Wasted on the Literal-Minded

Writing recently on the Stephen Fry imbroglio, in which the web exploded with righteous indignation over the polymath entertainer's comment to a gay's men's magazine that men seemed to be more sexually driven than women, I observed:


"Fry is a comedian and all-round literatus who likes to employ hyperbole. IT'S A RHETORICAL DEVICE, PEOPLE. IT'S NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY."


Now here's Fry, addressing the matter on his blog, The Fry Chronicles:


"I should have known that comic exaggeration, so much the chief mode of a humorist, can easily be made to look bad when wrenched from context and nailed up as a proclamation.

"I admit that I do have a sometimes disastrous tendency, when asked a question, to answer it, often jokingly, or in the interests of ventilating a new thought that has struck, or more or less as the mood takes me but certainly too much without any consideration of the possible consequences.


"I am not, after all, a politician who has to weigh every syllable and its chances of giving offence. Maybe I should be more aware that those who wish me ill are always likely to seize on such instances and use them as a fly-whisk with which to spank me."


Next week: volunteers working on behalf of disadvantaged youth crucify Oscar Wilde for his "grossly insensitive", "clearly reactionary" and "idiotic" remarks that "youth is wasted on the young."