Salford Lads' Life Imitates South Park's Cartman and Kyle

Last week the long arm of the law nabbed a 10-year-old boy in Manchester, England whose friendship with another lad seems grounded in the rich tradition of the politically incorrect verbal jousting of South Park characters Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski. Their conversations usually go something like this:

Kyle: You don't know anything about Jews, fatass!
Cartman: Don't call me fat, you fucking Jew!

With that in mind:

Last week a 10-year-old boy found himself before a district court judge in Salford being prosecuted for allegedly calling an 11-year-old “Paki”, “Bin Laden” and “nigger”.

This was considered by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to be “a racially aggravated public order offence”. The boy denied the charge and claimed that the other boy had called him “white trash”. In any event, the boys are good friends now and play in each other’s houses, and the whole thing would have blown over long ago had not the forces of political correctness overcome common sense. [Emphasis added.]

Fortunately there was one person in this astonishing story who did retain his common sense. Judge Jonathon Finestein angrily made the obvious point that this case was “political correctness gone mad”. He urged the CPS to reconsider its decision to prosecute and has adjourned the case until mid-April so that it can do so.

More here from the Times of London.

Shot of The Smiths posing in front of the Salford Lads Club here. More on the Club and its ongoing celebration of The Smiths -- and the 20th-anniversary of the release of The Queen is Dead -- here.