I'm baaaack! Right. This solicitor: Main thing I think about Rob's reaction is that for someone who was waxing lyrical about how we're just on a rock floating through the blackness of space and that some people want the world to be perfect and can't accept the imperfection of life and society..,you seem to be mightily, *mightily* concerned by the fact that one wealthy, comfortable lawyer got upset by another wealthy, comfortable lawyer and, for some god-forsaken reason this became national news. You (Rob) seriously cannot mention this without stringing together three or four words of invective about this woman. And oftentimes slipping into falsehood (she did not try "to destroy" him, did not try to destroy his marriage, did not try to ruin his career etc. I do not believe that she reported him for gross misconduct either but may be wrong on that). My take on it is that older, senior professionals probably shouldn't be saying the equivalent of "Phwoar!" when younger professionals ask to join their Linkd In network. I can totally see why this would piss off said younger professional. That said I think it was a mistake by her to make everything so public. She had every right to ask for an apology and put a check on his behaviour. Even to report it to his company and the Solicitors thingamebob (and let them both decide if she was over-reacting shrilly or if he needed a word). But it was the going public about it which I find a bit much. All in all I think he was slightly in the wrong, she was slightly more in the wrong. Two wealthy westerners having a tif about a comment on a networking site and honestly I don't know why we're still talking about it a year later. It is not symptomatic of a larger program of making my white, male life hell. Or, if that program exists it is doing a very ineffective job. I still find my life to be waaaay more easy and privileged than at least 95% of the world's population. As I said before: if I'm being oppressed it is the nicest, most gentle oppression that possibly the world has ever seen. Ever. Cheers, fellas!
Lenn, Don't know how you can say she wasnt trying to destroy him ? Why did she name him on twitter ? Why did she drag his name throuh the press, and go on tv/radio calling him a sexist whatever if she wasnt trying to humiliate and destroy him ? (Ive just got back to finishing my skeleton off btw)
Sorry but if you're gonna say stuff like "she was trying to destroy him" then the burden of proof is on you, not me. She asked him to apologise, reported his message to his firm, reported it to the solicitors thingy, put up a tweet moaning about his sort of message and then agreed to a newspaper interview (?). Now I simply would not call that "trying to destroy".
Oh, the poor girl, being hounded by the newspapers like that. The newspapers, the tv, the radio.... Jesus christ. The burden of proof is easily passed. Res ipsa loquitour.
Rob - genuinely enjoying the discussion but you're just way out of proportion on this event. Who said anything about her being hounded etc? The fact that what she was wearing in the photo is being discussed as if it's relevant, who sent an invite to who, the very *mention* of "entrapment"...it's all a bit shrill and an over-reaction it seems to me. And then you start taking it out on the rest of us by making us look up Latin phrases!
Lol. It's an important point to me. From your various comments, it's abundantly clear, that you are a fair minded, compassionate, intelligent, aware person. But there is an aspect of modern feminism that you're missing. I'm convinced of that. And I'm convinced of the soundness of my belief that it exists. And the behaviour of this woman, and the support given to her by the press and feminist groups - like the recent saatchi and saatchi fiasco - is a key example of it. To demomstrate my point, as well as responding to your other points - which I am in the course of doing, and will probably finish in the morning or late tonight - I need to establish this. So I will probably need to come back to this issue. It might be easier to do when including it in my wider argument, when I will also be able to include other examples, and a fuller explanation of my position. Either way, I intend to park this one for now.
Now I know that I'm gonna be predictable here and I also don't want to come across as either po-faced or a hypocrite (because I do love looking at beautiful women and Ms Riley is rather a goddess) but let's have a look at how important physical beauty and youth is for the male presenter of Countdown: So it's just, well, from a woman's perspective, a bit of a shame that if you are not blessed with the physical beauty (and youth) of a Rachel Riley your likelihood of working in front of a camera on TV is somewhat limited. For men it is much less so. It is very, very clearly the case that being young and pretty makes you far more likely to get on TV as a woman. That's a bit of a shame isn't it? And honestly, from a lazy-brained letch like myself I could actually do with having less of my brain being taken up by sexy images of women being almost constantly within eyesight. I'd probably have more interesting thoughts throughout the course of the day if I wasn't just staring vacantly at the latest pouting beauty staring at me from that poster of magazine cover or TV show or whatever.
Yes, but the group hate and group think in the US from a previous era think weren't organized in the way that PC is, and so IMO represents a different kind of horror. * Undoubtedly. But PC is a different kind of group think, a group think of the haves, and presents a different danger than the racism it has helped to ameliorate. Today's solution is tomorrow's problem. Am I being paranoid that the spirit of political correctness which has resulted in less free speech today will lead to no one daring to criticize our glorious leader tomorrow? I hope so. Don't get me wrong. I accept that PC has had more good results than bad, so far. But as with so many things, who watches the watchmen? To give just one example of PC excesses: the use of the phrase Native Americans to describe people who in the US were previously called Indians. The decree went out and those interested in being PC followed the call. There was only one small problem. A strong majority of those to whom the name now applied prefer Indian. So what happened here is that after killing most Indians and taking most of their land, seeing as they still had something left, the white haves circled back and decided to take their name as well. In the old days people who were educated were the ones who had the courage to stand against the mob. Most of the pogroms that were stopped by anyone, from my limited reading, seem to have been stopped by high church officials. But now that the educated have formed their own mob, who will have the courage to stop them?
You could equally argue that men were excluded from consideration for riley's role, because they werent (amongst other things) a beautiful woman. Not sure how that disrciminates against women tbh ?
People trying to be PC does throw up some massively ******ed stuff. Let's take the word "******ed". I saw this amazing video which was of a (very articulate) kid with Down's Syndrone laying into Ann Coulter or some other right-wing horror of North America. He was criticising her use of the word "******ed". I am not kidding - within the first couple of sentences he had said "You say ******ed because you think that me and people like me are dumb but we're not dumb!" I actually had to thoroughly check to see if it was a joke. OKay - here's another example of how people trying to be inoffensive more than anything can lead to weird ****: There was a news story a couple of weeks ago about how a muslim man who worked for a Canadian council had refused, in some official capacity, to shake the hands of women. This got him the sack. He then sued the council for wrongful dismissal/discrimination (?). Now. The spokesperson for the council said words to the effect of: "We believe that people can hold whatever beliefs they want. But they cannot discriminate" Now - you see the problem there? See how those two sentence, both of which sound nice and very acceptable, totally contradict one another? We will have to be a lot smarter than that spokesperson was being right there to deal with legitimate problems. And you know what? Plenty of people are. We just have to not focus too much on the silly end of things and always try to be intelligent and open-minded. So. Anyway. I find myself at the same time defending the overall effects of PC and also being fully aware of the ludicrousnesses and non-thinking that it can unfortunately encourage. What you gonna do? Settle for the ****ed up world of our grandparents? Demand perfection?
