BFR 75 Today

[Dave Cooper please]

Yes I think he doesn't get the condemnation and that he has to keep apologising. But I think a lot of that is to do with an out-pouring of almost pity that one of the most likable football people on television that was genuinely liked and admired by just about everyone should something so stupid, so crass, and, well, so apparently racist.

If he still doesn't get it after all this time and all those people telling him then he's either thick (he isn't), stubborn (probably), or racist (possibly).

[dave.woodhall]

Yes I think he doesn't get the condemnation and that he has to keep apologising. But I think a lot of that is to do with an out-pouring of almost pity that one of the most likable football people on television that was genuinely liked and admired by just about everyone should something so stupid, so crass, and, well, so apparently racist.

If he still doesn't get it after all this time and all those people telling him then he's either thick (he isn't), stubborn (probably), or racist (possibly).

I think it was very telling that in the documentary he was surrounded by his middle-aged, middle-class white friends or elderly working-class whites. Everyone he knows will tell him that he was unfairly treated.

[Toronto Villa]

From experience, I can tell the difference between a racist and someone who is just ignorant. The racist has anger and intent in his words and action. I don't think Ron Atkinson is a racist.

[dave.woodhall]

From experience, I can tell the difference between a racist and someone who is just ignorant. The racist has anger and intent in his words and action. I don't think Ron Atkinson is a racist.

Good point.

[Damo70]

What makes his words more offensive is that he had worked in an environment when there had been massive efforts to raise awareness and remove those attitudes from the game. To have gone through that period and still make those comments and then to compound it by an inability to see why what he said was offensive takes a particular combination of arrogance and stupidity.

I think the "massive efforts" have increased over the last ten years or so. I think BFR's last league management job was 1999. Time flies and when we talk about him growing up in a different era most or all of his management years could possibly be classed as a different era in some respects.

[Chris Smith]

What makes his words more offensive is that he had worked in an environment when there had been massive efforts to raise awareness and remove those attitudes from the game. To have gone through that period and still make those comments and then to compound it by an inability to see why what he said was offensive takes a particular combination of arrogance and stupidity.

I think the "massive efforts" have increased over the last ten years or so. I think BFR's last league management job was 1999. Time flies and when we talk about him growing up in a different era most or all of his management years could possibly be classed as a different era in some respects.

He was still involved in the game through his punditry, though, so I'm not sure that's a valid defence and in any case his outing happened in 2004.

For what it is worth I think his comments were more ignorant than bigoted, and I take on board all the generational stuff, but that still doesn't excuse them.

[brian green]

People my age are, justifiably in my opinion, acutely uncomfortable with the widespread presumption that their feelings are less valid because they are opinions held by the old who do not really understand how society must work.

I am far from happy that Bruce Willis can shout "Yippee Ki yay Motherf*cker" at Alan Rickman and have that obscenity become the signature of the Die Hard genre but in The Dam Busters the greeting Guy Gibson gives his dog is bleeped out.   To make matters worse Die Hard is a work of fiction but Guy Gibson was a real person and a war hero who really did have a dog he had given the "N" name.   Obscene fiction is acceptable, historical facts are not.

That my generation can like it or lump it is naked ageism and is as offensive to me as racism, sexism or homophobia.

I am not defending BFR, he opened his gob and created great offence.   I am defending the right of old people to have their take on things respected not merely tolerated.

[peter w]

It's a fair point Brian but "old people" haven't got the right to call someone a n***** simply because it was okay years ago. Society changes through the present cosmopolitan world that we live in. Better rights for the under privileged, such as ethnic, cultural, religious minorities, or majorities as it may be with women, and better care and protection for the 'disabled' and so on.

What has also changed is that we have taken a look at the words that we were using 30 or so years ago when describing any 'minority'. So much so it's largely enshrined in law now.

So as much as you may say old people should be respected I agree with that. But not if it means that they can use terms that are now likely to cause offence, simply because it meant something different to them.

[pauliewalnuts]

Isn't the bleeping out the name of the dog in repeats of The Dambusters a totally different thing to using that word now?

I understand why they used the dog's real name when they made the film, because it wasn't really an issue back then. I think for that reason, it should be left in.

However, that's a totally different thing to dropping the N Bomb these days, which is utterly unacceptable.

For example, if the writer of the Dambusters film were alive today and using the N word, that would clearly be deplorable. The fact it was used in 1955 (or whenever that film was made) is very different, though.

[brian green]

You get me wrong Peter I think.   I am not putting a case for any generation being immune from being educated into fairer, juster, more equitable behaviour.   What I am saying is that those better values evolve, there is no magic sticking point at which all that is held to be correct at that moment remains correct for ever.   Morality is the whole river of humanity not streams of it.   I would never use a racist term to a black person but in return I do not want any other person to consider me to be inferior because my memory is bad and I get up five times a night to pee.

The words are not the problem, they are simply the symptoms of it like the spots when you get measles.   I went to pick up one of my grandchildren from school and kids now use the word "challenged" as abuse.

What has to be eliminated are not just the "isms" but the urge to dominate.

The other day I was parking my van in our residents parking space (bought and paid for from Cambridge City Council) when I saw a notice saying that the parking bays were to be suspended on a certain date.   Being unsure of that day's date I asked a middle aged woman alighting from a Chelsea tractor dropping off her kids at the school gate (with no parking permit) what the date was.   She looked at me with a mixture of loathing and disgust in her eyes at being spoken to by this old bloke in working clothes driving a van full of fruit and vegetables.   She snarled something incoherent at me and I tried to explain that it was as much in her interests as mine to know if we were going to get towed away but I was left with the inescapable feeling that that woman thought I had no right to speak to her.

That assumption of superiority is what must be erased from our culture, superiority of skin colour, of gender, of sexual orientation, of age, of weight, height, whatever.

[PeterWithesShin]

The whole "it's not that bad because it was used back in my day" argument is a cop out in my opinion. I'm 44 and when growing up casual racism was pretty rife in society. P**i, c**n, n****r, w*g, and countless other terms were heard regularly. On tv, in real life etc they were still regularly heard through the 70s and 80s.
And I bet most people my age or similar grew up hearing the same words just as often. Well guess what, despite hearing them so often year after year we were smart enough to realise how deeply offensive they are and don't use them rather than still use them and go for the "well back in my day" routine.

Anyone in this country who used any of those terms in the last 20 years (at least) knows full well how deeply offensive they are. Age/ignorance is no excuse.

[brian green]

You are absolutely correct PWS.   All I ask is that all those prejudices which exist now in this day at this time come to be acknowledged as equally wrong.

Singling out people for abuse because of the colour of their skin is wicked and wrong.   No reasonable or fair minded person would even attempt to defend it.   That is only part of the problem.   I have a very good friend who is undergoing a sex change.   She is one of the bravest people I know.   She is a prominent Cambridge academic and most people knew her when she was a man.   She could tell you far better than I whether society is liberal and tolerant or bigoted and ignorant.    I suspect it leans towards the latter.

[brian green]

I should have added last night that I think one of the most pernicious prejudices glossed over these days - just like racism was glossed over in the days of Until Death Us Do Part - and which will become up front and centre in society is the ridicule and abuse faced by overweight people.

In the same way as the tobacco companies destroyed people's health in pursuit of profit in the 20th century the junk food manufacturers and purveyors will destroy it in the 21st.   The victims of over consumption of fat, salt and sugar are already treated with contempt and prejudice and it will get worse until the same stand is made against it as has been made against racism and homophobia.   The seeds of weightism have already been sown.   What does the "F" stand for in the name we have given Ron Atkinson?   Harmless?   A bit of a laugh? Something to be taken in good part?   That is what they said when Alf Garnett called his carer a c**n.

[Mortimer's Bear]

From experience, I can tell the difference between a racist and someone who is just ignorant. The racist has anger and intent in his words and action. I don't think Ron Atkinson is a racist.

I happen to agree with this, I also thank Ron for the most exciting few years of my Villa supporting life.

[peter w]

I should have added last night that I think one of the most pernicious prejudices glossed over these days - just like racism was glossed over in the days of Until Death Us Do Part - and which will become up front and centre in society is the ridicule and abuse faced by overweight people.

In the same way as the tobacco companies destroyed people's health in pursuit of profit in the 20th century the junk food manufacturers and purveyors will destroy it in the 21st.   The victims of over consumption of fat, salt and sugar are already treated with contempt and prejudice and it will get worse until the same stand is made against it as has been made against racism and homophobia.   The seeds of weightism have already been sown.   What does the "F" stand for in the name we have given Ron Atkinson?   Harmless?   A bit of a laugh? Something to be taken in good part?   That is what they said when Alf Garnett called his carer a c**n.

Unfortunately Brian that's also symptomatic of a survival of the fittest class of animal that we are. But, in particular specific to our culture. If you go and look at the cultures that are religion driven then the respect shown for the elderly is a cornerstone of it every bit as much as their devotion to a deity. It's a respect thing that has been lost in increasing secularity.

As for the fat people well I'm sorry but in all but a minority of examples it's a self-inflicted condition which is highlighting someone's greed, lack of respect for themselves., and lack of respect for others. I have no sympathy with obese people as they are saying 'look at me I'm greedy'. I hate the avaricious lifestyle that they have indulged in and see them no better than other sections of society that are selfish and contemptible.