The excellent blogger, Soho Politico, argues that we should stop calling his Lordship, Mandy. In a post that may well provoke some reaction, Soho concludes:
In general, whether you are gay or straight, if you have not had explicit authorisation from Peter Mandelson himself so to refer to him, this needs to stop.
Well, having thought about this most carefully Mandy it will remain. There is no reason to change the habit and it may confuse my readers to do so. Some may conclude that using the title Lord Mandelson refer to someone else.
Mind you, if he has struck a deal and Brown does resign or, as I have argued for months, that Our Dear Leader should be replaced by Alan Johnson as part a carefully organised transition managed by his Lordship, then Mandy becomes:
A Great Man or Lord Kingmaker
After all, in 1994 Mandy came down against Brown and will have to do it all over again if he wishes to ‘save the party he loves’.
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Perhaps we should doff our caps and bow our heads, looking down, as he walks past, if we are ever unlucky enough to experience such an encounter.
ReplyDeleteBollocks to that.
Mandy is too nice a nickname to call him. It reminds me of that nice old 10cc song "I'm Mandy, fly me"..
ReplyDeleteI prefer "Lord of Darkness, Hellspawn of Beelzebub"
Hmm, I don't buy this defence, unfortunately Howard. Will it really confuse your readers to start referring to Peter Mandelson using his actual name?
ReplyDeleteTo be absolutely clear, I am not asking anyone to start being more respectful towards Mandelson. You can call him 'slimeball' or 'sleazebag' if you like, as Letters from a Tory recommends in a comment on the original blog post. I do ask, though, that people refrain from using a name that implicitly takes a swipe at Mandelson on the basis of his sexuality. The practice of referring to Mandelson as 'Mandy' is bad for gay people as a whole. It implies that the lampooning of gay men as effeminate is acceptable.
Your commenter VotR really proves my point. He appears to think that the use of 'Mandy' is a way of cutting Mandelson down to size. But there's only one reason why it might be thought to do that...