Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Jo O'Meara digging deeper

The discomfort at Celebrity Big Brother's racism and bullying has continued to grow: there's now been nearly 5000 complaints to Ofcom, and - following Jo Sclub's suggestion last night that "Indians are thin because they're always ill as they undercook their food" - Keith Vaz has brought up the issue in Parliament.

Interestingly, Shilpa's manager tells the BBC it's unacceptable:

Shilpa's UK manager, Jaz Barton, told BBC Radio Five Live: "She didn't come into the house to have that sort of harassment.

"She came in there with the full intention to actually embrace the public at large and to be proud of her culture and her heritage and who she is, and now she's faced with all this sort of harassment."


Earlier, though, her publicist has taken a more laid-back approach for the MediaGuardian Organ Grinder blog:

Interestingly, Shlipa's publicist, Dale Bhagwagar, took a relaxed view of complaints of racism. "Shilpa is God's child. Jack is God's child. All human beings are ultimately connected by a single abounding energy. So, how does it matter who belongs to what race, religion, country, colour or creed?"

But, in case you're wondering, it's okay to call a woman a cunt:

Channel 4 has also confirmed that Jack Tweed called fellow housemate Shilpa Shetty a "cunt", not a "Paki".

The broadcaster was responding after bloggers and the Indian media picked up on comments made by Tweed about the Bollywood star.

On the Celebrity Big Brother highlights show in which the incident featured, what Tweed said was bleeped out, fuelling the controversy about alleged racism on the programme.

But a Channel 4 spokeswoman has confirmed that the word in question was "cunt", not "Paki".

It is understood that if Tweed had used a racist term of abuse, it would probably not have been censored for editorial reasons, in order to highlight an aspect of his character.


So, erm, that's alright, then.


22 comments:

Mikey said...

But hang on, aren't we now discriminating against Jo S Club and Jade Goody? Isn't being an intolerant useless fuckwit as much a part of their culture as living on mechanically reclaimed meat from Iceland and watching I.T.fucking.V?

I mean, are we? I'm in a Guardianista quandary!

Anonymous said...

Racism is a misleading term intentionally weighted in favour of the immigrants, jewish in this case, who invented the concept. People who hate dogs don't hate dogs because they are dogs they hate dogs because they bark all day and shit on the pavement. The term racism puts all the blame on the victim. If I went to live in an igloo and offended all the eskimos would that be *their* problem? I don't think so.

Anonymous said...

I hate to dignify Anonymous's fuckwitted comment with a response, but bloody hell...

Mikey said...

Ignoring, for all our benefit, the main thrust of anonymous' rather lively comment - It would really annoy them if you kept calling them 'eskimos', or even 'esquimaux' (which i believe is more correct. The people who (only rarely) live in igloos tend to think of themselves as 'Inuit'.

And no, they don't shop at fucking Iceland. They may be eskimos, but at least they aren't Chavs.

Anonymous said...

I haven't been watching CBB, but am going to have to start now just to see if these claims are true.

Perhaps that's what the media wants!

Anonymous said...

Nice analogy, moron, but it doesn't exactly work. If this mythical person who 'hates dogs', hates them because they apparently 'bark all day and shit on the pavement', then it's pretty safe to assume they haven't met many dogs. And are making a lazy and ill-informed generalisation which just showcases their ignorance and general fuckwittedness.

No, hang on, your analogy does work. Sorry.

Anonymous said...

jo o.meara has always been a pointless useless bitch, now she's a racist pointless, useless bitch

Anonymous said...

Whats more distressing is hearing these people come out of the sidelines and insist that there was no racism involved in the whole torrid affair. Goody herself admits her comments were racist (NOTW), but still these shadowy commentators still insist on remaining in cloud fucking cuckoo land

Anonymous said...

i hate jo ,thought she was a nice good looking chick in s club but after seeing big brother ,what i racist bully who seems to think to bully someone is funny ,looks like shit,speaks like shit ,smells of shit ,ohh and fags ,and has got nothing in her brain apart from shit!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

l don't want to mix with ethnic people at all not cos l'm racist,but cos l'd av a nervous breakdown worrying about uttering one word that might be considered racist,,,jermaine jackson came out with a few racist comments i,e called white pple "white trash" l don't care about that,,,jade called shilpa popadom,come on give me a break isn't this being blown out of all proportion

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Actually, most recent anonymous, Jermaine Jackson didn't call white people white trash. That was Leo Sayer; Jermaine was merely reporting what Leo had said. Still, why let the facts get in the way, eh?

Anonymous said...

Er.. Simon HB - facts? Leo Sayer wasn't even mentioned.

Jermaine Jackson has now claimed that he wass repeating to Shilpa what Dirk Benedict had said - he could have ssaid "trailer trash", but he didn't. He said "white trash". WHITE trash. He brought the colour of her skin into the insult. So please, with this comment coming from a "man of colour" (his words), how is this not a racist remark?

Anonymous said...

What about jermaine jackson's "of course my wife's black" comment? How are we supposed to take that, like marrying a woman of any other race would be abbhorent to him?

Jermaine jackson is a racist and should be treated as one.

Anonymous said...

Jo O'Meara is a sheep. She & Danielle followed Jade's bullying but she is not racist! She was concerned for her health after eating Shilpa's ill-prepared food (and subsequently having diarrhoea!) - to complain about that is not racist. It's obvious there was a personality clash & different cultural upbringings probably added to the incompatibility, but it wasn't racism, it was just women bitching at each other.

However, Danielle's "I think she should f**k off home" was a horrendous comment to make - yeah she's young & stupid & probably just repeating the kind of thing she's heard in the street from the previous generation, but that still doesn't make her behaviour excusable. Living proof that beauty's only skin deep.

Jermaine Jackson's comments about white trash were also racism but that seems to be fine if it's directed at white people.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Anonymous from 30/1/07 11:10 PM -

Oh, yes, of course, the famously black Dirk Benedict.

Admittedly there seems to be some disagreement over who originally made the "white trash" comment - Jermaine has told both BBC Asian Network and Five Live that it was reported speech.

Perhaps you need to check the transcript of what Jermaine actually said:

Jermaine: She's [Jade] a star so she has a following and a fan base her mother doesn't, she does not care and I dont want to, go like this, it was reffered to her, they bought up the word white trash and I dont want to bring that up, and I wouldn't call her that because shes a human being.

So maybe it's time to stop trying to suggest there's some sort of moral equivalence between Jermaine not calling Jakciey white trash, and Jo stereotyping Indians and British Asians, Danielle telling people to fuck off home and the whole "Fuckawallah" business.

Anonymous said...

Just pointing out when Jade said, "Shilpa Popudom" or how ever it's spelt, she wasn't being racist.

Popudoms are a kind of crisp which you eat curry with. Popudoms were also made in India.

So if we change the scene slightly and someone (mabye an asian/imagrent) prints a story about Tony Blair and calls him Tony Fish (hence our fishing nation) would anyone find that racist? No.
Racist comments HAVE to either work both ways or not at all.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Last anonymous:

Context is very important. Calling Benazir Bhutto a Pakistani isn't racist. When the guy who ran the newsagents round the corner used to call people "pakistani", he was being racist because he intended it as an insult, and his attitude towards non-whites was well known.

So the "Shilpa Poppadum" comment could be seen as on a par with, say, the French calling the English "Rosbif". But set in the context of her and her mother's refusal to bother to learn or pronounce Shilpa's name correctly, and comign straight after Jade's suggestion that she was called Shilpa Fukawallah, the stink of intended racism was obvious.

Even if you don't want to believe that Jade Goody is an ignorant racist, the best you could say about the poppadom comment was that she was resorting to lazy racial stereotyping.

The reason why your Tony Fish defence doesn't work is because nobody says it, so it's a meaningless compariosn.

Anonymous said...

I cant believe this! every1 has completly blown it out of perportion! she aint a racist! Jo is my role mode jus leave her alone so she can try n get on with her life!

Anonymous said...

How bizarre this is. Do all you Brits sit glued to the TV watching boring has-been entertainers desperate for a buck? Does your Commons hve nothing better to do than listen to this guy Vaz complain? Have your police so little real crime to stop that they have to investigate the racial attitudes of washed-up singers?

Do you ever get the feeling that you are sheep? Do you ever get bored of watching moving picture and reading tabloids? Don't you want a life? A real life?

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

Big Bill, part of what you say might hit home a lot harder if you weren't posting on the internet about Celebrity Big Brother.

Anonymous said...

anonymous, you are the biggest twat going. I hope you never feel threatened racially/otherwise in anyway cause you wouldnt know how to cope. You are incredibly ignorant and it's a real shame that people like you exist. racism is not 'a misleading term' and that is the most unintelligent quote i have heard all year. If you felt it was 'all being blown out of proportion' you wouldnt have wasted your time writing a response and then tried to retract when you realised that your lame ignorant argument didnt hold up

Anonymous said...

Jo O'Meara NEVER said one single racist word! And come on now, anybody who can't see through the whole scam against Jo is a useless moron! When Shilpa was arguing with Jade, she suddenly said: "Jo, are you going to say anything?" Why would she say that, unless it was to try to draw Jo into the argument? There are many such examples of how Shilpa manuevered things to play the victim! CBB was paid by Shilpa's handlers to let her win and to make her famous in some country other than just India! And it worked well too! They didn't care whose lives were ruined in order to promote that useless Bollywood bimbo!! The whole thing was rigged! Poor Jo was an innocent pawn and victim of these creeps!!

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