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About LinkBackshe shudnt lose his job, but perhaps he picked the wrong time to air his opinion. Even though I believe he shud be able to.Originally Posted by DaBeeeenster
Outrageous. He should be tried for inciting racial hatred
Mildly out of order.
I dont really care
He's just voicing his opinion
He's right, I am in total agreement
he shudnt lose his job, but perhaps he picked the wrong time to air his opinion. Even though I believe he shud be able to.
apropro some of the comments. An Arab representative on Radio Five was tut tutting at KS and the presenter said that they had received lots of e-mails. mostly in support of him. She also said that a common theme was that in this politically correct world you can't say anything out of sorts about Arabs or Islam but slagging off Christians, Britain, democracy, et. was fair game by anyone, espcially Arabs and Islam - he just disagreed (he would wouldn't he!)
I don't know about England, but certain Organisations, both public and private - including the Scottish Parliament, removed references to Christmas from Christmas cards this year because it "wasn't all inclusive" and just wished people "Happy Holidays". I despair! Do you think the equivalent would be done in Israel, or Saudi Arabia, or India? Of course not! And nor should it!
I think KS was crass and wrong but it highlights that you can't say boo anymore without being accused of being racist, sexist, or whatever-ist. Sad sad days.
Yes, if only because all the ranters about America generally distract attention from the reasonable arguments concerning the way America is run and how it imposes it will across the sea.
On a plus note, that means there's only one godawful jerry-springer style show on in the mornings now, let's hope Trisha finds her racist outspoken streak soon, then we'll be rid of both of them.
He should lose his job for being so damn ignorant, in my opinion, before even considering the other issues.
I don't think not having the ability to criticise the arab world as a whole is a particulalry bad thing, if political correctness means we can avoid sweeping generalisations about entire races I think that's pretty damn good...if you want to criticise make sure you point it at the right person/people!
EDIT: omg I misspelt sea. oops, last post needs a reply too.
Last edited by Byatt; 10-01-2004 at 07:17 PM.
Does anyone have a link to the actual article he wrote, or a scan of it ?. I can only find links talking about it, id like to read his words myself.
Don't really care and voted accordingly
I don't read all the tabloids on a daily basis but I would be surprised if you couldn't find a more excessive example (than that of Silk) of racist editorial and/or article coverage on a daily basis. Some of the stuff Richard Littlejohn got away with in the Sun and on TV was far worse than anything Silk said. Not that two wrongs ever make a rightbut let's get a sense of proportion.
Kilroy-Silk generalised about Arabs in an article written last April during the Iraq invasion which was reprinted last week in error in the Sunday Express. His comments weren't picked up last year beacuse there were far more news worthy stories at that time and also because the need for political correctness towards the Arab peoples was not as important then (during the Iraq invasion) as it is now in the post Sadaam world.
Most of the year no-one would have noticed the Silk comments and they would certainly not been front page news but last week was a truly a dire week for interesting news and Silk got it because the media had nothing else to write or speak about. The media choice was either more Kilroy-Silk stories or another 20 hours coverage of the story about carcinogenic Salmon and the Silk story won
Last edited by telfer12000; 11-01-2004 at 03:03 AM.
We have lots of irony in modern societies and I think I've one of them here...
Kilroy-Silk is one of many TV/public personalities (whether they're journalists or presenters) who've a newspaper column. His face and his name are things that a lot of people would recognize and hence the newspaper is willing to give him the column inches to allow him to express his views, which the newspaper thinks will be a good read for the buying public. Now, that newspaper can pay me or any of you to write a column once a week, but chances are, no many people will necessarily read what we write about, column or no column.
Another point we have to bare in mind is that we are living in a democratic society. We have the right to voice our opinion, without the fear of persecution nor the fear of revenge. Sometimes, unpopular or controversial have to be said, otherwise, views and opinions of a minority section of the population will go on unrepresented.
Now, here's the real irony - what makes 'personalities' possess more or less controversial opinions than the average public? They are human and they are entirely capable of extreme or unpopular views. What those ‘personalities’ say or do in front of a camera or a mike is no more of their own views than those of the editors, research staff and producers. While I’m not suggesting that newspaper editors or editorial staffs are any less capable of filtering out extreme or unpopular views, they’re again human and they’re capable of missing things. Say the ‘personalities’ can say their pieces and so how manage to slip past the ‘quality control’ of the editorial staffs. Another point is: nowadays, newspapers and the rest of the news media are bent on ‘sensationalizing’ news events. Everything is say with exclamation. Even the most mundane of topics tend to be sensationalized. What can these ‘personalities’ write to compete the rest of those sensational stories spread cross the news media? Something controversial, may be?
So we ended up with a bit of a Catch 22 situation: ‘Personalities’ are hired to write columns, but they not necessarily have anything interesting to say. If they do have anything interesting to say, it is not necessarily uncontroversial or popular. So what’s the point? ‘Personalities’ are hired to because they’re popular with some section of the public and are occasionally the ‘mouthpiece’ of that section of the public. What these ‘personalities’ write or say are, in fact, a reflection of the views of certain sections of the public, be they the majority or the minority. While Kilroy-Silk’s views may offend a good number of people, I bet they have certainly gotten a good few nods somewhere in the readership. We, as a nation, should be more concerned with the extreme or unpopular views that exist in the population than the ‘personality’ who happen to pen the column.
Last edited by spikegifted; 11-01-2004 at 03:07 AM.
Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly. - Batman costume warning label (Rolfe, John & Troob, Peter, Monkey Business (Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle), 2000)
Except he didnt pick the worng time to voice his opinion. He voiced it months ago in the middle of the war and at the time it was applauded
Kilroys father died defending the right to free speech. It seems clear that the truth hurts...
whats that got to do with the price of apples ? many people had relatives that took part in the 2nd world war - does that give them the right to publish articles with glaring errors in them ?Kilroys father died defending the right to free speech....
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What kind of glaring errors are you referring to? Ok, it was a sweeping statement that he made regarding Arabs/Muslims, but what he said has a lot of truth in it - a lot of Arab/Muslim states have "suicide bombers, limb amputators, woman repressors"... And those are the ones we know about because these stories have been reported in news media. How many people knew how bad things were in Afghanistan before the US turned its spot lights on it after September 11? How many people know the Islamic Nigerian regime that existed in the northern part of the country prior to Miss World 2002?
The simple truth is, there are a lot of things that goes on around in the world that we don't know about and we'd never know about unless some brave journalists investigate and tell us about them or these terrible places are linked with some evil events. We choose to ignore these things because we're so full of ourselves, complain about someone making a sweeping statement that appears not to be political correct. It is a terrible thing to say, but it is also the truth.
I think Kilroy-Silk is guilty not for making writing the article, but being over-generalized in his assessments. In the end, what he said was the truth, if he only qualified his examples, instead of a sweeping statement.
Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly. - Batman costume warning label (Rolfe, John & Troob, Peter, Monkey Business (Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle), 2000)
The truth eh? What has Arab culture contributed to the world? Our number system, for a start. Silk is an ignorant prick if he doesn't know that. Maybe if someone can find me a copy of the article I can take it apart properly.
Does Silk have a right to say what he did? Yes. Do I have the right to moan about the BBC using some of my licence fee to pay the rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish? Too ****ing right I do, and I will
Rich :¬)
If you choose to drag in all the history, you can suggest something good and something bad to nearly every single culture in the world... Now, I don't think that is constructive in the sense of getting to grips with what's happening in the world today. I'm not trying to suggest we should ignore history and culture to any given country and at the same time I'm not saying that we should apply 'Western standards' to all other civilizations. However, there is something called 'equality' and 'fairness' and other things called 'decency', and Kilroy-Silk is mere pointing out these differences and 'deficiencies'.
In terms of what Kilroy-Silk said, while I don't agree with his sweeping generalization of the whole Arab/Islamic world, what he said has some truth to it.
Last edited by spikegifted; 16-01-2004 at 02:10 AM.
Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly. - Batman costume warning label (Rolfe, John & Troob, Peter, Monkey Business (Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle), 2000)
Agreed. What's done is done. You could take two opposing sides, discuss any country's/culture's history and argue til you die.
What matters is how things are right now.
As I originally offered 'mildly out of order'.
I never wanted to see him on the TV in the first place, and i certainly don't want him back now. I'm rather shocked and also disgusted? at how many 'supporters' he has found here, and the way some of you can judge what is right and wrong by how much media attention it recieves i find rather disturbing.
Just because there is no media frenzy if someone makes a racist remark about white/English/British people doesn't make it right nor does it because goverment policy is frankly rediculous regarding such things as Christmas cards, let's vent some anger and blame it on the Arabs, they'd make a nice scapegoat, they're all wife beating terrorists after all?
Some truth? There's a reason they don't ask for some truth in a court of law! I can't actually think of anything that doesn't have 'some truth'! His comment is racist, it is offensive, and it is dangerous! The holocaust wouldn't have happened without generalizations just like this one! That was thrown in for a bit of controversy but there is more than 'some truth' in it.
These Arabic terrorists, surely they are just making the same mistake as Silk has just done, the descisions of a few Americans pissed off some Arabs, these Arabs not to happy about this called Americans "suicide bombers, limb amputators, woman repressors", and so blew some Americans up, yet you condemn them and support Silk? While Silk to my knowledge hasn't killed anyone the mistake is the same.
Fact is the truth is dressed up with a load of inflamatory, incorrect, irrelevant B*****s. I KNOW that Islamic regimes commit atrocities and repress their people, I was moaning about the Taliban long before 9/11. Thing is though, not many of the repressive islamic regimes are actually Arabic, the Taliban aren't, neither are Iranians or (fairly obviously) Morroco, Algeria, Nigeria etc. I must admit I haven't read the article but it's Arabs he's criticising isn't it? Knob.
Anyway, they've sacked the git. Good ****ing riddance
Rich :¬)
There are a few points I like to raise regarding your reply, but I'm only going to say one thing: Life is not a court of law. In a court of law, there's black and white, right and wrong. In life, there is black, white and an infinite number of shades of grey in between. In life, nothing is absolute (except, arguably, death and taxation). There is 'some truth' in Kilroy-Silk's statment because he's making a genaralized statement on a large number of entities. There bound to be inaccuracies. That's why I don't like sweeping generalization. However, in this case, while the generalization is not good, it is not possible to claim that it is completely inaccurate.
Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly. - Batman costume warning label (Rolfe, John & Troob, Peter, Monkey Business (Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle), 2000)
I haven't read the article either (The Express and the Sunday Express are not my 'reading radar'...), however, not all repressive regimes are Islamic/Arabic either... Case in point: Until recently, Americans literally cannot criticize the US administration. For if they do so, they'd be considered 'unpatriotic' and that's not a done thing... Is that repression?
Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly. - Batman costume warning label (Rolfe, John & Troob, Peter, Monkey Business (Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle), 2000)
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