Not.
Samir Shah, a non-exec director of the BBC, pointed out this week that while ethnic minorities were largely absent from the top ranks of the BBC, there was a tokenistic over-representation on screen.
Mr Shah said that politically-correct broadcasters often "over compensated" by bombarding programmes with black and Asian faces - so much so that "even ethnic minorities are slightly embarrassed by the plethora of brown faces they see on the screen".
"It's almost impossible these days to find a television news programme that doesn't have a black or Asian presenter as part of the team - even in areas of Britain where black and Asian faces are quite thin on the ground among the population as a whole," he told an audience at the Royal Television Society in London.
A similar point was made by the veteran broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy a few years ago. He was torn limb from limb by critics who went for him ad hominem, calling him a silly old man.
No such attacks on Mr Shah have been forthcoming.
He was simply discribing a situation as he'd observed it (viz Patrick Mercer). But in our MaCarthyite times, that alone is enough to put paid to your career.
The reason is simple: being from an ethnic minority, Mr Shah is immune.
If his observations - which included the remark “Let’s not forget the UK is still 90% white – not everyone lives in London or the West Midlands” - had been made by a white BBC director, he would have been, to coin a topical phrase going around London's City Hall, 'thrown to the wolves.'
