Why I hate the Daily Mail, as distilled into one edition

Mail more vexed about her tweeting about (obv. made up) drinking and sexual exploits tbf

i think it's important to know what public figures were tweeting when they were 15 and i look forward to the Daily Mail's ongoing investigation

quite.

She sounds like an ideal Daily Mail columnist, tbh. Paul Dacre should give her a job.

a) None of the news reports I've seen say that she was 15 at the time of posting, they just say "before she took the position" - this would imply shortly before to me. Where is your information coming from?
b) If she was 15, this would still only be two years ago. I would say being racist two years ago is probably relevant for someone who has to work with disenfranchised youth.
c) Was her twitter feed protected? No? Then it's not exactly phone-hacking.
d) The Daily Mail are horrible scumbags, but I have no problem with a racist and homophobe being removed from a position of power.

Police are investigating her over tweets she posted between the ages of 14 and 16 which could be considered racist and anti-gay.

yeah this is bad and stupid. she's still a child. i think maybe if the point of the post was to have somebody representative of young people they might be struggling to find anybody who hasn't said anything stupid and offensive in a public sphere.

Ms Sandys, the South Thanet Conservative MP, said on Twitter: "Paris Brown should step down as youth crime Tsar for Kent... Gimmicks always backfire."

Mr Collins, the Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said he did not think the role should have been created in the first place, and called on Ms Barnes to admit that it had been "a mistake".

i wd describe this as "subtext"

I don't think the police should be investigating anyone for going "lol fags", but I don't think someone who says "lol fags" should be given a position like this.

Don't really care about the subtext when the main body of the text is fucking bigotry.

emil.y OTM

whose daughter is she anyway?

Mrs Brown.

Yeah, it was more the usual "we disapprove of this person, and we'll get some evidence against her tomorrow" thing.

it's a little bit thoughtcrime this

Emil.y otm - ppl are treating this like she got caught out doing something every teen does. not all of them are racist/homophobic, surely

Mrs Brown

Never watched it myself, but I believe she only has sons

They get top billing, but.

not all teens get their background checked by journalists either, i don't think many people would disagree with the fact that this young lady had been quite a dick with those twitter posts. but twitter is just a fucking horrible thing that i wish never existed.

she learned a lesson in life, anyway - and tbh £15000 a year wasn't worth the hassle anyway

the lesson in life being "don't go on twitter"

and i congratulate everybody whose worldview is perfectly well formed at the age of 15 16 17 whatever.

If you think not being a racist or a homophobe is enough to qualify for a perfectly well formed worldview then, yeah, thanks for those congratulations.

it isn't, that's the whole point

depends on if you want them to represent the majority or not i spose

i don't want that i suppose.

but more strongly i don't want random retrospective search on twitter account being the basis of this judgement of one's character, i suppose.

I haven't been 17 for a very long time, but most teenagers weren't bigots when I was growing up and most teenagers aren't bigots now.

How the Kent police managed to put a bunch of teenage applicants on a shortlist without vetting their social media presences, I just don't know. But since it's the police, I'll guess incompetence and stupidity, especially when 'public engagement' is at stake.

I don't get why the emphasis is that she was bigoted "on twitter". Unless the thinking is it was a terribly formed joek then she was bigoted, enough to be so publicly.

am obvs suspicious as to why the mail is suddenly concerned abt racist homophobes on the police force, but am more perplexed by the amount of people who are like 'yeah i was a racist homophobe when i was 14, its just a phase yeah.' her 'defence' of said tweets is pretty weak, and the police bod who employed her was equally woeful on radio 4 at the weekend, all 'hey at least she's better than the politicians and media types who would just hide behind a press release, at least she had the guts to stand in front of reporters and cry.'

I wish a lot of teenagers didn't use certain slurs in an unthinking way but I don't think anyone that does is a hateful bigot. Calling her "a racist and a homophobe" on this evidence seems way OTT to me.

Sorry, that should be I don't think everyone who does is a hateful bigot.

A certain amount of 'sea change' wrt the Stephen Lawrence case, happened at the DM

nothin stronger than a past sinner that repents

Or maybe they dislike racist bullyboys more than respectable black people, thesedays..

But her "racism" consists of remarks about an "illegal" at her local takeaway who can't speak English, which is shitty but no different - in content rather than language - to what you find in the Mail all the time. You could find dozens of tweets more racist than that if you only searched the last five minutes. Not saying that her tweets are OK, obviously, but I hesitate to go straight to "racist" on that evidence. Unless there are worse tweets that I haven't read yet?

The ones talking about 'pikeys' were illuminating.

lots of teenagers use bigoted language because it's what's around them, because they don't know better, because they want to shock or transgress - it doesn't mean they ARE hateful bigots themselves. i'm pretty sure i used "pikey" and maybe "chav" when i was a teenager. definitely used "retard" until i was, like, 20. trained them out of my vocabulary when i got to know more stuff.

the mail deserves a massive eyeroll but tbh this is exactly the kind of learning experience that ideally teaches mouthy teenagers that certain words are beyond the pale for good reason. hopefully she learns from it and goes on to fulfil her potential. if she just builds up resentment and continues to think like that, then fuck her.

lex otm

x 2

yeah that sums up how i feel pretty much

"I don't get why the emphasis is that she was bigoted "on twitter". Unless the thinking is it was a terribly formed joek then she was bigoted, enough to be so publicly."

I guess my issue with it is that does that mean she won't get a high profile job ever again? one that daily mail or whatever deems 'twitter search worthy'? It just a bit arbitrary.. and.. bigoted? can one be a bigot about bigots?

I guess its two things still. one of twitter being this device that one can unwittingly fuck yourself up in the future with. and the other being the once you're a bigot you're fair game. I dunno.

Another pt I guess is that adults who are actually in power say much more offensive things every day - they just cloak their shit in more respectable language

i'm pretty sure i used "pikey" and maybe "chav" when i was a teenager.

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), dinsdag 9 april 2013 19:18 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is it considered bad fashion to say "chav"? Does that make me a 'hateful bigot'? (serious question from a non-UK person who uses this phrase quite a lot)

Not read it but I think this has had an impact on people's use of the word:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chavs-Demonization-Working-Owen-Jones/dp/1844678644

Thanks for that.

By no means do I use the word meaning "the working class" though. That is too broad a concept almost for me as a foreigner with an English gf to comprehend. The UK class "system" is, on a deeper level, quite tricky to understand when you didn't grow up with it.

Reading the wiki on "chavs" now I am learning a lot of its origins. Should have done that earlier.

I used the term in the 'blingy' sense of the word mostly, like the people you see on embarrasing 4th rate "reality" shows, who wilfully go on telly to "proudly" tell of their teenage pregnancy and still smoking, stuff like that.

i told my son i'm not comfortable with him using "chav" as a generalised term of abuse, the subcultural nuances are more or less buried in old-fashioned lol-the-poor snideness now

Your son is fortunate to have you as his father NV. I will take that to heart.

it's like a lot of things, depends how you say it, but there's a real Daily Mail ring to most usage i see/hear

yeah it has become a term of class hatred, particularly when it's sneering middle class people laughing at working class people.

and I'm sure Jones' argument is much more nuanced but I think that's the gist of his argument

amongst kids i think "Chav" is doing the job that used to be done by "Townie" or "Casual" but even working class kids throwing it about are buying into the demonization Jones talks about

I am thankful to the classmate who told me I was being thoughtless when I repeated (aged 12?) some horrible homophobic jokes I had heard getting big laffs among people old enough to know better the day before, cz I don't think many other 12-year-olds would have, and it was a pretty big "just because an adult said it and some older kids laughed, doesn't mean it was big or clever" moment for me

anyway I'm torn here, because "learning experience" and "inappropriate for public figure" sure but digging through things a 17y/o said when they were 14 for dirt is p. uncool (don't have such a problem with the 16 part, maybe that's an arbitrary distinction but still)

I will hold my hands up here and say I hadn't actually read the tweets themselves (BBC article didn't mention them, I refuse to click on a Daily Mail link) and someone at work implied they'd been a lot worse than they seem to have been. Not that they're not awful, but I get what people are saying a bit more now about just using teenage type language (that lots would never use). Obv getting the police involved is a dumb idea and the Daily Mail are horrific but it's kind of an interesting discussion about what public stuff is and isn't off-limits when it comes to your suitability for your job (see also: the dongle joke thing).