What a ridiculous pantomime. Now, I haven't really followed any Big Brother since I moved out of my parents' house (because it's garbage and I don't put it on the TV) until very recently so the first I heard of this was on the front page of a newspaper. Someone had called a Bollywood actress a "Paki" and, as you would expect when the big top collapses at the circus, there was chaos.
Even at this point I regarded the whole thing as overblown. Front page news? While this has been the top story on the news an Asian gang attacked a 15-year-old white boy and battered him in the head with a hammer (I can't remember if they actually killed him or not--which just goes to show how little reported the assault/murder has been), that struck me as a little more newsworthy than people bitching at each other on Big Brother (the kind of petty carping which has gone on in every "reality" show since the time of the Jesus, I think). When it became apparent that the Indian actress (Shilpa Shetty) hadn't been called a Paki--she'd actually been called a cunt and Channel 4 had bleeped it (as you do) and this had lead to a bunch of media retards simply assuming the bleeped word was "Paki" (a ridiculous leap in logic given that Shetty is Indian, not Pakistani) and running with the idea--I caught that first familiar whiff of bull feces.
It turns out that the "racism" which has led to something like 50,000 complaints and at least one cretin filing a complaint with the police amounts to little more than your standard playground bickering, which we've seen on every Big Brother. Certainly Jodi Marsh, Jade herself the first time she was on the programme and a few others have got it a lot tighter in the past than Shetty has, often not just in the house but from the same newspapers who are now screeching their horror at what Jade etc. have said as if they'd set a box of kittens on fire.
There were actually only two incidents to go on which the media have been able to spin into "racism": firstly, one of the housemates mimicked Shetty (who by all accounts is a bit of a snotty cow, even if she has been picked on unfairly) in an Indian accent (Shetty had taken the Mickey out of the way one of the other housemates spoke herself before). They weren't insulting the accent, they were just doing an insulting impersonation of her--and since she has an Indian accent (on account of being Indian and all) it shouldn't come as a surprise that an impersonation of her should include one. Secondly (and this was the biggie): Jade--who couldn't remember Shetty's surname while complaining about her to someone--referred to her as "Shilpa Whatever. Shilpa...Poppadom."
Even at this point I regarded the whole thing as overblown. Front page news? While this has been the top story on the news an Asian gang attacked a 15-year-old white boy and battered him in the head with a hammer (I can't remember if they actually killed him or not--which just goes to show how little reported the assault/murder has been), that struck me as a little more newsworthy than people bitching at each other on Big Brother (the kind of petty carping which has gone on in every "reality" show since the time of the Jesus, I think). When it became apparent that the Indian actress (Shilpa Shetty) hadn't been called a Paki--she'd actually been called a cunt and Channel 4 had bleeped it (as you do) and this had lead to a bunch of media retards simply assuming the bleeped word was "Paki" (a ridiculous leap in logic given that Shetty is Indian, not Pakistani) and running with the idea--I caught that first familiar whiff of bull feces.
It turns out that the "racism" which has led to something like 50,000 complaints and at least one cretin filing a complaint with the police amounts to little more than your standard playground bickering, which we've seen on every Big Brother. Certainly Jodi Marsh, Jade herself the first time she was on the programme and a few others have got it a lot tighter in the past than Shetty has, often not just in the house but from the same newspapers who are now screeching their horror at what Jade etc. have said as if they'd set a box of kittens on fire.
There were actually only two incidents to go on which the media have been able to spin into "racism": firstly, one of the housemates mimicked Shetty (who by all accounts is a bit of a snotty cow, even if she has been picked on unfairly) in an Indian accent (Shetty had taken the Mickey out of the way one of the other housemates spoke herself before). They weren't insulting the accent, they were just doing an insulting impersonation of her--and since she has an Indian accent (on account of being Indian and all) it shouldn't come as a surprise that an impersonation of her should include one. Secondly (and this was the biggie): Jade--who couldn't remember Shetty's surname while complaining about her to someone--referred to her as "Shilpa Whatever. Shilpa...Poppadom."
...
Are you kidding me? That's what earned front page in the newspapers and top story on the news channels? Surnaming someone "Poppadom"? What do poppadoms have to do with racism? Last I checked, your nation's preferred foodstuffs are not racial characteristics. Local cuisine has nothing to do with your biology.
And they're talking about this in parliament--parliament! Doesn't the government have more important things to discuss, what with MRSA in the hospitals, rising instances of gun crime, the European constitution flopping, those illegal immigrant criminals the Home Office lost upon their release when they should have been deported, climate change, the two wars this country is currently tied up in? The same government that calls people "hysterical" when they call for the death penalty when it comes out that yet another paedophile released early from prison or on parole has abducted an infant is in talks with the Indian foreign ministry because some Z-lister on Big Brother said someone's surname was Poppadom?
It's pretty tricky for a white European or white American (or whatever) to be racist to an Indian in the first place, it should be noted, given that "whites" and Indians are actually of the same race. They're both Caucasian--heck, before saying "Caucasian" became fashionable the correct term was actually Indo-European--so that's at least one torpedo in the argument that Jade was being maliciously racist right there. A second torpedo hit home when I was made aware of the fact that Jade's late father was himself a white/black half-caste (we're allowed to say that again, right? I've had trouble keeping up with the latest in pointless censorship since they changed "blackboard" to "chalkboard") making her of mixed race herself.
Surnaming someone "Poppadom" should by no means be enough to cause this kind of uproar--they're actually burning Channel 4 executives in effigy in India like it's the 5th of November in scenes reminiscent of the Islamic world spitting the dummy when the Danes drew some doodles of their prophet. The crowds which normally gather outside the Big Brother house during evictions were also banned when Jade's time came because she's had death threats and Channel 4 was worried she'd be attacked.
Of course there has been some overt and indefensible racism (and classism) on Celebrity Big Brother this year, but not directed at Shilpa Shetty. No, it came from Jermaine Jackson when he referred to Jackie Goody as "poor white trash". He also told Shetty he was pleased to see another "person of colour" in the house. What would the reaction have been had the Goodys told Danielle Lloyd and that S Club girl that they were glad to see a a few more white faces in the house? We can but wonder.
I don't see anyone pulling up that whinging nobody in the diary room or crucifying him in the media. As a white person I find it offensive he's trying to suggest poverty and "trashy"behaviour are somehow due to a person's white heritage in some cases--had I the temerity to call Jackson a nigger on TV when I was upset with him then you can bet your glass eye I'd have ended up in court for it.
The usual double standard is filmly entrenched here, of course. It's hear no evil, see no evil--unless the evil has a pale face.
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