There is no logic in mk.
Fatality!

cosmicjellybean wrote:

So that Baker guy pulls a Rosanne and people are torn whether he should be fired for it? She said she didn’t mean it as well.

Not quite.

She denied she did anything wrong and tried to blame it on Ambien.

She then continued to be the same hate filled, bloviating, right wing, twatbadger that she was before.

The general precendent the Baker thing sets is shitty. Imagine you say something in front of everyone at work. It has racist connotations but you just didn't think about them, even though you're a smart enough person. And you're certainly not a big racist with any history of doing similar things. As soon as someone points it out you're mortified and apologise for it to everyone.

You wouldn't be thinking 'fair enough' if you got fired for that. Yes, you made a mistake, but really quite a small one, and you still aren't a big racist.

But for some in here it seems like radio DJs are supposed to be held to a higher standard of accountability than pretty much anyone. I mean, even politicians get away with slip ups like this followed by some mealy-mouthed 'regret if any offence was caused' type non-apology.

You don't want to go down a road where you're thinking, 'yeah that's OK, he made a mistake, deserves to lose his job.' It will start to happen more generally, and if you have a no questions, one strike and you're out policy, you can bet it will be used cynically, be nasty little pricks trying to get their colleagues fired by twisting their words.

Nobody should be lauding severe punishments for mistakes (that are essentially immediately admitted as such and have no apparent surrounding pattern) in the context where basically everyone’s lives are being permanently documented in real time.

Furthermore we should also be slower to get onto any territory that smells a bit like “no smoke without fire” land because the dangers in that are also alarming when we know it’s really easy to cynically play a crowd (cf: Brexit).

JonB wrote:

As soon as someone points it out you're mortified and apologise for it to everyone.

Mortified may be pushing it.

Following allegations of racism over the tweet, Baker deleted the post on Wednesday. “Sorry my gag pic of the little fella in the posh outfit has whipped some up. Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased,” he said.

“Soon as those good enough to point out it’s possible connotations got in touch, down it came. And that’s it.”

Baker, 61, repeated his apology on Wednesday evening, saying the post was intended to poke fun at the royal family.

“Once again. Sincere apologies for the stupid unthinking gag pic earlier. Was supposed to be joke about royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted,” he said on Twitter. “Royal watching not my forte. Also, guessing it was my turn in the barrel.”

He also made light of it in interviews afterwards.

I think maybe that if he had dealt with the initial apology better, things might have been different.

Source for the above:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/09/danny-baker-apologises-for-chimp-tweet-about-royal-baby

Anyone else who thinks that they need an apology from him are the problem, they're the idiots that are seeking offence and pushing buttons to give themselves their 15 seconds of internet fame

He's talking about Danny Baker, not you or him.

Then why quote that?

Nah, it was a hypothetical situation. The point was to imagine if you did something like that completely accidentally, then realised what you'd done and tried to make up for it but still got the boot.

JonB wrote:

Nah, it was a hypothetical situation. The point was to imagine if you did something like that completely accidentally, then realised what you'd done and tried to make up for it but still got the boot.

I feel it’s an important distinction myself. As I say, I think if he had handled the apology better things might have been different. Appearing dismissive and defensive in that situation is worse than the original fuckup.

20 of the best, dragged through hot coals and a pound of flesh.
Anything less and he might be racist.

Yossarian wrote:

JonB wrote:

Nah, it was a hypothetical situation. The point was to imagine if you did something like that completely accidentally, then realised what you'd done and tried to make up for it but still got the boot.

I feel it’s an important distinction myself. As I say, I think if he had handled the apology better things might have been different. Appearing dismissive and defensive in that situation is worse than the original fuckup.

So it's too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider this system could ever fail? There's some specific line agreed upon by employers where an apology is deemed sufficiently sincere and gets accepted?

I'm trying to make a point about the precedent being set. You're focusing on an irrelevant detail.

I'd be curious what the specifics were for the dismissal. For all we know, it might be less about a racist implication and more about attracting bad press to the BBC. I don't really know bakers stuff but he seems to have been critical of his employer, maybe he had been warned to knock that sort of stuff on the head and the BBC felt this fall into the realm of bringing their image through the mud.

I'm not saying I think that's what it was or that I agree with it, but I'd be curious on the exacts.

You appear to think that this can be divorced from its context and held up as a precedent. I don’t, that’s what this comes down to.

Baker’s initial apology was poor and could certainly be taken as suggesting that seeing racism in his joke was the product of a diseased mind. His second apology dismissed the situation as being his turn in the barrel rather than reflecting on his own actions and how that might seem to others. He then went on to start joking about the situation.

If he had made a full, unqualified apology at the start, I’m reasonably sure that this wouldn’t have gone any further, but he didn’t. I don’t know that he should have been fired for it, but I also don’t see this as precedent-setting, and I certainly don’t think that you can simply skate over how poorly he handled the situation when analysing this and what it might mean for others.

JonB wrote:

The general precendent the Baker thing sets is shitty. Imagine you say something in front of everyone at work. It has racist connotations but you just didn't think about them, even though you're a smart enough person. And you're certainly not a big racist with any history of doing similar things. As soon as someone points it out you're mortified and apologise for it to everyone. You wouldn't be thinking 'fair enough' if you got fired for that. Yes, you made a mistake, but really quite a small one, and you still aren't a big racist. But for some in here it seems like radio DJs are supposed to be held to a higher standard of accountability than pretty much anyone. I mean, even politicians get away with slip ups like this followed by some mealy-mouthed 'regret if any offence was caused' type non-apology. You don't want to go down a road where you're thinking, 'yeah that's OK, he made a mistake, deserves to lose his job.' It will start to happen more generally, and if you have a no questions, one strike and you're out policy, you can bet it will be used cynically, be nasty little pricks trying to get their colleagues fired by twisting their words.

Say if a colleague at work has cancer, for example, and as a 'joke', on Slack, on the general chat channel, or on your company wide email group you raise:

"Don't show that bald headed cunt any sympathy. Haha."

Even in a stream of other well wishing messages, and even if you know the guy well, there's a good chance you'll get fired.

That's the 'common sense' side of it.

Culturally though, yourself and Tempy keep pushing this 'bigger picture' idea, completely neglecting the fact that a mixed race Royal family is one of the greatest anti racism gestures we've seen in our time.

Possibly the clearest symbol of a change in culture, at least since Obama.

So perhaps zealously guarding that is more valuable than you think.

No one's even taken the security issue into account.
Can you imagine the number of death threats the family have received from domestic enemies, since Meghan has married into the family? 

And, interestingly, no one has bought up Alan Sugar yet.
His comments can possibly be seen as less harmful than Danny's (overlooking intent). But they were no less stupid, and he pretty much got away with that...

Why do you think that is?