Columnist On Mandela Coverage: 'Famous Nice Black Man Dies!'

Is This The Worst Thing Written About Mandela's Death?
SOUTH AFRICA - MAY 06: Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa on May 06, 1990. (Photo by Lily FRANEY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
SOUTH AFRICA - MAY 06: Nelson Mandela in Soweto, South Africa on May 06, 1990. (Photo by Lily FRANEY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The world mourned the death of Nelson Mandela on Thursday, but at least one British columnist wanted it to stop mourning quite so much.

Rod Liddle--a writer for the Spectator magazine whose views on race tend towards the incendiary--scoffed at the amounts of coverage he was seeing on the BBC:

It's as if the poor bugger now has to bear your entire self-flagellating white post-colonial bien pensant guilt; look! Famous nice black man dies! Let's re-run the entire history of South Africa. That's better than watching the country we're in being flattened by a storm.

Liddle hedged his bets by allowing that, "on balance," Mandela had probably done good in the world.

Criticism came swiftly.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot