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I’m not judging the person involved or his intentions. I don’t know what his level of awareness of what he was doing was or wasn’t. <br>Like most of us I would guess I’m guilty of having witnessed the use of such language and -despite knowing it was wrong and should not be tolerated – have failed through embarassment, affection for the offender or sheer lack of balls to correct it myself.<br>Every time that has happened I’ve felt diminished by the experience. Why? Because I know (as I expect very many of us know) that it shouldn’t go uncorrected, shouldn’t be tolerated. But in a manner of casual cowardice that is I would guess fairly typical I’d be inclined to let it go in most contexts, so I’m certainly not getting on a high horse here.<br>What I am saying is that in the context of a public broadcast the producers cannot tolerate something like this because quite simply there are rules against it. I am also arguing that there is no room for misinterpretation here. It’s pretty hard to think of a clearer example of a racist comment than this one. It is racist in both it’s content and it’s meaning. Simple as that.
I suggest you buy a new telly – your contrast is obviously f**ked.
I beg your pardon?
I have never heard of the phrase, and in this day of PC gone mad I certainly would have more sense to say it in public (let alone on the airwaves) had I heard of it.<br>I can’t see any excuse for it. Even a savant would know and recognise the offensiveness of the comment. I can’t believe that it just ‘slipped out’. I’d have to say that someone who uses/has used the phrase enough that it would just accidentally slip out simply chooses to use it. Nobody would accidentally use such a phrase IMO. Most would know better. None would feel comfortable with it by default. No excuses from me. If he cannot choose his words more competantly than that, then he has no right to be airing his views in the public domain. Sometimes one cockup is all it takes, if that cockup is big enough.
I started this thread after spotting the slip. I watched and listened to it again several times that evening. I have to say the context in which it was said was not racist or derogatory, just very careless.<br>As a child I learned the ditty, that I’m sure many of you also have heared, "eenie meenie mynie mo catch a n*gger by the toe…..". I admit I would probably use THAT version of the rhyme instinctively instead of the  "tigger" version which kid’s are thought nowadays.
I’m not condoning the use of the word. I can see why it causes great offence but surely the context in which a word is used is more offensive than the word itself.<br>I know plenty of ‘up their own arzez’ bigots who, despite using all the P.C terms are still racists to the bone they’re just more clever about it.
Quote: from heffo on 1:03 pm on June 22, 2007[br]I know plenty of ‘up their own arzez’ bigots who, despite using all the P.C terms are still racists to the bone they’re just more clever about it.
I know plenty of smokers that will be going to the loo a lot when they go to the pub after Jul1. Just because they can’t smoke in public doesn’t mean they are now non-smokers :)<br>They just know better than to simply light up inside. This guy should have known better too. Such a comment wouldn’t offend me, but some people will complain about anything. Some are even looking for excuses to complain.
A lot of the debate on this thread has been about whether the phrase should have been used on live TV (or at least delayed by several seconds as Glenn might point out:biggrin: ) and also that the phrase slipped out.
If the phrase is racist, then it should not be used in public OR PRIVATE and if it "slipped out" then the inference is that the person in question has used it before and is fairly comfortable with it. This, in itself, does not mean that the user is racist, more that their command of the English language could be better. This is even more true given that they are TV although you don’t need to be a Poet Laureate to be a horse-racing pundit.
Perhaps this is the bigger issue – that it seems OK to be slightly racist in the comfort of your own home but not in public. How many on this forum have said to the wife/girlfriend "I think we’ll order a Chinky tonight" rather than use the word Chinese. Does this make you racist?
On a slightly different note, I hate the way modern day press treat every attack on a "minority" as a racially-based assault when in fact it’s ONLY a racist attack if the motive behind it was racially based.
Seems to me it could be an age thing, Joe Rowntree must be about the same age as me.
Alright it doesn’t make it right.
But if I tell you that when I was in short trousers my mother knitted me a jumper with wool that was described as "nigger brown"!!!!!
If you remember the film "Dambusters", the leader of the squadron??, Guy Gibson, had a dog that was named Nigger.
Again, I know this doesn’t make it right but it might explain the different attitude to the word. When you are brought up with the idea that nigger is a shade of brown it just doesn’t have the same effect.
Incidentally I have just read John Grisham’s first book "A Time To Kill" and the word seems to appear on every other line, used by both white and black characters.
By the way I don’t remember ever using the phrase that Joe used or the word nigger on its own.
We are getting to the stage where people will be unable to say anything without offending some poor sod.
Colin
Age does have a lot to do with it. The further back the generation the more apparent and rife the racism. All about delusions of empire.
The empire was real enough. It’s just that the working- class folk were part of it, just as they have become increasingly since the Prayer of St Francis of Assissi was so memorably and movingly intoned at the door of 10 Downing Street.
During the Boer War the Surgeon General wrote that the majority of potential recruits for the army had to be turned down, because of chronic malnutrition. They were too physically weak even to be used for cannon fodder.
Now we’re told New LABOUR has plans for people to work until they drop – past their seventies. Sorry for the rant – in a way. But not in another.
(Edited by Grimes at 1:52 pm on June 22, 2007)<br>
(Edited by Grimes at 1:53 pm on June 22, 2007)
Interesting thread to an oldie like me. 50 years ago if we had had such a thing as the internet we would never have had a thread like this – obviously people today are rightly more open about/responsive to others sensitivities.
Mind you sensitivities are not the only things that have changed – a gay bachelor was a joyous man , a partner was purely a business or golfing term etc etc.
Incidently no women would have ever shown her bra strap in public and indeed blouses etc were carefully examined for transparancy. Nowadays bra straps are positively flaunted much to the disquiet of people of my generation. Am I entitled to complain and expect these modern sensitive people to take account of my sensitivities?
In a word, "Yes".
What’s happened is that standards of behaviour have dropped, in some ways at a more superficial level, or what seems to be more superficial. In fact, it’s the thin end of the wedge.
Until the return in 1980 of the mindset that gave us WWII and a kept most of the population in penury, great gains were made, however, in standards of humanity of a more direct and obvious kind.
Swings and roundabouts, but when the ruling political class (currently unopposed, because of Blair’s theft of the Labour Party) itself loses its grip, however faltering on Christianity, and the rest of the popualtion follow suit, all is lost and things have been going and continue to go from bad to worse.
On the other hand, the Labour Party was taken over by militant atheists at such a early stage that it was only a matter of time before, like "salt that has lost its savour", it was trodden underfoot by men. Well, "men" is flattering them.
The current leader of the labour administration is not a militant atheist, neither is the leader of the US, if there were a few more militant atheists in charge perhaps the world would be a better place, just because you don’t believe in God it doesn’t mean you have bad manners as a matter of course. Morality is not the sole preserve of the religious.<br> I echo Grasshoppers call for people to define their understanding of Political Correctness Gone Mad, it seems to be a clarion call for the Right with no clear understanding of what it means to be politically correct or what political correctness is and used as a straw man to bolster poor political arguments.<br> Perhaps this could be moved to the Lounge too…
Quote: from Grasshopper on 4:24 pm on June 22, 2007[br]I am getting roundly ******-off with the constant bandying about of the phrase "PC  gone mad". As a previous poster said, it seems to be primarilyused to conveniently ignore an opposing view.
I would ask that those who have chosen to use the phrase on this thread (you know who you are), provide their definition, in order that we can see whether there is a consistent definiton amongst the perps, or (a much bigger price, imo) one which is in any way coherent.<br>
If you read what I said in context, you would see that I was saying that the guy should have known that in an insanely PC world (a mere paraphrase, maybe I should have used quotes and a winking smiley?), and in the aftermath of the BB incident, it was sheer madness to say what he did and think that it wouldn’t be noticed. Any frontman who values his job and credibility, would not even think of saying such a thing on air.<br>I didn’t say that he shouldn’t have said it. I was pitying the guy for lacking the self-preservation that should have stopped him from saying it. We all know that as soon as you say something that could even remotely be construed as racist, you are jumped on from a great height by all and sundry. Mr Rowntree is probably not a racist, maybe he is? I really don’t know. But the fact is that everyone will assume he is because of some stupid one line soundbyte.<br>Are you saying that political correctness is a good thing? Like I somehow disparaged the practice?<br>My opinion is that we live in a world where you can have a painful ass-ripping inflicted on you if you are naive enough to believe that you are immune to the PC gang and their masses of pseudo rules and regs. The PC brigade, for all their wishing to do the right thing, are sometimes more of a problem than a solution. I have no problem with them having an opposing view, I even agree with some of them, I just don’t like that opposing view shoved squarely down my throat without my permission like it is their decision as to what kind of person everyone should be. PC’ness isn’t just do-gooders trying to do the right thing. It’s closer to paranoid fascism.<br>PC doesn’t say "you shouldn’t be a racist, that’s not nice". It says "If you are a racist, we will persecute you and chase you to the depths of hell and back". It’s akin to persecuting, even prosecuting, a person for being gay. Some people are racist and some people are gay. Neither are illnesses or criminal offences in their own right, both are states of mind. You can’t change a state of mind simply by enforcing it by law, no more than you can stop thugs from stealing people’s cars and slamming them into lampposts or paedophiles from abusing kids.<br>I am against racism in all of it’s forms, but I don’t see why anyone should lose their job just for saying something that doesn’t adhere to someone else’s viewpoint of how a utopian world should be. If others want to be racists, OK that makes them assholes. So what. There are lots of assholes in the world. If some people want to dislike non-caucasians, that is squarely a lifestyle choice, not a reason for persecution.
Does that clarify my definition of PC? :biggrin:
………and he is a Knight of the Realm, perhaps he should have been asked to return his Knighthood, or did this happen before he received it?;)
Colin
I have to say I found the original remark extremely offensive.
<br>What’s this bloke got against Woodpiles?
Well said with your initial post, Grasshopper. No need need for the later blandishments, imo.
No need for Blair or Bush to be militant, Seven Towers. Bush does what he wants and Blair does what the "anything goes", de facto atheists behind the country’s corporatism, want. Like having people, work until they drop, into their seventies and beyond, for which, it seems, they have a plan.
I’d also be the first to recognise that there are both ‘de facto’ atheists among people calling themselves Christians (only Christ was perfect truth, so even the genuine children of light will to some extent be hypocrites), and ‘de facto’ Christians among non-believers. It makes it more confusing, but also much nicer than having only the School Prefects go to heaven.
I hope I haven’t already posted these links here, but there are a couple of interesting articles, written, I believe, by Jesuits:
http://www.agendaforprophets.org.uk/dis … icle_id=59
and
Nobody mentioned hanging, never mind drawing or quartering. <br>It is a feature of this thread TDK that absolutely nobody who has taken issue with the comment itself has suggested any punishment, rebuke or even judgement of the man uttering it.<br>Apologists for the use of the remark have complained of ‘persecution’ , ‘kangaroo courts’ and ‘PC gone mad’. It is they who have reacted to an imagined attack on their liberties and asked those condemning the language used to consider the context.<br>I would imagine that many of us are old enough to remember the black and white minstrels on tv, messers Manning and Davidson with their line in ‘jokes’ that belittled Irish, Jewish and Asian people too. I would imagine that many of us have that ‘context’ in our backgrounds. I know I have and yet I still find the use of that kind of language hurtful, dangerous and offensive. Everybody has a right to use whatever words they wish but rules exist in certain fields (like broadcasting) in order to protect the rights of others (not their ‘sensitivities’ their rights. Like the right not to be casually referred to as a ‘n-‘ by a racing pundit on TV). <br>Along with the right to use language any way you want goes the right of others to express their views on its use. Several posters agree that the use of such language is unacceptable but nobody as far as I can see has called for the head or any other bodily appendage of the man using it.<br>
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