Elementary, my dear bellends

Usually, we have just one bellend to confer the dishonour of Bellend of the Month upon. We’ve had a posthumous award, one that was also the following day’s Weekly Gross-Out, and one that was awarded on the same day as a Weekly Gross-Out, but never more than one.

The co-Bellends of the Month for January 2012 are Kieran and Michele Mulroney. They are the people who wrote the screenplay for the new Sherlock Holmes movie that came out this month. I liked the movie, but either of those bellends could’ve been responsible for writing a scene set in a Romani (Romani is another name for gypsies) encampment somewhere in France. In that scene, which is the worst example of antiziganism since Romanian president Traian Basescu called a journalist a “stinking gypsy” on the same day he survived an impeachment vote, the Romani were depicted as liars and thieves. This is not on because these are very negative stereotypes. It’s just like saying that the Irish drink themselves to excess, or that black people eat fried chicken and do drugs, or that Asians are bad drivers, or that homosexuals are responsible for spreading HIV, or that Jews are greedy and covetous, or that all Muslims are terrorists. I realise Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was from a different time, but NewSouth Books was able to remove the N word and references to “Injuns” from Huckleberry Finn.