Did anyone notice all of the xenophobic rhetoric on last week's Top Gear describing a whole nation in a derogatory manner? Or did you miss the film about the competition with Top Gear Australia?
I'm amazed that not a single mention in the news about the way the team talked about the Aussies while the firestorm about the 'Mexican' comments rages. Could it be that there is a double standard in play here or that many of the complaints have come from people that didn't actually watch the whole show?
Either way the viewing figures this week will probably be a lot higher than last week as people tune in braced and ready to be offended.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
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11 comments:
There's no "double standard." Australians are the same ethnicity as us, Mexicans are descended from a people who were subjugated by people of "our" ethnicity. That's having one standard for one thing, and another standard for something else.
Nice theory Richard, but unless you're saying that Aborigines aren't Australian or that only Amer-indians can be Mexican then you're talking complete and utter bollox.
Aborigines obviously aren't "Australian" for the purposes of the jokes made about Australians on Top Gear. They were joking about White Australian culture.
As for the latter, 80% of the population of Mexico is Mestizo, ie. descended from Amerindians. Top Gear certainly didn't specify White Mexicans in their rant. So yes, any attack on Mexicans is at least tangentially an assault on Amerindians.
Richard is employing the classic 'only people who are non-White can be the victims of racism' defence. It no longer works.
In fact, it never did, except for those who believe the lies of the left.
Some moron called Coogan does a great job of belittling the Mexicans whilst trying to have a pop at the Top Gear crew. It's on the Fails web site I think
I just re-watched the relevant sections of the show on the iplayer and it's *full* of nation-based stereotypical references.
The silence from the sound of complaints about the rest of them is deafening. It's almost as if JuliaM is correct .. ..
“Only non-whites can be victims of racism”. Julia M could have added that this bizarre left wing belief is itself racist!
Hope that's not too subtle for Guardian readers.
http://goingfastgettingnowhere.blogspot.com/2011/02/star-of-london.html
This Yeoman of the Guard, Bill Callaghan, makes the Top Gear boys look like beginners!
I think the Mexican Ambassador (or whatever he was), Richard Allan and all the other "useful idiots" who tagged along really need to grow up. Spending some time in the real world might also help.
National stereotypes have been around (and will be around PC-lunacy notwithstanding) for many, many years. Every nation has, and uses, them.
"An Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman walk into a bar..."
A law that purports to protect against descrimination, but then is not applied in one direction (Recent case in Germany where a petition to have "Scheiß Deutsch" put on the same "police response level" as "Scheiß Turk" was thrown out of the Reichstag petition site), is, in it's own right, as racist as it comes.
What it is in fact saying is, "Ahh but they are poor wee foriegn people who, due to failings in their cultural up-bringing can not be expected to understand our humour, whereas YOU are a stiff upper lipped white man who should know better than to get upset by such trivialities".
I agree entirely with that sentiment FT. It reminds me of a post I read, published in 2008, from a teacher/blogger who was recently the focus of a media storm because of their political alignment. Unfortunately the blog this came from has since been removed.....
"Why do white middle-class people always feel sorry for the rest of us? We're too poor, too black, too underprivileged to make something of ourselves. To allow us to live with dignity and accept the consequences of our decisions, whether bad or good, is seen somehow as cruel.
Better to rid us of our self-respect and tell us how to live our lives. Better to never punish us at school, never hold us to any standard, and then set up quotas so that we'll get a job in spite of the fact that we don't know anything. Of course it is. I mean, we're just stupid after all. What would we do with all that knowledge? Skills? PAH! They're only of use to the rich white man.
And how can we, the poor, the blacks, the underdog, complain? Whenever we fail, old whitey is there to catch us. He has set up debt loopholes so we can run big businesses out of town. He has engineered it so that we can never be excluded out of school. He has structured society to teach us how to lack manners, be aggressive and, oh yeah, be angry ALL of the time. And he always forgives us! We are never allowed to feel shame. Whitey knows how hard it is for us. Whitey knows we can't help ourselves. After all, we come from the fucking jungle.
God damn white people and their condescension. God damn white people and their constant pity and disrespect. We are human beings JUST LIKE YOU! Get it? We are capable of attaining the standards you all set for yourselves. We are not dirt under your feet. And we deserve the opportunity to fail. We deserve the consequences of our actions. We deserve some god-damn respect.
To hell with white people. Go see a therapist. Talk through your guilt at being privileged. Get help. And stop taking out your inadequacies out on the rest of us."
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