Makes the word go round
Our world depends on stereotypes.
Douglas Adams once said, by way of Ford Prefect:
If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
An unkind but useful observation.
Spouting stereotypes is, what cocktail talk, crocheting or casual sex might be to some and watching female wrestlers on TV to others: a restful non-activity that does not require any brain power whatsoever and passes the time in a boring but non-threatening manner.
Ah, stereotypes: so often disdained and discarded.
Without them, any family get-together would be unbearable; newspapers would go broke; churches would stand empty. Our world would not be able to function without the soft and careless blessing of this, our favourite means of communicating.
Besides, not many columns would be written without their comfortable and ever-lazy presence either.
What would columnists do, if they did not have some stereotype to attack:
“See! Not all Americans are weird and obsessed with glory…”
or champion:
“See! All Americans are weird and obsessed with…”
What joy the average newspaper column can bring to each and every household around the world:
We may be weird but those Brits are strange beyond words.
We may not be brain surgeons but what about those uniform-loving Germans.
We may not always be paragons of virtue but what about those Dutch folks, who send out their little boys to molest unsuspecting lesbians.
We may have our hang-ups but what about those sex-crazed Japanese…?!
Our loved ones observe us and, if we’re lucky, forgive us. Gods may measure our lives and judge us most sternly and, if we’re unlucky, fair.
Stereotypes though, like death and American Idols, are the great levellers. Nothing is beyond their casual reach, nobody safe from their indifferent but all-pervasive call.
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