"Why is it that blacks who are born in England think they're Brits? Just because a dog is born in a horse stable it doesn't mean it's a horse. Un-fuckin'-believable." (The last word is not a paraphrase -- he said that as if he couldn't believe the audacity of non-whites thinking they're British.)
Maybe the guy threw out some zingers that were "genuinely funny" in the middle of all this, but so does almost any comic of any stripe. You said the respect Manning has gotten in the Brit press could be a "nostalgia on what remains of the UK left for a bygone era of Brit politics when labor still mattered and there was still a distinctive working class culture" -- yet the targets of Manning's humor seem to be folks who are working class if not poorer. They're just not straight and/or white.
I don't deny that after watching more Manning vids on YouTube than I'd care to, that he was trying to play up his hardscrabble roots, and wanted to convince listeners he was in possession of that mystical blank check called "working class authenticity," like the Blue Collar Comedya folks (the name of the troupe says it all) but the guy basically just sucked. I don't think comparing him to racist, anti-gay American comedians is off the mark. The Guardian complained his critics were "middle class," the British put-down equivalent of "limousine liberal," or Volvo-driving, cheese eating, wine tasting, etc. in the US. I dunno what The Sun said; my surprise was what left-leaning Brit outlets said, a mandatory nod that he was "controversial" but otherwise a virtual white washing. No pun intended.
-B.
Russell Grinker wrote:
"This certainly raises some interesting questions. Although I never saw much of Manning when I lived in the UK, I suspect there's no easy parallel between what he did and bigoted US redneck comedians. I think Manning's origins were much more in the working men's club tradition which I don't believe has a real parallel in the US. It was a mixture of racism, sexism, and homophobia, but combined with strong working class/labourist (sometimes also working class Tory) self-consciousness. So what's all the current nostalgic sentiment about then? I could posit a few ideas: * Nostalgia on what remains of the UK left the for a bygone era of Brit politics when labour still mattered and there was still a distinctive working class culture, albeit one that was largely backward."