When the authorities seek new members for the Advertising Standards Authority, how do they find suitable candidates? In the absence of a time machine which will find individuals with the appropriately anachronistic standards, does it have an island near, say, Rockall, where applicants may be trained in the principles of 1970s feminism, 1990s multiculturalism and neolithic numeracy?
Last week, the ASA upheld complaints against Levi's for showing some photographs of topless models, male and female, in slightly suggestive poses. The women's breasts were no more visible than in a bikini. Yet these advertisements, said the ASA, had caused widespread offence - as indeed, it declared, had another advertisement, in which a woman, whose breasts are unclothed but covered, was shown holding a bottle of Diet Coke. This, puffed the ASA, was "exploitative of women, sexually suggestive and left women feeling vulnerable and embarrassed."
Prudishness
Dear me. "Exploitative of women"; "sexually suggestive"; "vulnerable and embarrassed" I haven't heard such whinnying mumbo-jumbo in years. Retrofemininism: only women bleed, a woman's heart, offensive to women - the creepy victimhood which was the early love-child of a traditional Catholic prudishness consorting with man-hating lesbian feminism: a sad and joyless, boiler-suited hybrid, breathing halitosic cliches of puritanism, oppression and angry self-pity.
Happily, it wasn't men who put this wretched beast out of its whinging misery, but women: women who like their sex, their sexuality and their bodies, and feel free not merely to celebrate these things, but are happy for men to join in this celebration also. They do not feel their bodies, or other women's, are something to be ashamed of, as any woman's magazine, and the many nude or semi-nude images within it, will testify.
So much for offence; but what about the "widespread"? What does it mean? Let's start with newspapers. They sell about a million a day in this country, and more on Sundays. Most sell for about £1 each, and every pound handed over represents a strong expression of opinion and of choice. That's what widespread means.
So in ASA-speak, how extensive was this feeling of "widespread offence"? Was it expressed by one million people? Or 100,000? Or 10,000 people? Five thousand? One hundred? No. None of these. There were in all, from a population of 3.5 milllion, just 28 complaints about these advertisements. Praise the Lord and pass the widespread ammunition.
Changing taste
There are two issues here, both of which would of course have been touched upon during an ASA indoctrination course, if the members had attended one. One is taste; and the standards of what is tasteful today and what would have been in good taste 40 years ago are of course radically different. The question must be: do the standards of taste of these advertisements conform with the standards of society generally?
Well, yes, they do. Most young people today become sexually active in their teens and, moreover, inhabit a culture of overt, explicit sexuality, in which virtually no personal conduct is not discussed, even if not always experienced. So if one of the women in the Levi's ad might have appeared to be in the early stages of having an Allied Irish, they - and most of us - would say: so what? Indeed, they would probably feel the fact that only 27 individuals complained about the advertisements which supposedly caused "widespread offence" actually proves how reassuringly few prudes, cranks and sexually dysfunctional characters remain in Ireland.
This brings us to the second issue:
Why is a tiny minority taken so seriously as to have its opinions solemnly attended to and acted on as if it represented the vast majority? Did the ASA, when it was presented with this statistically insignificant number of complaints - so small that it makes all margin of error in normal opinion polls seem like the population of Mexico City - even think about seeking opinions from the millions who, by saying nothing, have passively approved of the ads? And are our public standards to be set and reset by the noisy microminority of sad busybodies who have nothing better to do with their time?
Perhaps a harbinger of things to come is the opinion from the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin that the images were "very offensive to the Muslim community". Really? And should I care about this? This is a secular Christian society which, after all, compels no-one to stay. Because it is increasingly pluralist doesn't mean that it is run on lines of multicultural parity of esteem, or that the veto of every tiny but coherent minority may properly be exercised over all public imagery.
Salman Rushdie
For who may not then declare a prohibition of this or that? A decade ago it was Salman Rushdie. Now Saudi Arabai's mufti, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, has issued a supreme fatwa upon, of all things, Pokemon games - because (he says) they are Zionist-inspired - and his prohibition has spread through much of the Muslim world. No doubt he believes what he says; as do the 27 individuals who object to the Levi's ads; as do the Taliban leaders who destroyed the ancient statues of Buddha; as does the Islamic Cultural Centre in its attitude to bare female flesh.
A society which is all-inclusive, which says we value all your opinions equally, is not a society at all, but a school playground full of feuding cliques. And if the complaints of the unrepresentative but noisy few are elevated into social policy, what results is a grey and whining crankocracy, for which the ASA provides a splendid model.