Be Excellent To Each Other

The right-wing folk are started to make noise about the fact that Romesh Ranganathan often makes disparaging comments about white folk on Twitter, and when said white folk complained the BBC (apparently) said "what people say on their Twitter is nothing to do with the BBC".

Doc's kind of there on equality and equity.
Thinking about equality and diversity at a basic level, I think I see it as:
'Equality' - everyone should have the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else. We should also treat everyone with the same basic civility (unless they cross us).
'Diversity' - different people from different cultures, traditions, backgrounds etc do things differnetly. So long as they do not affect the equality idea, that's great. Let's share and learn from each other. If they don't we should where possible show as much leniancy as possible (eg the classic turbans v motorcycle helmets).

Been a very long time since I last wrote an undergraduate essay on this, mind!

Is one directly employed by the BBC and the other someone who appears on/in BBC shows? Does that make a difference if so?

I think the main issue in this case is the use - even if entirely unintentional - of a well-known and deeply derogatory reference.

*sits back and enjoys the room*

This is nice.

Oh yeah, he had to go.

How he meant it is only of any consequence to his own peace of mind.

<hears he has been fired for a tweet>
"Hmmm... possibly a storm in a teacup, probably misinterpretation, probably an over-reaction"
<looks at what he posted>
What the actual fuck! It's difficult to think of an interpretation of that post that is anything other than overtly racist!

He absolutely had to go.

There’s a video of him at his door trying to make an explanation, if not an apology, and it doesn’t come across as particularly sincere, not least because he’s wearing a fez with a Christmas wreath on it.

https://news.sky.com/story/danny-baker- ... e-11715152

Claiming that he had no idea that monkey jokes have racist connotations, or who the parents were is completely implausible for someone working in the media.

Especially as he watched Millwall in the 70s and 80s.

Someone just pointed out that the new mum had on a white dress 48 hrs after giving birth.

Women out there who’ve had babies... partners of women who’ve had babies... Can you even imagine the precautions going on underneath that outfit?

Jeez. Poor woman.

I know, right. I thought it was a brave choice. But didn't she look fucking radiant? I wish I'd looked more like that post-birth (and not a total zombie)

It's a really odd one. I can't see how he would fail to realise how obviously offensive it is but from what I've seen of him I can't imagine him doing it knowingly either.

Dear old Chinny, late of this parish, has been saying that he has a regular thing about chimps in human dress and the media circus, which is all well and good if you are aware of the running joke but not so much if, like me, you're not in on it and only see a deeply racist slur.

There’s also the slim possibility, with him not really being interested in the royals that he may actually have been unaware that Meghan is mixed race.

I am calling bullshit on that one. the wedding and the birth was covered by every newspaper and TV station. You would have to have been under a rock to no know.

And why’s he so crap at games when he’s got a gaming channel? Bloody infuriates me watching him play some games.

But I digress.

Or, you know, not paying attention to it. It’s easier to tune populist shit out than pay attention in my experience. I’m in no way arguing that it was wrong and he was an idiot for doing so, just saying it’s easier to tune the coverage of the royals out than you seem to think

She looked stunning. But so would you have. Maybe not polished like that, but you also wouldn’t have had a team of beauticians and stylists and people to help care for you and your newborn in that way. The pictures are beautiful, but not realistic for most people.

I wish my wife looked like that.

Still, her 40th is coming up.

I dunno, I think there's a definite honesty in actually looking like you shoved a person out of your chuff rather than looking like it was a magical fairy experience with definitely no pooping.

Yes, I only found out she was pregnant a week or two ago and didn’t realise the other ones had three children already.

But Baker works in the media, so you’d expect he had a fair breadth of knowledge of the media as it’s his job. He’d know about ‘mo keys’ being used as a racist slur because he’s well known for his football interest. What he may have done is just had a stupid blanking of mind when he posted, not having done the obvious forethought. I can imagine many of us have done exactly that in some form or another, but if so he should have said exactly that, rather than say that he did not see it as being racist because, to paraphrase, he wouldn’t see the link because he’s not racist.

It's like knowing how your food gets to your table rather than assuming meat magically appears in supermarket packaging.

My publicist has asked me to point out that it's not a lot like that and I do not in fact eat babies.

Hahhahahahhahahah

Why do people always think everybody poos when giving birth? I know it happens sometimes but is it most of the time? I didn’t poo. And I never at any time felt like pooing was a thing that my body might do.

I can kinda see where that argument might come from, but it's like any running joke in a smaller group, you know if it has offensive connotations and you might use it anyway in your close group of friends, but know not to use it outside of that group.

e.g a group of white guys calling each other "my nigger" or some such. They might do it in their group and not think too much of it, but they damn well know they can't do it in public.

Surely, if that were legitimately the case and intention, Baker would have mentioned it in the past 24+hrs?

Or did you? Or DID you? Or did YOU? OR DID YOU?

It's just a thing that happens with all that pushing downstairs. The nurses just wipe it straight up like it's nothing and carry on*.

*I've a friend who's a pediatric nurse.

No, I really didn’t, but I wouldn’t be ashamed if I did. I just felt like that part of my body was just not really in the mix, of that makes sense. Worst thing that happened to me was my waters going about 60 seconds before the giant 9lb4oz baby came. Thought we were going to be evacuated for flooding. Was like someone emptied four buckets of warm, sweet smelling bath water onto me and just EVERYWHERE.

It literally went WHOOOSH, SPLASHHHHHH!

One of my friends cheerfully described the aftermath of her waters breaking as causing her bathroom to "look like a crime scene".

You shouldn’t be ashamed either. It’s just a thing that happens during child birth. It’s not like pregnant women curl a massive turd out either it’s usually just a tiny bit that immediately gets wiped up. It’s just thing.

EDIT: Poorly edited!

Yeah, o just asked my Ma, and she doesn’t know if she did, but she had all sorts of different things going on in birth forceps for me, epidurals for my brothers, etc so she said she wouldn’t know, and she didn’t have a handy helper at tge business end like I did.

Russell almost vomited and fainted. Not when I was actually getting the baby out, but when they were putting in the canular (?) for a drip

I totally get that. Needles... <shudder>

I pooped during childbirth but was totally unaware. Yay midwives.

I was sent home from hospital once with those canulars still in my hand. I noticed when I was making a cuppa, clearly still out of it. I phoned up and they told me to remove it by gently pressing on the skin and pulling it awa my in the direction away from the needle until it was free.

Nope, nope, nope. I got a bus back to the hospital and made them do it.

Man, my midwives were horrible people. Apart from my community midwife who was my actual guardian angel and temporary mum.

Well today he's insisting that of course he knows what it meant.
"I needed no lessons on the centuries slurs equating simians and people of colour. Racism at it's basest."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48226247

So his best argument now is that he didn’t know Markle is mixed race.

In labour I came into the hospital vomiting from the pain, kept politely asking for new kidney bowls and apologising all the time.
The staff said "really stop saying sorry it's all very normal" I said "normal for you, but not for me!"

Anyway fwiw I'm in a different country and I know she's mixed race and the houpla around it

No, he seems to be saying that he just had a total brain fart and wasn't thinking of that at the time that he posted the picture.

I mean, I'd totally buy that if it wasn't all over the fucking news for a year.

Her heritage being a surprise to people was even a (tiny) storyline for her character on Suits.

".....actually looking like you shoved a person out of your chuff....". Pure poetry.

Remind me never again to look at the 'talk' section of Wikipedia's page on Baron Kilkeel's newborn. Pages and pages on what he might be called if Charlie gets a proper job. And, of course, an obligatory conspiracy theory that he's far older than we've been told.