Astonishing Irony

[sp1814]

Sometimes the Daily Mail makes it too easy.

Hands up who can see the beautifully realised piece if irony in this latest Daily Mail attack on the BBC:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2295543/BBC-digital-radio-station-censors-lyric-Elvis-Costello-hit-Olivers-Army.html

Big thanks to The Media Blog for highlighting this.

Brilliant.

[emmie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/***

[naomi24]

That's just the point though, isn't it SP. It's subjective. What offends you doesn't necessarily offend me, and vice versa. I can recall intelligently argued posts being removed from here because someone cried 'offence'. Personally, I absolutely agreed with the 'offending' opinion - but someone didn't and hence, they were no more. I absolutely disagree with such censorship of freedom of speech. Everything offends someone and forcing others to shut up - which is what is being done here - doesn't cure the problem - it simply hides it.

[emmie]

that has just blipped out the word, thus blipping out the link.

[emmie]

it was a wiki link to the word n igger, just so some know the origin...

[naomi24]

Two 'absolutelys' there. Smacked legs. :o)

[naomi24]

See what I mean? Em can't even post a link to a bona fide information source. Ridiculous!

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

//// AOG - what swear words are you happy with children using? ///

Why specifically pick on me?

And who mentioned children I am sure I didn't.

But in answer to your question, I would think that some of the children of today could teach me a few swear words that would make me blush.

Incidentally I don't condone the use of swear words, whether or not they are proper swear words or words that have been described as swear words simply because they offend certain minorities.

[naomi24]

By the way, that's not a criticism of AnswerBank - it's a criticism of this potty world of political correctness that we are all expected to embrace.

[anotheoldgit]

I purposely used Guy Gibson's dog's name in my 16:23 post to see if it would be censored, and indeed it was, but one would have thought that the censor would have used the correct amount of stars, when the word was replaced
by *** yes just three stars.

[FredPuli43]

C16 dialect word neeger, from French negre, from Spanish ***.

[FredPuli43]

Bloody hell. Even a perfectly acceptable word is censored by the idiot programmers who set the filter. Used by Martin Luther King in his most famous speech, the word is still found in academic literature. Fortunately the censor doesn't find the French word offensive.

[FredPuli43]

The wiki link we are directed to, courtesy of Answerbank, is about the use of ***. Evidently *** is used whatever the number of letters expunged.

[sp1814]

AOG

I am not certain I 'picked' on you...but look at your post from 15:23....

What offensive words do you not find offensive?

[sp1814]

AOG

Prove me wrong...

The words c***, f*** and n****r are all offensive, right?

I think you think that n****r should not be up there with the others, simply because you are not personally offended by the word.

Am I wrong?

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// I am not certain I 'picked' on you...but look at your post from 15:23....///

You did indeed pick me out personally, by addressing your question specifically at me, and what my 15;23 post has got anything to do with it is beyond me, I was merely making a comment of how the 'N' word is being removed from past literature.

If you fail to remember, this is what you put,

/// AOG - what swear words are you happy with children using? ///

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// I think you think that n****r should not be up there with the others, simply because you are not personally offended by the word. ///

I was simply saying that the 'N' word is not a proper swear word as such, it may cause offence to some, but it is not an English swear word.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_swear_words

[AB Editor]

"One could say the same if anyone on AB dared to reproduce what was said, it would be automatically censored by the AB censor.

Would that also be ironic?"

No, it wouldn't be ironic. Members don't have editorial control here. Moaning about the over-zealous editorial controls of one organization in an article which seems to suffer from the same level of editorial controls IS though :)

"I think all these words that we are now no longer allowed to write, type or say should be treated the same as objects made from ivory prior to 1947."

I like that analogy.

[FredPuli43]

After all that, I still don't understand how a word, just by being a word, is to be banned. I'm of the Kenneth Tynan view; no word is obscene in itself . We have lost Victorian sensitivity about blasphemy, which we now see as ridiculous ; putting G... or G-d for God, D... or D----d! for Damned and so on; we have partly lost our sensitivity to sexual words; f**k, c**k etc; but have acquired a whole new one for racial terms. Odder yet, we apply it to one term above all, the "N word". Jews, but few others, may talk of the "Y word", yet "Yid" has connotations and history just as the N word has. We do not see a near total blanket ban on other terms.

[anotheoldgit]

FredPuli43

Not very often I agree with you Fred but I heartily do on this.

Another such word springs to mind and that is the abbreviated term for a native of Pakistan.

Whereas Brit, Scot, Yank etc are perfectly accepted.

I failed to add 'Paddy' to my examples because I am not sure if this is not also now classed as offensive.

[FredPuli43]

The assumption is that the "abbreviated form" of Pakistani , whenever and wherever it appears in print, must be being used in furtherance or promotion of racial hatred True enough, it is often so used. But surely having any automatic , computerised, censor, or a policy of a newspaper never to print it, whatever the circumstances of it being used, is absurd What do newspapers employ editors, sub-editors , and lawyers, to check the text for libel, contempt of court, and illegality for ?