartoon lion or the puppy, thank you.

But not monkeys. God how I hate monkeys.
posted by vignettist at 8:26 AM on September 4, 2017 [7 favorites]

OMG!! Has no-one though of the poor unfailing polite guy with the @johnlewis twitter handle????



.
posted by Wilder at 8:44 AM on September 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

OMG!! Has no-one though of the poor unfailing polite guy with the @johnlewis twitter handle????

I like to imagine they are "Closing their eyes and thinking of England."
posted by mikelieman at 8:45 AM on September 4, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yes, I would buy a girl's outfit with dinosaurs for a little girl. Or trucks, or dragons or whatever she liked, if she were old enough to care.

There's an interesting ratchet effect that happens with gendered things - they can move from male to female, but they can't move from female to male. John Wayne's given name was Marion, for example. Even in this thread, there's more "girls can wear dinosaurs" than "boys can wear princesses" I guess it's a consequence of feminine being synonymous with second-class - a girl in a dinosaur onesie is getting an upgrade.

If you had a concerted effort to rebrand dinosaurs as "for girls", I bet you'd end up with a lot fewer male paleontologists in thirty years time.
posted by Leon at 9:41 AM on September 4, 2017 [20 favorites]

they can move from male to female, but they can't move from female to male

Dude, I'm wearing a My Little Pony shirt right now!
posted by SPrintF at 10:07 AM on September 4, 2017 [4 favorites]

I hope this means a reduction in the amount of offerings meant for little boys that are grey or black. There's nothing sadder than a small child wearing grey clothes.

Sorry. I'm a single parent. All minutes of my life are accounted for. Dressing my girls in grey and black and dark blue means I have two laundry settings to deal with: white and dark. Pink never gets washed. They have both survived this torture, and one of them even thinks it has given her some street/playground cred.
posted by mumimor at 10:40 AM on September 4, 2017 [5 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that Piers Morgan is, in fact, an unreconstructed asshole who sees literally any form of change as bad, and not just someone who plays one on TV.

Obligatory Stew, not on Morgan specifically but certainly on his ilk.

And yes, I'm completely sure that anything Morgan has by way of fellow travellers definitely counts as an ilk.
posted by flabdablet at 11:01 AM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

All this tells me is that the people who care about gendered kids clothing need a label to tell which clothes belong to which gender. Either:

1) they can easily tell boys' and girls' clothing apart, in which case why have a label? Or
2) boys' and girls' clothing is interchangeable, so why have a label?
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 1:36 PM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

As a long time Arsenal supporter, I feel I have the right to say that Piers Morgan is a mindless jerk who'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:34 PM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

I have also been frustrated at the aggressive gendering of baby clothing whenever I have to attend a friend's baby shower, particularly because the boys' clothes say things like "Genius" and the girls' say things like "Smile" and "Cute." (I almost cried with relief when I finally found a shirt that said "Genius just like Mom.")

I have solved this problem by mostly buying my friends Star Trek onesies for their children. That way, the only genders are Science, Command, or Operations. (Or Klingon, because Today Is A Good Day To Cry.)
posted by ilana at 4:59 PM on September 4, 2017 [14 favorites]

It does seem harder for boys who like pink, than girls who wear dinosaurs. My son gets annoyed at having to shop in the girl section, just to get some pink and purple outfits.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 7:28 PM on September 4, 2017

I am still recognized at our downtown toy store as the mom who bought her 3-year old son a pink princess dress when he was going through his Glenda the Good Witch phase.

He's 15 now and hates when I tell that story.
posted by bibliowench at 7:43 PM on September 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have also been frustrated at the aggressive gendering of baby clothing whenever I have to attend a friend's baby shower

There's some great non-gender all-purpose newborn clothing out there, but you have to seek it out.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:58 PM on September 4, 2017

Gendered clothing for children drives me mad. When I was pregnant with Elder Monster, there was heavy pressure to reveal his sex so people would know "what kind" of clothing to buy for the baby shower.

Later, one of the extended family pitched a fit at a gathering because he was hanging out in a pink onesie. "But that's a GIRL COLOR!". Well, no, it's just one of the three that we're in the pack. He's a baby, FFS. He doesn't give a shit, he's just gonna puke on it in an hour anyway. (He was pretty barfy for a while.). The relative was furious! And while she was having her fit, he puked on her. I like to think he did it on purpose.

AFAIC, there is no need to gender their clothes. Just make it easy to launder and hard for them to tear off on their own while squealing "I nakey!" and hauling ass down the hallway.
posted by MissySedai at 9:13 PM on September 4, 2017 [15 favorites]

Dressing my girls in grey and black and dark blue means I have two laundry settings to deal with: white and dark. Pink never gets washed.

As the saying goes, ain't nobody got time for that. The model at our house is all kid clothes go in the same washload regardless of color, and all kid clothes get washed in HOT, to kill all the god-knows-what is on them. Anything that can't survive the hot cycle doesn't make the cut at the register.

Side note about a small pet peeve of mine: I would lay good money that people who design white clothing for children don't actually have children. Or they own a great deal of stock in stain removal manufacturing companies.
posted by vignettist at 11:58 PM on September 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love the idea of the only three child genders being command, ops and science (we dressed or child as ops btw, though I think my wife secretly wanted a science) also you still get to have the Snopes esque "did you know the colours for the three child genders is a recent thing. Parents used to dress ops babies in red and command in gold, or sometimes even green!"
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 12:23 AM on September 5, 2017 [6 favorites]

I'm pretty sure that Piers Morgan is

I just typed "Piers Morgan is" into the search bar and it told me "Piers Morgan is a sentient ham," but by all accounts that is giving him WAY too much credit and frankly I was expecting something far nastier.

At this point I would be tempted to say "NO ONE CARES, PIERS MORGAN," but apparently a lot of people care a great fucking deal.
Those people can kiss a poorly constructed replica of my whole entire ass because here is a very accurate representation of what happens when you put pink on me and I was vocally rude about it as a child and it was going to be ruined with mud and snake poop anyway. I bet there are lots of girls just like that now, and I am so happy they have more role models and choices than I did, that is so wonderful.
posted by louche mustachio at 2:43 AM on September 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

I was at a rest stop in Ohio yesterday and my 2.2-year-old daughter, free from her car seat for the first time in apparently months, was happily stretching her legs by sprinting between her parents, each waiting in separate food court lines. After the fourth or fifth time this pink-tutu'd blur zoomed up and giggled and zoomed away, the people behind me said "Your little one is adorable," and it took me an hour or so to realize that they had very cleverly not gendered her despite the pink and the tutu and the long blonde curls, and I wish I'd been able to thank them for that, because I've lost track of the times people have gotten annoyed at us when they assumed she was a boy when she was wearing jeans and her favorite Yay! Trucks! gray shirt.
posted by Etrigan at 3:53 AM on September 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Here's to hoping we can have a world where AMAB kids can go wander through what's typically coded for AFAB kids and not feel ashamed or be ridiculed.

(I probably shouldn't hold my breath on this one.)
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:34 AM on September 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Maybe it's a combination of confirmation bias and the advent of the Disney Princess, but it seems like, growing up in the 70s, clothing was a lot more interchangable, if not entirely gender neutral. If know this wasn't universal, and I know a lot of little girls are forced to dressed "girly" but it was mainstream enough for The Brady Bunch. You see pink represented, but it's more because they ran out of earth tones.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:38 AM on September 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

FFS, that dinosaur dress is freaking awesome and I would buy it for my kid in a second.
posted by telepanda at 7:41 AM on September 5, 2017

someone has made the critical mistake of linking to anything Piers Morgan has ever said.
posted by Theta States at 8:14 AM on September 5, 2017

I am confused by these outraged parents of small children. Surely they are aware that small boy children and small girl children are not shaped particularly differently? You can still refuse to buy your boychild a dress and dress him in his favorite polos and trainers. Your girlchild will still have access to pink clothing if she wants it.
posted by desuetude at 8:33 AM on September 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hopefully this precipitates average parents/gift-buyers rethinking not just their assumptions about what patterns a kid can/should wear but also what styles a kid can/should wear because it's a shame that all those AMAB kids aren't encouraged to wear lots of movement-friendly leggings and skirts (and similarly AFAB kids with the heavy-duty-sweatpant type pants, although I suspect that's slightly less stigmatized).

As a kid I wore nothing but leggings and skirts until around late elementary school and now I hate dresses/far prefer pants because I think skirts are way too much work to try to stay decent in all the time. I feel fortunate to have had the options I had at both stages of life!
posted by mosst at 8:37 AM on September 5, 2017

Everytime somebody says pink is for girls, I immediately think of John Travolta in "Grease," wearing the aggressively pink shirt in the big dance scene. During my h.s. years, pink & black was a cool color combo for boys.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:02 AM on September 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

My son gets annoyed at having to shop in the girl section, just to get some pink and purple outfits.

It gets no easier as an adult.

Case in point: the Liberty floral-print shirts Uniqlo had a few years ago. They had a coloured fabric, but it was only available in womens' cuts; men and man-shaped humans had to make do with a monochromatic steely blue. The coloured print wasn't even romance-novel pink or anything; it was a joyous jungle of saturated reds, yellows and greens. It was just colours. But because it was a floral print (and without the redeeming dudebro machismo of Hawaiian shirts), they had to leach all the colour out of it and tacticalise it for the dudes.
posted by acb at 11:14 AM on September 5, 2017

I must admit until I had a child I didn't think too much about how gendered children's clothing was or wasn't. We learned quickly. For us it started right away - people were bent out of joint that we refused to reveal the sex of the baby. They were equally annoyed when the kid emerged that we refused to dress him in blue or pink as a baby. Strangers would accost me, get angry at us if we did not genderise the baby's clothing to their satisfaction. Utterly mind boggling.

Peak annoyance about our refusal to follow gendered clothing "norms" came when one day my partner was called in to the school. The dauphin was in kindergarten at the time. What transpired was that one of the teaching assistants was "concerned" because she thought my son had stolen another child's clothes. At the time I thought "that's weird" and I tried to think of what he had been wearing that day - a pair of second-hand jeans and a T-shirt. So the partner gets to the school and talks to the TA. She points out that our kid was wearing "girl jeans" - so basically slim cut jeans with some purple threading, I don't think there was even any designs on the pants. My son has a long thin body type so slim cut clothes just look better on him then the more traditional baggy "boys' cuts". My partner did her best not get pissed off at the TA and told her politely that "No, those are his pants. In fact they are the pants he chose to wear today." The TA's response was "Oh" but my partner could tell the wheels were spinning in her head. So time passes and my son now older (and more gendered due to peer pressure) still encounters this TA who works in the after school programme where she treats him well but is always singling him out and "celebrating his diversity" which I guess is fine but still pretty weird.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:37 AM on September 6, 2017

I was thinking more about this, and mentioned it to my brother. He boggled a minute, then asked me if I remembered Garanimals. I DID! Back when we were kids in the 70s, Garanimals had this whole line of gender neutral colors, and you coordinated outfits by matching tags - lions with lions, etc. We had a ton of it, likely to make laundry easier with three rambunctious kids in the house.

I looked then up to see if they are still around. They are...but now sadly gender their clothing.
posted by MissySedai at 9:20 PM on September 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

When this call from Northwood said John Lewis’ gender neutral labelling was “bowing to political correctness” - James O’Brien had the perfect response waiting.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:25 PM on September 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

I long for the politically-incorrect days of yore. You know, when my then toddler grandfather and grandmother both wore dresses.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 12:22 AM on September 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, that's so disappointing about Garanimsls.

I'm going to copy a previous comment about gendered colors:

For a number of reasons I am totally fascinated by the home shopping channels on TV, especially the peek into the world outside my very blue bubble.

One thing that is so weird to me is the insanely gendered way products are presented and sold.

No matter what the item, if it comes in multiple colors there is always a color (black, blue, grey) for "the men." If the "manly" colors sell out it's so weird to watch the hosts twist themselves into a knot rationalizing why your man or your son might be able to live with a red or purple laptop or set of sheets--maybe it's school colors? Team colors? Of course, there are often options with lots of bling because LL Cool Bling I guess, unless they're "wild" in which case there are plenty of animal prints usually available, too.

There are a million examples, but it's really so bad that they actually talk about how some items/colors are "gender-friendly." (I think the term gender-friendly was probably uttered by one host and all the rest just ran with it. They obviously mean "gender-neutral" but it's interesting that it's framed as being "friendly.") There are also occasionally hosts and presenters who joke about carrying a pink laptop or thermos or somrthing.

(And thanks to the Emotional Labor thread, I have much more insight into the "Ladies, it's so easy your husband can do it!" sales pitch. Fascinating.)

posted by Room 641-A at 4:15 AM on September 8, 2017

Room 641-A, I'm reminded of my first question here: Can a man with a very unremarkable sense of style get away with having a (not-too hot) pink mobile?

I'm glad you were all so affirmative, as it was a really good opportunity for me to affirm my own character. Which is distressingly what all this crap is about: making everyone conform on the things that don't matter. And maybe the more energy that's expended making people conform "just because", the less people end up conforming with the social norms that actually do matter. The ones around respecting other people's rights, and not overusing shared resources.
posted by ambrosen at 5:36 AM on September 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Anybody who has not yet followed Johnny Wallflower's James O'Brien link is in for a perfect treat when they do.

O'Brien will not let go of his talkback caller's lazy talking point about Political Correctness, and forces the lazy sod to paint himself into a verbal corner until he simply has nowhere left to go and falls flat on his face in the paint. Just glorious.

I really want to see a James O'Brien vs Piers Morgan cage match now.
posted by flabdablet at 11:40 AM on September 8, 2017 [3 favorites]