Thursday 29 April 2010

Mind your language!

I can't believe the coverage Gordon's unveiled 'bigot' comment has received. Dave's black man in Plymouth and Nick's reference to nutters were definitely more dodgy, in my view. Mrs Duffy may well not be a bigot, she just phrased things clumsily. But to recast her as Mother Teresa and have Gordon genuflecting apologies left, right and centre is just ludicrous.

7 comments:

Cusp said...

The whole business is a farce: something for media to get steamed up about. Anyway she was quite biggoted in what she said IMO so why shouldn't he be able to comment (though of course I quite understand that everyone is supposed to be whiter than white and completely blameless in this charade called an election)

nmj said...

i think there is the assumption here that you can't be a lifelong Labour supporter AND a bigot... ridiculous... and GB has apparently committed a crime for having public and private personas that don't match - but they all do! he was vexed and was letting off steam, so what? the media frenzy is just silly.

Mim said...

I couldn't agree more. Brown's on-mic comments have made the top news spots here in the States, but we've heard nothing about "nutters" and "black man."

nmj said...

hey mim, the context of nick clegg's use of nutters was fine - 'nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes'- it was just that he chose to use that not very PC word in the live televised debate i found very odd!

dave's 'black man' comment was just ludicrous, he was trying to act all pally & inclusive, but it just showed him up to be the isolated toff he is.

and bigot is not even an offensive word!

nmj said...

transcript of conversation between GB & Mrs Duffy

http://tinyurl.com/27odrmy

nmj said...

Jon Stewart's take on things...

http://tv.gawker.com/5527780/jon-stewart-mocks-the-laughable-tameness-of-british-political-scandals

nmj said...

Just saw this in Observer:'...There has been hardly any reaction in Scotland to Brown's unguarded moment, save perhaps for a quiet acknowledgement that he was spot on.'

I think however the journalist is romanticising how cordial and lovely everything is up here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/02/gordon-brown-duffy-kevin-mckenna