You Can't Beat the Feeling! (of coffee and a snout)

It's so dull making endless sport of political correctness. Comedians and columnists have been dredging it  as material for years with the same thudding tedium that surrounds those collections of mis-written insurance claims. You know the sort: "In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole."

Actually (tee hee) that one is quite good. But as with political correctness we do, in our hearts, see the point being made despite the cack-handedness of the way it all comes out. It's essentially about making people feel a bit more comfortable, and, as such, is fairly hard to condemn.

But I wonder whether Japan may have taken the anti- political correctness thing too far. I mean there can't be many countries where Philip Morris and the Coca-Cola Company are happy to indulge in a crafty spot of joint-marketing.

The inexorable march of political correctness - especially where corporate branding is concerned - has done one very stupid thing: it has purposefully denied some cast-iron facts about who we are and what we like. So everyone has got into the habit of pretending we are a whole lot healthier and better- mannered than we are.

Peanut butter, for example, is sold along with suggestions for spreading it on toast, rather than with the long-stemmed spoon that we all secretly need for the journey home. St Valentine's Day cards - with saccharine stanzas that pledge love "to my special someone" - are never sold in the kind of 50-card jumbo boxes you need to properly hedge your bets. Packets of Hob Nobs do not come in "Test Match" sizes that will see a spectator through an entire game.

And amazing joint-marketing opportunities are squandered because of that strange corporate squeamishness that surpresses the sordid truth of how we really consume their products. Thus Durex and Nescafe have not teamed-up for a "would you like to come in for coffee?" campaign, and skiing equpment is not sold with the bottle of Johnnie Walker that one inevitably buys separately to make the sport fun and painless. Ann Summers and Bold Automatic have never admitted that the use of one product leads to the need for the other, any more than you can buy Rennies from behind the counter at McDonald's.

But perhaps the most fearsome example of denial arises from the supposed gulf between coffee and  cigarettes. You know they go together, I know they go together, everyone who has ever tried the combination knows immediately that they are as perfect a pairing as Terry and June. Secretly, it now seems, even Coca-Cola knows they go together. But corporate sensibilities leave coffee and cigarettes as star cross'd lovers: obviously meant to be together, but separated by cruel fate and social pressure. It's no coincidence that the most coffee-friendly cigar bears the tragic name Romeo Y Julietta.

But Japan, bless its politically incorrect little socks, has shamelessly united these two titans of sensation. Yes, AM-PM have started selling a combo pack of Marlboro cigarettes with a can of Emblem Black Georgia coffee - the leading coffee brand of Coca-Cola Japan. Not exactly the squeaky clean image the firm from Atlanta was going for back in 1971 when it had all those kids on the Hilltop singing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke".

Comments

[andy]

"But Japan, bless it's politically incorrect little socks"

When will the world learn "it's" means "it is"? It does not represent ownership.

[Adam]

OH GOD IT THE GRAMMER'S POLECE

[DOMINIC]

THANK GOD YOUR HERE!

[Thomas Moser]

In Japan, Individual citizens, and groups that act on the behalf of communities, have few if any rights. Your marketing examples reflect that fact that corporations have free reign to act in callous disregard for the welfare of the Japanese, "as long as it sells". To refer to this as "political incorrectness" is to suggest that the attitudes of the Japanese citizens are the cause of this state of affairs. Rubbish!

[ellie]

you quoted an apostrephe when there wasn't one there.

[Andrew LJ]

Coffee and cigarettes are a divine combination. I fully believe God invented fags as he was quaffing a dark roast on the morning of the 7th day.

Despite that, I am quite glad that political correctness keeps them separated. The more pleasurable pastimes are the province of advertisers, the more overlaid with neuroses they become...am I drinking the right coffee with this cigarette???

[Ikooko]

My heart immediately sank when I saw the picture. But as far as I know (I'm a Japanese), we've never had chance to embrace political correctness thus no such thing anti-political correctness. People are always reluctant to talk about what's right and what's wrong. This article misses the point.

[Tony G]

Why should Japan be politically correct? The assumption that the rest of the world should share values forced upon the West by "progressive" thinking has a touch of arrogance about it. Good for the Japanese - let them keep doing it their way.

[Paul]

Why not Malboro and dead whale? I love Japan, and the Japanese are very nice people, but their silly and cruel whaling does them a serious disservice.

[Susumu]

Japan has political correctness in spades, but it usually only applies to the unorthodox - and then results in passive aggressive shunning. Corporations and the government have little to worry about since they are the ones that determine what is orthodox, and the Japanese people in general are more than happy to let them do their thinking for them. Besides, why deny the working poor (otherwise known as 80%+ of Japan's population) their minor vices? It keeps them happy outside of the massive amounts of unpaid vanity overtime they have to work to justify their existence.

[Andrew Milner]

With imported alcoholic beverage at one-third UK prices and cigarettes at one-fifth, lead on Japan. And when the police caught the Colombian that broke into my house last summer, they came by to tell me they'd got him. In the event, "got him" meant he was chained up in the van out front. Not quite, "Here's a baseball bat, we're going up the road for a smoke", but they did show me photographs of his three associates. PC has painted UK into a corner. The sooner you guys fly the coop, the sooner you'll stop spitting the dummy. Life's too short to put up with BS UK.

[C.M.P.]

Here's an idea- write something...newsworthy. The utterly non-sensational promotion of ONE particular combini hardly merits a raised eyebrow, let alone that pile of inane drivel. Do us a favour and just stop. Cheers.

[Dominic]

Political correctness is destroying this country. It takes the Iraqi deputy Prime minister to tell the truth about Islamic Mosques in this country because anyone else who does will be hauled away by the police.

As for cigarettes, if you want to smoke then visit a couple of cancer wards each year to remind yourself of the result, and have private health insurance.

[e.purgold]

There is not a lot we can do about BS UK Andrew. We have been gangbanged by the lefty mafia until most of the population is more or less braindead -look at posts *2&*3 -they think that's a joke! Cannot even speak their own language let alone think or act for themselves. Next time the bombers get on a train here they'll probably be offered seats while they prepare their bombs to shred all the infidels -just so long as they're not smoking.

[Freddie]

Does Leo Lewis actually get paid to write this guff? There's no identifiable thought in his articlette, and it starts with the Lib Dem establishment assumption that most of us out here share his opinion of political correctness being a Basically Good Thing. Perhaps Leo should get out more.

[CHARLIE PACE]

something like gauloises i can understand, but marlboro ICE MINT?? with coffee??? blyegh!

[Damian]

The author clearly needs to return to some sort of education:
1) Only a liberal mind can be so ignorant as to not know the socially-destructive force of political correctnes (or 'lying') as it should be known. It is a disgrace to insult 40 million people who have bothered to think ahead, or at least think at all. I was so shocked (and worried) by his foolish statement, I couldn't focus on the subject he so badly introduced.
2) The first thing you learn in journalism rovolves around issues about "Its" and "It's". That's why it's so shocking.

I showing my father The Times is now full of the same ignorant liberal leftie fools as other papers. The Times has become a tabloid. And The Times keeps proving it. Shame.

[Jon]

But 40 fags and only one can of coffee? That seems to be an unbelievably ambitious level of chain smoking.