Offence and plastic bricks

Lego is anti-Islamic. Who knew?

One of the things that annoys me the most about current discussions of criminalising the causation of offence is actually a very simple point - people can be absolute fucking idiots and get offended by really stupid things.

Case in point;

This toy is racist. This toy is a Lego representation of the palace of criminal head honcho Jabba the Hutt on the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars saga. And yet it is racist.

Can you tell me why? Yes? No? No idea?

Well, it is disrespectful and insulting to islamic people. Yep. It just is.

So, according to here and other places, some poor fool bought this toy for his sister, and somewhere between the store shelf, the check out counter, getting in the car or on the bus and going home, delivering it to his sister, and presumably his sister opening the carefully numbered plastic bags of parts and assembling it, the purchaser decided it was an evil jab by the Lego Group at islamic people everywhere.

Thus it is racist.

Somehow.

Because islam is an ethinicity. I guess.

And Jabba's Palace looks like the Hagia Sofia apparently. Checkmate! In any event, take it up with George Lucas, who has been criticised for ethnic stereotyping - rightly or wrongly - before.

Now this is either a perversely black-humoured troll, or a very silly person. I hope the former, because I would hate the idea that there are numb-nuts out there that are this simple.

There's a saying that you don't give offence, you take it. The saga of the racist, anti-islamist plastic construction toy should be held up as exhibit A why offence laws are problematic.

If, for some reason, we soon see large numbers of angry islamic protestors burning boxes of Lego, I will weep, because there are some really cool parts in that set and the minifigs are cute.

So, if this be trollage of perverse nature, I salute you sir. You sure know how to get yourself bandwidth and get people talking.

If this however is a serious complaint...