Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have caused a big scandal in the UK, calling up the actor Andrew Sachs' answerphone during Brand's radio show and confessing sexual attraction for his granddaughter, Georgina Sachs.
"The BBC could face prosecution over obscene phone calls that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made to 78-year-old Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. The controversial presenters left a series of lewd messages on Mr Sachs’s answerphone claiming, in shockingly explicit language, that Brand had had sex with his granddaughter, Georgina."
Thousands of people, including the Sachses, are calling for their heads, and so far they have been suspended (Ross is the biggest earner there, 18 million pounds for three years' work. Good gig if you can get it). What idiocy. I suffered through pretty much all of the prank, and all I could hear were two comedians, sorry, "comedians", behaving like brain-dead schoolboys. Not funny for sure, but to make a major case of this is just almost as brain-dead.
I never could understand moral indignation. We have financial turmoil, wars, crime in the streets, but what people get upset about is somebody making a bawdy phone call?
Update: this article says Georgina Baillie is a "burlesque dancer". I'm guessing that means that she's a stripper, but it's not her they are tearing down today, so they don't use that word.
Here's what an army of volunteers can do: one can use Wikipedia as collection of synopses (synopsi) of current news events, it seems.
An interesting aspect of this is that after the radio show itself appeared, almost no complaints about it were made to the BBC. But after an article condemning it in a Sunday paper and escalation in the media show, complaints soon reached a record-breaking 30,000!
I've found that often people are upset only because they think that they are supposed to be upset. You point out to them that this is not the case and the upset disappears like magic.
It's also interesting that the most upset person is Georgina... you might not expect her to be such a sensitive person if you know she's dancing in nazi-decorated group called the Satanic Sluts!
15 comments:
Well there is a BIG difference between calling up someone and leaving lewd messages on their phone or doing that on their grandfather's phone. I would be seriously pissed.
Sure, it was stupid and well out of line, but for the whole country, including the prime minister, to get involved...
Never really cared for morning shock jocks, and as for Jonathan Woss, I never really took to him anyway.
Still, that was how BBC Raadio 1 was heading. They wouldn't make shows like that if there wasn't the audience for it.
Did they try and justify it by saying AS's portrayal of a Spaniard was racist? The whole raison d'etre of Manuel was to lampoon biggots like Fawlty.
There, Lampoon thrice in one morn.
As for Burlesque, it doesn't have to be stripping, just calculated to be teasing.
"as for Jonathan Woss, I never really took to him anyway."
Me neither. I'm not very familiar with him, except for David Bowie interviews, and I mostly noted inane questions and that Ross let Bowie wait while he sat and prattled about his cat. Idiot.
"Did they try and justify it by saying AS's portrayal of a Spaniard was racist?"
Did they?
How could it be racist? The Spanish aren't a different race.
People seem to confuse nationality and race.
Quick, can a prescriptive linguist find me a thesaurus. I need to find the word which means "biggoted towards one of another nation", that can replace the vernacular term "racist".
Is there a descriptive linguist can allay my fears and tell me that through common usage "racist" is an acceptable term in this context.
Thanks,
Alex
(native speaker of Cestrian English with Scouse, Manc and rural East Midland influences)
Good luck with that.
Race is not the same as ethnic group, though mainly mentally deficient people use it that way. It refers to distinct physical characteristics and has nothing to do with language or culture.
No matter what the word is, there is bigotry against nationalities ("frog"), against fat people, against intellectuals, against, well, probably any group you can name.
That's the thing, the term "racist" is used so often that it seems to have taken on the meaning of bigoted against any ethnic group. But if I call an American a "damn yank", or I get called a "Limey" that's bigoted, and not racist.
Wait, no, bigotry means/meant "religious hypocrite".
I hardly consider myself mentally deficient, just poorly trained in my native tongue as taught to me by fellow native speakers.
Can we get people to stop calling buses buses, because they really are omnibuses, just horseless. Why do people call them airplanes when they were aeroplanes initially.
Language evolves, and any attempts in the past to stop it changing have failed. That said, I still would rather people hold to the original definitions of some words, e.g. decimate.
alex:
That's the thing, the term "racist" is used so often that it seems to have taken on the meaning of bigoted against any ethnic group.
It seems to have, and this is another case where the original meaning should be retained.
I hardly consider myself mentally deficient, just poorly trained in my native tongue as taught to me by fellow native speakers.
Native speakers often seem to be the poorest speakers of a language. Foreign speakers often learn things about it that we native speakers don't.
I should read over my posts before I commit...I said "speakers" enough times. :)
"bigoted towards one of another nation"
Xenophobic?
On a totally different subject (didn't know where else to put this), I just read a brief blurb on Russell Brand's thoughts re: the UK riots. I'm quite impressed w/this dude's "reflections." I'm looking forward to reading his books; he, actually, seems like a good writer, along w/his quick, naughty, wit. LOVE him! :-P
And...here's his blog.
captcha: "ouste" :-0
Wild! Yet another FAST "mawwiage! Why am I not surprised?! And, yet...I thought that they might be good for each other! Sad! :-( (I think they're BOTH too durn BUSY to even "conduct" a mawwiage, though! Takes a LOT of work that BOTH have to want to be part of and do!)
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