The Morning Advertiser Think I Don't Have A Sense Of Humour

I was a bit bored at work today, so I accidentally* read the Morning Advertiser. It's a pub trade magazine that tends to boil my piss because of the sychophantic, kow-towing, deferential way they treat PubCos (who are strangling the industry with their shitty business practices), and seem to think that all pubs should be mega-glossy, gourmet gastro-pubs, with no time for wet-led** pubs. However, today was a bit different.

The last page in the magazine is devoted to the 'Snifter' column, which is sort of like a 'gossip and funny stories from the pub trade' column. This issue (May 19th) contained this:

Punter's fury over pub sign

The Hand & Spear pub in Weybridge, Surrey, has been criticised for encouraging its male customers to get their dates drunk. An irate female customer photographed a 'thought for the day' sign saying: "If at first you do not succeed, buy her another beer" and promptly sent it into the local paper to vent her anger. "I thought the sign was totally inappropriate", she told the Elmbridge Guardian. "Pubs have a duty to ensure people drink responsibly and to imply you should get a woman drunk to sleep with her is pretty distasteful and massively unprofessional." It's official - some people seem to have had their sense of humour surgically removed.

So, just a couple of points:

1. The original 'thought for the day' is pretty damn offensive in and of itself. I mean, do I really have to spell this out? Implying you should get a woman drunk in order to sleep with her is neither a) funny or b) professional and teeters very close towards advocating rape.
2. The language 'Snifter' uses to describe the woman is that so beloved by the closet misogynist. "Irate". "Vent her anger". "Sense of humour surgically removed". Oh YAWN. I mean, damn us humourless feminists, all seething balls of holier-than-thou anger and earnest finger pointing when all anyone wants to do is have a laugh. It's the bloody Keys defence, isn't it? "Only a joke! Sorry if you got offended!". Let me spell this out again: Implying that a woman is a hysterical banshee because you can't be arsed to engage with what she's saying is neither an argument nor a defence to what she is saying. It's you being a dick.

Anyway, I found some Morning Advertiser people on Twitter and asked them this:

One of those I mentioned (Ewan Turney) got back in touch with me and asked him to email him, so I sent him this:

Hi, I tweeted about the 'Snifter' column. I strongly object to the reporting about the Hand and Spear pub sign. I'm going to write something about it, so I wondered if the Morning Advertiser could explain why it thinks it is acceptable, and to clarify its position on rape?

I'll let you know what they say.

Oh, and just to prove I do have a sense of humour, here's something that really made me laugh:

*I was procrastinating.

**Dry sales are food, wet sales are drinks. So, wet-led pub are pubs that don't serve food, or don't serve much food. Real pubs, in other words.