It can't have failed to escape your notice that there are an awful lot of 'Charlies' around at the moment - Everyone is proudly proclaiming that 'they are Charlie'. This has got me thinking..
We currently live in a culture where it is almost fashionable to 'take offence'. You only need to have a quick scan of any national newspaper to see it littered with people moaning about what someone else has said. recently there was the Alan Sugar incident in which someone, uninvited, tweeted him with the opening missive "Evening sugar ;-) can I call you that... Lol". Alan Sugar replied thus: "yes no problem as long as I can call you fatty". He didn't actually call her 'fatty' he pretty much just said "if you call me sugar; I'm going to call you fatty"
This seemed to provoke a storm of epic proportions, some of the replies to him were comical in their hypocrisy - "miserable old goat", "arrogant b&%£$&*^".
The woman at the centre of the furore, accused Alan of 'cyber-bullying'. In the stakes of unwanted female attention (could loosely be described as sexual harassment) 'she shot first'. Sugar is used as a term of endearment - akin to him calling her sweetie, honey, babe, doll etc. She sees 'fatty' as an unwanted word having negative connotations.. Childish, immature and rude are also unwanted words having negative connotations, and they all came from her fingers - to him.. Is he crying about cyber-bullying? No.. and I am glad he's not apologising either. I was always taught 'if you can't take it; don't give it'. Maybe Elena should have subscribed to this.
I detest Big Brother™! Initially it started out as an interesting social experiment but after the first series, it became a competition for morons to see if they could make a name for themselves - some of them did.. Anyway... Celebrity Big Brother or 'a vehicle for z-list celebs and below to try and drag themselves up a notch by prostituting themselves', Ken Morley was removed from the CBB house recently for remarks he made, prompting 251 complaints to OFCOM... I wonder how many of these mortally offended people 'are Charlie'..
You only need to look at the way Charlie Hebdo portrays it's caricatures to see that there is indeed racism it them:
racism
ˈreɪsɪz(ə)m/
noun
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
Are the people complaining about Ken Morley (of whom I have no particular opinion - I never watch Corrienders Close or whatever it was he was / is in) still Charlie?
One of the standout things in this debacle is that Morley's son deemed it appropriate to 'apologise for the offence his dad had caused'.. What a meaningless act...
And this:
Hundreds have taken to twitter in support of the decision to remove him from the house after the 'offensive' comments.
How is this any different to what the people complaining (with Guns) about Charlie Hebdo are saying. They, also are outraged. They are feeling offended. All the Je suis Charlie supporters are saying that you shouldn't be offended.. I don't get it..
I'm fully aware that freedom of speech and expression comes with the caveat that you may be universally thought of as 'a bit of a moron' and people are free to call you out on it but why this need to take offence so easily? Are we that weak that we cannot think for ourselves about what we deem to be acceptable? My opinion is that CBB should have left Morley in and let the public vote him out - If he was being as offensive as the complainants said; then he would have been voted out anyway!
Charlie Hebdo stands for itself - we are the ones who make the choice to be offended or not to be offended
I would argue that anyone claiming 'Je suis Charlie' who is taking offence at others' actions are basically hypocrites.
One man's humour is another man's Jihad! The Muslim terrorists tried to silence what they classed as offensive using AK47s.. Others try and achieve the same aims using twitter...
I will leave you with Stephen Fry:
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