Bye Bye Danny

[citoyen]

I'm not entirely comfortable with a world where it's not the intent but the perception that rules.

Don't forget this is the BBC we're talking about. Constant bullying from the Daily Mail and Sun has turned them into lily-livered appeasers.

[Robh]

I think it’s worth remembering that he has been sacked for ‘a serious error of judgement’, and I think he’s pretty much guilty as charged on that count. I also think this whole episode is probably a salutary lesson in what can go wrong when you let yourself loose on social media when pissed. As Mme Mugwump says, he gave his employers no option.

[PeteB99]

If the BBC sack a possible racist for a tweet how come they invite very real racists onto flagship programs like Today and Question time?

[toontra]

I'm not entirely comfortable with a world where it's not the intent but the perception that rules.

Don't forget this is the BBC we're talking about. Constant bullying from the Daily Mail and Sun has turned them into lily-livered appeasers.

True enough.  The BBC has been the enemy of sections of the right for a long time, but following the Gilligan/Kelly affair it lost it's nerve and is now a punchbag with little or no fight left in it and is so risk-averse it's losing its ability to take a lead on issues.  Not that this particular case is an issue worth defending.

[rafletcher]

https://twitter.com/carryonkeith/status/1126450252221952007

https://twitter.com/carryonkeith/status/1126505292324196352

[caerau]

Farage et al do not present daily shows on the BBC, they're not their employers and they do get taken to task by interviewers*...


_{*In principle at least.}





He had a shot at a Royal, that's always going to get the hardest hit of the hammer.  The Beeb is establishment - Royal bashing of that ilk is not tolerated.


Maybe he should just be more Frankie Boyle about it

[De Sisti]

He had a shot at a Royal, whose ethnicity was being likened to that of a chimpanzee; that's always going to get the hardest hit of the hammer.  The Beeb is establishment - Royal bashing of that ilk is not tolerated.


Maybe he should just be more Frankie Boyle about it

[mattc]

I'm not entirely comfortable with a world where it's not the intent but the perception that rules. Particularly where that offence is vicarious, and often worn more as a symbol of someone's beliefs than actual offense. Mining social media for potential offence causing material seems to be a growth business

Exactly.

[mattc]

Maybe he should just be more Frankie Boyle about it

... and this is where the Beeb show their lack of spine. For years they have paid people to be deliberately offensive.

[Jaded]

Have a job like that?

Be careful. In public, on air, in social media. Particularly if you are an 'ego'.

It is pretty straightforward.

[Pedal Castro]

I am a Danny Baker fan but this was definitely sackable. Also if his excuse was it’s just a comment on royal babies being a form of peep show entertainment then why didn’t he do similar when the other recently royal babies were born?

[spesh]

He'd have been in slightly less danger of getting the pink slip from the Beeb if he'd posted something "edgy" involving gingers or James Hewitt.

[citoyen]

Mining social media for potential offence causing material seems to be...

...like shooting fish in a barrel. Using a howitzer.

[spesh]

Of course, nobody had an issue when it was people with the "wrong" politics from the observer's POV having the starring role in a virtual auto-da-fé, but should we be surprised that this sort of thing has acquired a momentum of its own, and now there's a whole horde of people channelling Bernado Gui or Tomás de Torquemada?

[bludger]

Glad to see the back of him. My only gripe is that the media are selective when giving blatant racists the boot. I expect Baker lucked out with having few enough friends in the right seats to save his hide. Meanwhile 'watermelon smiles' Johnson will retain his telegraph column, Rod Middle will keep his Daily Heil slot (or is it the Heil on Sunday? It's one of the two) etc.

[rafletcher]

Glad to see the back of him. My only gripe is that the media are selective when giving blatant racists the boot. I expect Baker lucked out with having few enough friends in the right seats to save his hide. Meanwhile 'watermelon smiles' Johnson will retain his telegraph column, Rod Middle will keep his Daily Heil slot (or is it the Heil on Sunday? It's one of the two) etc.

And you think he’s (DB) a “blatant racist”?  On what basis 

[rafletcher]

,,, but all it seemed to be doing was comparing a royal with a performing monkey.

If you can't see any racist implications in that tweet then you must surely be the racist as backward as you're making yourself out to be.

And I think highly of you too 

[Wowbagger]

That said, I've no idea who Danny Baker is...

Wowbagger, you've given yourself away - it turns out that "ian" has been your sockpuppet all along...

Danny Baker I am (vaguely) aware of. Megan Markle less so.

[bludger]

And you think he’s (DB) a “blatant racist”?  On what basis 

On the basis of it being my view that he's another nasty old man who thinks monkey jokes about black and mixed race people are acceptable.

If you actually think it was 'all an accident' I have a 300 foot long bridge to sell you.

Unsurprisingly his fellow Millwall FC fans (notorious for making ape noises at black and mixed race players) are all on his side. https://millwall-forum.vitalfootball.co.uk/threads/danny-baker-racist.35777/

[mattc]

And you think he’s (DB) a “blatant racist”?  On what basis 

On the basis of it being my view that he's another nasty old man who thinks monkey jokes about black and mixed race people are acceptable.

If you actually think it was 'all an accident' I have a 300 foot long bridge to sell you.

Unsurprisingly his fellow Millwall FC fans (notorious for making ape noises at black and mixed race players) are all on his side. https://millwall-forum.vitalfootball.co.uk/threads/danny-baker-racist.35777/

Well done bludger - fight bigotry with bigotry 

Let's brand old men as nasty racists 

Let's lump all football fans together as racists 

Let's leap to conclusions about Milwall fans ... or, hang on, we could actually read the thread bludger linked to:

Post #3:

In fairness, it was a bit strong. Whether he meant it or not is another matter, he wasn't making similar jokes about 'circus animals dressed in posh royals clothes' when Williams kid was born. He's on social media regularly, he should have known it would cause massive uproar - he's not that stupid. Or is he? People on social media try their hardest to pick out something offensive, no matter how small. Danny on this occasion has handed them a big fat serving of outrage on a plate and will rightly get ripped to shreds about it.

I couldn't give a toss about DB personally but what he's put out on social media will only serve to damage the image of us Millwall supporter even more.

Post #4 agrees with above

post #5

Idiot what was he thinking, this social media shit gets so many people in trouble when will they learn.

bludger you are posting rubbish.

[citoyen]

Meanwhile 'watermelon smiles' Johnson will retain his telegraph column, Rod Middle will keep his Daily Heil slot

Yes, well, it would be difficult for the BBC to sack them, seeing as how they don’t work for the BBC.

[bludger]

No I'm not. He's a rancid nasty old man who's been given the sack for racist jokes, and you're on the wrong side of history. I never said 'all old men are racist' but if that's the inference you want to draw then you go right ahead. And if you think that pointing out a fact, that Millwall fans are notorious for harbouring a prominent racist community who make monkey noises at black players is 'bigotry' then I don't think this chat is worth keeping up. It's a fact. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/millwall/8471418/Preston-striker-Nathan-Ellington-complains-of-racist-abuse-including-monkey-chants-during-warm-up-at-Millwall.html

Yes, well, it would be difficult for the BBC to sack them, seeing as how they don’t work for the BBC.

wel that's handy because I never said they did

Weird how this subject of it being unacceptable to make racist jokes seems to prompt such irrational responses...

[Man in a tree]

The aspect that amazes me is that Baker, and some other people in the media, seem to be saying that they didn't know, or had simply forgotten, that Meghan Markle is mixed race. This seems incredible to me but, given that 'colorism' is a thing, perhaps this dire and insulting racism has occurred because people like Baker regard Markle as some kind of honorary white person? His defence that he used the same 'joke' for Rees-Mogg's baby seems to back this up somehow.

[Mr Larrington]

The aspect that amazes me is that Baker, and some other people in the media, seem to be saying that they didn't know, or had simply forgotten, that Meghan Markle is mixed race. This seems incredible to me but, given that 'colorism' is a thing, perhaps this dire and insulting racism has occurred because people like Baker regard Markle as some kind of honorary white person? His defence that he used the same 'joke' for Rees-Mogg's baby seems to back this up somehow.

I have seen people claiming not to know that Lewis Hamilton and Barack Obama (!) are mixed-race too.  Srsly.

[citoyen]

Yes, well, it would be difficult for the BBC to sack them, seeing as how they don’t work for the BBC.

wel that's handy because I never said they did

You highlighted how Danny Baker has been sacked yet other racists who work for different organisations* hadn’t lost their job. Which is a non sequitur.

If the editor of the Radio Times got sacked for printing pictures of naked women you’d probably be the one wondering why the editor of Razzle wasn’t sacked for doing the same.

*you refer to the Mail as the ‘Daily Heil’ - so you recognise that it is a racist institution, hence it should be no surprise that it will employ racists. The BBC is not a racist institution and that’s the significant difference, and why it’s therefore unacceptable for one of its presenters to make jokes with racial connotations. Try thinking it through a bit, eh?