Acclaimed dressmaker Dame Trelise Cooper recently designed a formal dress comprising six overlapping layers of material and dubbed it “Trail of Tiers”. Why? Because, in its overlapping layers it forms a perpendicular trail.
Let’s get the language cleared up. A tier is a layer. A trail is a path of common features. In other words the dress was aptly named. But as always there’s someone to take offence and contact the lapdog media.
In this case, unlike Dame Trelise it was an unacclaimed woman, described as a Professor of Maori Education at Victoria University, with that fine old maori name of Joanne Kidman. She complained to the media about the similarity of the name with a North American event 190 years ago. This involved the forced expatriation of native Indians, Kidman with ludicrous hyperbole described as a genocide. Apparently it’s known as the “Trail of Tears”.
Dame Trelise sadly fell into line and apologised. This is ludicrous.
Kidman is supposed to be an educationalist. As such she ought to respect language and recognise there’s a world of difference between “tiers” and “tears”.
An explanation. Probably attention-seeking or alternatively stupidity.
It’s time the media showed judgement and ignored this sort of nonsense.