Consider these three comments, in each case reporting a fact about the speaker:
1) "Whenever I see my friend Bill in his biker kit, I am reminded of the Michelin Man!"
2) "I had this professor at university that always reminded me of Krusty the Clown!" (let's imagine he had quite wild hair)?
3) (Early in his career before he was in the movies): "Jim Carey, in his manic moments, often reminds me of that comic book character - the Mask."
Is there an important difference between these comparisons between real people and cartoon images and this one?
4) "Whenever I see that tennis player with the big hair, I am reminded of the Robertson's jam golliwog!"
If so, what, precisely, is the difference? If not, is it that we should not tell other people about our internal chains of association (is it improper for us to report to our friends these perhaps somewhat bizarre insights into our internal psychology)? Or is it that it is wrong for us to have any internal chains of association between drawn characters and real people and we should struggle to remove such associations rather than indulge them by reporting them to other people? Or are, perhaps, all four statements equally harmless?
[One additional thing. Suppose that we did decide that, say, it might not be okay to report a reminding of Krusty the Clown. After all, it presumably might be legitimately offensive or frightening to an elderly Jewish man with a receding hairline if strangers in the street called at him: "Oi! Krusty!" And one could imagine someone taking the view that this is sufficiently material for it to be better to avoid any reference to Krusty the Clown when describing anyone. But if you took this view, would it be so obvious that yours were the only legitimate attitude to take that you would think it appropriate to vilify someone taking the other view (thinking Krusty-reminiscences were legitimate and harmless)? Would you, for example, consider it legitimate to fire someone from her job for saying, in a private conversation, that someone or other reminded her of Krusty the Clown?
The issue here is not merely about the rights and the wrongs. It is about what is to be tolerated and what not tolerated. Must our society be intolerant of someone that thinks private noting of reminiscence of golliwogs is harmless? And if not, is private mentioning of such a reminiscence really a legitimate basis for firing someone from her job - or ought someone so fired be able to sue for unfair dismissal?]
