How offensive do you find clothes pegs? How “triggering”? Do you start trembling uncontrollably when you see them or break out into a cold sweat? No? You’ll be as baffled as I was, then, by the Ant and Dec “furore” that erupted at the weekend.
Publicising their new podcast, Hanging Out with Ant and Dec, the TV stars shared a shot of themselves hanging from a washing line with their 5.9 million followers, their feet dangling a few inches above the ground – in the way that they would, you know, if you were hanging from a washing line, alongside a few bits of laundry and a sparrow.
Now, imagine for just one second making the leap from this to “suicidal imagery”. An Olympic gold medallist would struggle to bridge that gap. Yet within minutes of it being posted, the video was being described as “insensitive”, “triggering” and in “poor taste”, with former X Factor contestant and mental health advocate Katie Waissel insisting that the “opening visual of feet suspended above the ground is not a harmless play on words” and that “the suicide imagery is impossible to ignore”. Within hours, it had been taken down.
The TV stars shared this image of themselves hanging from a washing line with their 5.9 million followers on X
Actually, much like the neo-Nazi undertones in Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle adverts – “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” – the suicidal imagery is very easy to ignore… on account of how it’s just not there. Doesn’t exist. Was fashioned out of thin air by bored woke warriors who need something new to be incensed about.
Imagine how desperate to claim offence you have to be to make that connection? What a concerted, fully paid-up, 24/7 victim? Because that is not a natural, organic connection to make. You have to work hard at that. Only a modern mind, a sick mind, warped by woke thinking, could go from clothes pegs to noose, to suicide – to outrage.
Like the American Eagle marketing team who will have been blindsided by the outrage their snappy little campaign slogan unleashed, Ant and Dec’s team must have been scratching their heads on Sunday, even as they took down the post. Even as the comedy duo’s apology was put out. Because, as Matt Damon says on Joe Rogan’s podcast this week, celebrities would rather serve a jail sentence than be cancelled. Hence the instant apologies.
“We did not mean to cause any offence with this promo video,” said Ant and Dec, “and we are sorry if it upset anyone.” Rest assured: no one was upset. The whole thing was a fabrication and should have been treated as such from the start.
When Sweeney finally spoke out about her supposed white supremacist views after no less than five months, the actress said she regretted not rebutting these nonsensical claims earlier. Public figures should learn their lesson from that.
There is only one way to respond to fabricated offence, and that is to come back immediately and hard. “We cannot understand how a clothesline has been likened to a noose,” is what Ant and Dec should have said. “But we are deeply troubled by the minds that have made such a connection. At a time when there are all too many genuine issues to be outraged about, we are ourselves affronted, offended and insulted, and will not be engaging in any further discussion about this nonsense.”
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