Not enjoying the Janey Godley pile on....

It's not just comedy - I touched on this in the other thread about children's literature. You have parents now who read a book like The Giving Tree, or The Story of Ping, or anything that doesn't hammer the reader with the "right" moral, and they can't deal with it "in case some readers get the wrong idea."

A show where the character being made fun of was clearly a bad guy, not "regular." and not sympathetic, might be ok. Because then the audience would be clear they were meant to despise him. But is that really a true story about human beings?

It reminds me a bit of HAL. If you don't have clear directives about what is ok and what not, and worse they are contradictory, civil servants can't make clear and consistent decisions, and what you get will be a hot mess.

The civil servants normally do due diligence

The problem here is that even the Scottish civil service is compromised on its integrity over what's acceptable & what isn't. There are SJW activists in every sphere & SJW are very selective IMO over who gets the 'cancellation' treatment. Even when there's a tendency to lean towards the BLM/take the knee stuff (as Leslie Evans cringingly did by posting a pic of herself 'taking the knee') someone in the good graces of the FM gets a pass, even with the sort of stuff Godley posted. In embracing & adopting the SJW model on standards (as it seems is the case), there's still an element of personal opinion in play when carrying out due diligence - and the response that Leyanelle got to her complaint illustrates that perfectly.

Remember, the SNP equalities convener feels empowered to determine who should be 'removed from communities' and who doesn't. Same applies even in the civil service when the due diligence is supposed to pick up what was pointed out in the complaint about Godley.

They're now seemingly unable to spot when someone's background is questionable for fear of being seen as 'shaming' any transgressions, or simply being sympathetic to someone that's deemed useful. The drag queen that Mhairi Black took into a Scottish primary school is another example - the school should have done their due diligence but the drag queen was warmly welcomed despite what children could find if they searched him online.

They go their own way. And assume that the general public is stupid and/or beneath contempt. The remind me of the mullahs.

1. Struggling to understand the relationship between those tweets and being a professional comedian.

2. The SNP really don’t have a leg to stand on if they did nothing about this when they were made aware of the tweets almost a year ago!

mobile.twitter.com/Leyanelle/status/1319737393373728770

Honestly I think it was ignored. Leyanelle (tweets above) flagged this on twitter with sturgeon in 2020 when sturgeon did the alter ego post.

The SNP and sturgeon should never have elevated Janey the way they did.

twitter.com/leyanelle/status/1436400686586081281?s=21

Do you have any insight into what is likely to have happened there? Did [X] do their diligence, know about all of the problematic posts and decide that they weren't relevant or were they attempting to cover their lack of appropriate reseearch?

I've worked in "celebrity selection" for gov comms.
Janey Godley would have been chosen to reach a particular demographic as someone who'd "get the message across."
The civil servants normally do due diligence, then the selection is forwarded to the appropriate Minister to review and sign off.
So either the background research wasn't done or the results were just ignored.
Her previous SNP politics make me raise an eyebrow,,,

I think that's the problem though - intelligent comedy requires an intelligent audience. We watched TDUDP as a family and knew Alf was the figure of ridicule, and laughed at him, not with him. The same with programmes like Love Thy Neighbour. We could see that the white racist bloke was meant to be the figure of ridicule - his own wife thought he was an idiot! But being "other" ourselves, maybe we could see the caricature.

I saw the Pub Landlord chappy a couple of times but several years apart. I saw him when he first developed the character and the crowd were of the "young professional" type, lots of women there. When I saw him again, the crowd had become much more blokey and lairy. Watching it, I felt that the caricature had changed into character trotting out well worn lines, without irony, to a crowd who were lapping it up at face value.

But it never seemed to have occurred to Mitchell that if you're subtle enough that racist idiots think you're a hero maybe you're too subtle for prime time TV.

I agree. I think the problem with the series was that Speight gave Garnett all the best lines, and Warren Mitchell was such a brilliant actor he made Garnett an almost-sympathetic character. As Blake (I think) said of Milton: he was of the devil’s party without knowing it.

They're criticising it because the harm done by showing those views in a reasonably subtle portrayal on prime time telly watched by a lot of children had real negative consequences regardless of the good intent intent. As Sanjeev Bhaskar said: the playground was always hell for non-white kids on the days after TDUDP was on TV.

Tell me about it! In the 70s/80s, was part of the only brown family growing up in a white, working class (but fairly socially conservative) area. A lot of 70s/80s TV would illicit that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and having to brace myself for the school playground the next day. Even fairly innocuous stuff. I remember when Electric Avenue was no.1 in the charts, I spent weeks being followed around by one group of lads doing their rendition of Eddy Grant with their own amusing lyrics about "Pakistani Zoos".

Alf Garnett was an interesting one. Warren Mitchell would tell of fans who'd come up to him and who regarded Alf as simply a hero, telling it like it was. Mitchell's reaction was always that the racist fan was an idiot and it was hilarious that they couldn't see the truth so he was the winner. But whenever I heard that story I wondered why it never made him think that maybe there was a problem with giving the racists a hero on prime time TV and validating their views.

IME modern criticism of TDUDP is completely aware that Garnett was a satirical figure. They're not accusing Johnny Speight of being a racist. They're criticising it because the harm done by showing those views in a reasonably subtle portrayal on prime time telly watched by a lot of children had real negative consequences regardless of the good intent intent. As Sanjeev Bhaskar said: the playground was always hell for non-white kids on the days after TDUDP was on TV.

Alf Garnett, the racist and misogynist working class Tory from the 70s comedy, Til Death Us Do Part. From Wiki:

Writer Johnny Speight often commented that the character was supposed to be a figure of ridicule, but admitted that not all viewers saw the satiric elements of the character. Speight defended the Alf Garnett character, saying: "If you do the character correctly, he just typifies what you hear - not only in pubs but in golf clubs around the country. To make him truthful he's got to say those things, and they are nasty things. But I feel as a writer that they should be out in the open so we can see how daft these comparisons are."

Are there no depths to this?! I thought they'd simply never bothered to check.

So they were told (I won't be repeating the quotes) by a member of the public what language she'd used and they carried on endorsing her. Well, this looks like total contempt for her targets on the part of the Scottish Government. How far in does the rot go?!

I'm actually staggered by this. I didn't see this development coming at all.

University students

Since when were they seen as any kind of group in general that represents any kind of wider view etc?

Remember the young ones

Not seen all in the family.

I vaguely remember the Fawlty towers thing. Wasn't it the BBC who pulled the episode from iPlayer or something? And there was a hooha and everyone pretty much said wtf. And the BBC put it back.

My feel and recollection is that it was a BBC decision that came as a surprise. Not that there was a campaign or anything!

And like I say it goes both ways eg Al Murray

But it's not just an online thing, either, I've seen it really frequently with university students in person.

Blimey, so it was all classified as "tougue in cheek humour" as recently as June?

Now it's not? Exactly who has their tongue in whose cheeks in this humourous relationship?

Milady are you familiar with BK? If not it might take a while!

Can you give me an example of older stuff that was racist but in an ironic way and has been attacked? Not sure what sort of thing you mean!

When it comes to ironic but being taken straight up. Al Murray is a brilliant example of this.

Lobster who knows what stand up etc is going down well in pubs all over the place.
Or maybe online in groups.

Not widely visible doesn't mean not happening.