I caught a trailer on Today this morning for the Jonathan Dimbleby hosted “Any Questions” programme on Radio 4 tonight and I noted that in it he made a reference to the Thatcher legacy including “golliwog”. Grins all round. But since it was Dimbleby who used this word – in public – I was wondering should he not be suspended forthwith? Or, and this is just a guess, is this what we can expect from the BBC in future – the direct association of the name Thatcher and racist language? If so, it rather confirms the blatant political agenda behind the alleged “outing” of Carol Thatcher’s private comments by unfunny comedienne Jo Brand.
As a further indication of BBC obsession on groupthink, there was a debate on Today between Thought for the Day contributor Anne Atkins (Church of England, mild) and Ben Summerskill (Gay and loud) on the use of language. Anne kept telling us how wonderful the BBC has been whilst the Stonewall Chief Executive got properly stuck into all who refuse to use only pc approved language. The BBC would be scared of a proper debate on langauge lest their innate fascism on the topic be exposed.
Caught this on Radio 5 this morning. Jeremy Clarkson has insulted McFatty One eye and Nicki Campbell was NOT happy about it.
Slagging off George Bush is OK on the BBC but not the Scottish one eye.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/02/06/fury-as-top-gear-host-jeremy-clarkson-brands-gordon-brown-a-one-eyed-idiot-86908-21100881/
Good on Jezza
Don’t underestimate the significance of what the bbc fellow travellers are up to here.
This is a carefully orchestrated spin operation to link the two T words that the beeboids find so abhorrent, Tories and Thatcher, with something slightly unsavory. The bbc will continue to run smears like this in the build up to the next election.
I look forward to the same coverage and faux outrage, over the amount of tax payers money that convicted labour arsonist, lord watson, has collected from the public purse for House of Lords ‘attendance’, whilst out of prison on license.
The BBC id fully commited to the active supression and domination of the British people, the red fascist boot is being applied to our necks, these small victories for the facsists are cemmenting their dominance and their success in determining the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, remember that these fascists couldnt care less about ‘the offence it causes’ rather it is a perfect weapon and tool with which to gain control over and dominate the masses!
The censorship being applied is the age old weapon of the dictatorship, first control, then punish(and yes even now they are planning a strict punishment regime for those who speak out of turn) and they have their Castro/USSR/Nazi state.
Slightly OT, but the pass the sick bag award for today, goes to the nulab bint who asked in Parliament (Toady this am), ‘ what the government was doing to protect my constituent ‘ – ie the completely illegal failed asylum seeker who just happened to get picked up fighting for the taliban, whilst resolving some personal issues.
Backwoodsman,
That is a very perceptive post my friend, the BBC agitprop offensive is beginning with a sustained attack on the Tories, every dirty trick will be used to equate the word Tory/conservative in a negative light and these BBC commissars are experts in Marxist agitprop allied to a grubby, desperate, dishonest, crooked labour party and we are going to get the most obviously dirty election campaign ever seen.
The ramping up the BBC propaganda will give us a clue as to the date of the GE of course!
A combination of vote rigging by labour and the buying of ‘mob votes’ led by the mob raisers and a BBC dirty tricks campaign will see the UK slip into the third world gutter.
What people hate about Clarkson is that he isnt afraid to speak his mind. Thats what drives those PC morons crazy! And I gotta admit, I actually enjoy listening to Clarksons rantings 🙂
I watched a bit of last nights QT and have to say that Shami chick is smart. When asked when Golliwog became a bad word did you see what she did? She tied it directly to the word paki in her first sentence and then did not mention the word golliwog again. The rest of her rant was solely using the word paki…almost as if to say the word golliwog is as bad as the word paki.
Clever chick indeed.
Cant stand the hoe though!
Mailman
I am confused about the of certain words as well.
While it was perfectly acceptable to refer to President GW Bush as the chimp in the Whitehouse, I fear the same label applied to the current president in the Whitehouse might not be acceptable!
The little corner shop WAS for many years called the paki shop. There was no disrespect in that term, no racial abuse. If anything, it was an affectionate term.
As an olggit I still find myself using the term occasionally. Yes it is now non-PC. But should I care, I mean no harm, it is just a figure of speech.
(We were so poor when I was young we didn’t have Robertson’s jam or collect golliwogs from the jar labels. Didn’t have butter either, or margarine, or even lard. Or bread. Had to nibble paving stones….)
Backwoodsman 8:30
Good point about Lord Watson.
Imagine the BBC coverage if he had been a Tory peer. God, the BBC make me sick !
The bluster about Clarkson’s choice of words reminds me of the soldiers who got Gordon Brown to sign an armoured vehicle they had named ‘Cyclops’.
Where was the fuss then?
Jeff Todd:
I am confused about the use of certain words as well.
While it was perfectly acceptable to refer to President GW Bush as the chimp in the Whitehouse, I fear the same label applied to the current president in the Whitehouse might not be acceptable!
Jeff Todd | 06.02.09 – 9:02 am
Good point. Not only did they call Bush a chimp, they drew cartoons of him looking like one. No doubt cartoonists will try so hard not to offend Obama supporters in their drawings that he will end up always looking like some kind of filmstar.
Will the BBC never tire of saying the word ‘golliwog’ on air all the time?
McFatty One-eye? I thought he was Cyclops.
mailman: “The rest of her rant was solely using the word paki…”
As someone here pointed out a week or two ago, the website for the “Biggest online Pakistani Community” is http://www.paki.com.
If it’s THAT offensive….
So much of what passes for argument on race is pure cant and bullshit.
Actually, thats a really cool url 🙂
Regards
Mailman
Clever chick indeed
So was Goebbels.
.
Just to put the cat among the pigeons. Yes, Jo Brand is a leftie commedienne, who’s political views (instincts? prejudices? reactions?)are not mine. So what? The point about her is that she is frequently extremely laugh-out-loud funny. She just is – loud, rude, curmudgeonly etc, but very funny. Grant her that.
The problem with the Brigstockes & Jeremy Hardys is that whilst they’re fully equipped with the approved set of indentikit prejudices, they’re just never funny.
Nearly,
Indeed…in fact, Id say that the vast majority of those who have had a real impact on history are probably quite clever…maybe even more so if they are dodgy evil little f8ckers.
Mailman
anyone know where Jo Brand lives?
not that i’d want to encourage anyone to post dog-poo thru her letter-box, you understand…
public teat:
Jo Brand already looks like dog poo!!!
I’m still really struggling with why golliwogs are deemed to be offensive. Can anybody tell me what is offensive about any of these golliwogs?
http://i17.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/2f/a2/5c57_1.JPG
http://i15.ebayimg.com/06/i/001/2f/a7/9aca_1.JPG
http://i6.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/2f/a7/bb7f_1.JPG
http://i19.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/2f/a7/e536_1.JPG
http://i21.ebayimg.com/03/i/001/2f/a7/f8a5_1.JPG
http://i13.ebayimg.com/06/i/001/2f/a8/28a4_1.JPG
http://i.ebayimg.com/23/!BMDj00!!Wk~$(KGrHgoH-DsEjlLl)w!eBJigB2pu0w~~_1.JPG
http://i17.ebayimg.com/01/i/001/30/39/5670_1.JPG
Are any of those golliwogs ‘negative portrayals of black people’ – astronaut, policeman, brownie, sailor, cowboy, Canadian Mounty, boy scout and golfer.
What exactly is the problem?
“Gollygate” has been rumbling for a few days now. Yet there is no “Have Your Say” on this matter.
Is that because they know the reaction will not be positive to the BBC? Or perhaps they’re just being very British and prefer to talk about the weather all week.
I think this is a BBC news reader conspiracy which enables them to quote the use of unacceptable words like “nigger”, “paki” “golliwog” etc etc with impunity.
The BBC newsreader department are a branch of the BNP. Definitely
I think this is a BBC news reader conspiracy which enables them to quote the use of unacceptable words like “nigger”, “paki” “golliwog” etc etc with impunity
Exactly. They just can’t stop saying these words now. And as a result of their fuss, the word ‘golliwog’ will have been said in people’s homes about 6 million times in the last two days.
And they know it.
Which proves they don’t really care about the word being said. They just want to be able to exert PC control over everyone.
Grimer | 06.02.09 – 2:31 pm |
What exactly is the problem?
The saucer eyes and the big red lips. You could dress that up as the Queen and it would still be a caricature originally drawn from a bigoted perspective. That’s not the fault of anyone alive today. But it is what it is, and Carol Thatcher should probably have understood that before she opened her mouth in front of emotional busybodies.
I have to admit, though, that if someone from Mars saw the astronaut or the policeman pins, they wouldn’t possibly see it as racist. In this case the offense lies with the baggage, and not the image itself. Societal growing pains and all that.
However, where was the noise when Top Gear had “Stig’s African Cousin” on dressed up in a shiny silver loin cloth? How is that less of a racial and cultural stereotype than saying somebody resembles a golliwog? Maybe the Controller of BBC2 is less vigilant than Jay Hunt.
Personally, I see the standard big-haired golliwog as an obvious reproduction of a slave caricature. I don’t think it should be banned from the public or anything, and I’m definitely not saying that if you think it’s cute you’re a racist. As I said, I can appreciate the concept that from one perspective it’s just an image.
But even if it’s cute, I wouldn’t even think of calling a short-haired, light-skinned tennis player one. Although, if somebody did in front of me, I think I’d be more offended just by spending five minutes in a room with Jo Brand.
Radio4 – long car journey – played the ‘waiting for the other boot to drop’ game – BBC never fails to deliver. Best example: You & Yours item re effect of economic climate on golf club membership – a comparatively neutral piece on what we all know ie golf overly catered for(at least to my knowledge in S England), many private clubs struggling to find new members in the last few years, interviews at Teignmouth (S Devon) with pro who says it’s a trend and at prompting agrees that economic conditions exacerbating situation so golf available to a wider social spectrum of people. Interviews with middle aged lady members could only produce a moan that the newcomers paid less than the old timers and the hope was that they could continue to ‘play when they wanted to’. Item ends – obviously not enough ‘reactionary’ content from the shires for the editor(and to be fair the interviewer didn’t push the social exclusion chestnut overly hard). Back at the studio a BBC man is introduced “One of the big things in golf is that Tiger Woods is predicted to become the first golf billionaire. Tiger Woods is BLACK – which means we look forward to the sport being more diverse” (UK implied).
For this mans information:
Tiger Woods father was a career Army officer.
His mother is Thai and is obviously educated & extremely articulate.
Tiger attended Stanford and majored (yes) in Accountancy & Business.
Tiger is loathe to discuss racial issues – his one outburst at a press conference was in response to being referred to as ‘Afro-American’ which he said was “an insult to my Asian heritage” and that his ancestry was a “united nations” and made clear he represented no individual racial group.
So BBC what is the reason for bringing (literally) the question of colour (“black”) as a rejoinder to this item in such an ignorant and inappropriate way – and is this not racialism of the worst sort. I look forward to Today, 10’Oclock news talking of nothing else for tha next week and inevitable resignations (NOT!)
Fark, Ive just realised she should have called him a “Golli-Frog”.
Thank you…Im here all week 🙂
Mailman
“The saucer eyes and the big red lips. You could dress that up as the Queen and it would still be a caricature originally drawn from a bigoted perspective.”
Cartoons tend to be drawn with exaggerate features. Just look at the Manga style – huge eyes, huge breasts, tiny waists, etc.
Given that the golliwog was apparently inspired by a stuffed toy, the features are naturally going to be exaggerated – stuffed toy inspires cartoon, that then inspires stuffed toy.
I just don’t understand why golliwogs are singled out as examples of negative racial stereotyping when things like this aren’t:
http://www.vanpuffelen.net/faust/img/CabbagePatchDoll.jpg
Note the stupid expression and obese features.
Back at the studio a BBC man is introduced “One of the big things in golf is that Tiger Woods is predicted to become the first golf billionaire. Tiger Woods is BLACK – which means we look forward to the sport being more diverse” (UK implied).
For this mans information:
Tiger Woods father was a career Army officer.
His mother is Thai and is obviously educated & extremely articulate.
Tiger attended Stanford and majored (yes) in Accountancy & Business.
Tiger is loathe to discuss racial issues – his one outburst at a press conference was in response to being referred to as ‘Afro-American’ which he said was “an insult to my Asian heritage” and that his ancestry was a “united nations” and made clear he represented no individual racial group.
So BBC what is the reason for bringing (literally) the question of colour (“black”) as a rejoinder to this item in such an ignorant and inappropriate way – and is this not racialism of the worst sort. I look forward to Today, 10’Oclock news talking of nothing else for tha next week and inevitable resignations (NOT!)
PeterN | 06.02.09 – 4:56 pm | #
The BBC is stupefyingly obsessed with skin colour, especially “Black” skin colour and it doesn’t actually matter whether the object of their labelling is actually “black” or not (see Obama).
As an organisation it is too thick and too blind to deal with people rationally and as they are, rather than as some boxed-in category in a BBC cartoon world. All it can cope with is a few idiotically simple slogans and weasel words. Look how stupidly and ineptly it deploys those same recurring words in all the wrong places. You know what they are: the D word, for example. No ability to think, you see, once they have been brainwashed at the B’oid Farm..
Ever since the Liberal Elite decreed that golliwogs were offensive I have made a point of buying them, except for the actual dolls. I have 3 porcelain gooliwogs, a golliwog keyring and a tin with a golliwog picture on it. In the same vein the more Holocaust denial is demonised the more I suspect there is some conspiracy going on.
a BBC cartoon world
Millie Tant | 06.02.09 – 6:43 pm
Because they spend so much time talking to each other and watching their own programmes, the BBC bods only get feedback from each other, and this leads them eventually to believe that the BBC world is a normal place, and they do not realise how strange their little world really is.
Job Vacancy: in the Have Your Say Department.
Qualifications: A high standard of academic achievement is required, plus life experience.
Therefore it should suit a white middle class sociology/politics graduate who reads the Guardian and can spell pregudiced, or any muslim will do, provided you oppose our government’s policy in Iraq. However, if you are a female muslim and you arrive in a black bag, your husband’s signature will be required on the job application form and on the equal opportunities consent form.
We are not ageist – even applicants as old as 28 will be considered.
Job Description – a fast reader required – you will have to scan through several thousand posts an hour to find about half a dozen ones of the correct type that we are looking for.
Please note: You are advised not to make any references to our department being like the Ministry for Truth in the book ‘1984’. Our department is not at all like that in the book, and we do not find those kinds of remarks funny. Please do not make them. For a start, if you notice in the film, they don’t use computers like we do, and in the film if you look through the window you will see they are all facing West, whereas our desks all face Mecca. If you do not know why, please do not apply for the job.
Sample interview question:
– If someone asks you how come the earth is cooling during a period of global warming, what would you say?
(I never said our job is easy)
Perks – private health insurance
Location: Near all the good grammar schools and private schools
Grimer | 06.02.09 – 5:24 pm |
I’m aware of how cartoons work. That’s not the whole story here, though, is it?
I already said I think it’s unfair that a golliwog remark is single out while other equal or worse offenses are overlooked or condoned.
We could get into just how the remark may or may not have been offensive, but in reality we don’t know what the actual remark was. So it’s impossible to grade its offensiveness.
But I think the focus on the remark itself, and the racialist heritage of the icon has obscured the larger problem. It seems that the remark wasn’t worthy of dismissal: the failure to apologize correctly was. Apparently, only certain apologies are acceptable for these offenses. What I gathered from Jay Hunt’s defense was that Thatcher said she was sorry for causing offense, but that she didn’t mean it in a racist way. Hunt (or Tessa Finch?) wanted Thatcher to admit her racism along with the apology. That’s what Thatcher refused to do, and that’s what got her canned.
The BBC-PC rules have gone beyond controlling words: they are trying to control thoughts, or at least force people to publicly espouse the correct ones.
Just a personal comment here
My wife is pakistani – and it not the first time when I’ve been out with I’ve heard pakistanis mutter “gora” as we walked past .
FYI “gora” translates as “white man” but has the same overtones as “nigger” – I don’t give a damn so whu should ms charibati and co get so precious about the word “paki”
geoffrey sturdy: “..so whu should ms charibati and co get so precious about the word “paki””
Because it gives her the advantage of being seen to occupy the moral high ground.
It’s all about feigned outrage, posturing and bullshit and people who should know better go along with it.
We were so poor when I was young we didn’t have Robertson’s jam or collect golliwogs from the jar labels. Didn’t have butter either, or margarine, or even lard. Or bread. Had to nibble paving stones….)
LUXURY !
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth and eat two bits of cold gravel.
We had to go to work half an hour before we woke up, clean our paper bag home, walk seven miles a day week in week out, work 29 hours a day and pay t’mill owner permission to let us go to work, and when we got home, our Mum and Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife if we were LUCKY !
(after “Four Yorkshiremen” by Monty Python.)
Mark:
We were so poor when I was young we didn’t have Robertson’s jam or collect golliwogs from the jar labels. Didn’t have butter either, or margarine, or even lard. Or bread. Had to nibble paving stones….)
LUXURY !
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth and eat two bits of cold gravel.
Paving stones and gravel. Strewth. How posh and decadent and positively suburban is that! We had to scrape the distemper off the walls and eat the meagre plaster if we wanted a bite to keep us from death’s door – that of course was the only door we knew.
Millie Tant,
You were lucky to have a door…..
What’s a door ?