Certain Habits

Staffers in the British Foreign Office learned the hard way one of the commandments of the digital age: “Write not what you would not like on the front page of this morning’s newspaper.”

In preparation for the Pope’s September visit, staffers wrote a memo proposing activities his Holiness might like to do while in Country. The top ideas?

… [H]e might like to start a helpline for abused children, sack “dodgy” bishops, open an abortion ward, launch his own brand of condoms, preside at a civil partnership, perform forward rolls with children, apologise for the Spanish armada and sing a song with the Queen.

The lesson? While vile bigotry is a prerequisite for political service these days, don’t commit your slurs to a memo.

Update:

Not only should you not commit your bigotry to a memo, you shouldn’t express it to your aides when mic’d … even when you think the mic is turned off. You never know who could be listening. Maybe the news.

Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, learned this less the hard way over the weekend when he complained about his staff putting him with a supporter who he deemed “just a sort of bigoted woman” (Daily Telegraph; YouTube). The description may be on the mark. When the woman was asked what she thought, she said she’d be voting for Brown anyway.