BORN TO BE DIFFERENT is back on.

[TheOriginalFAB]

This Thursday at 9pm on channel four.

[sigh]

Past hope.

I have to my bed.
I tried

Oooh

Snogs fanjo!

Pag, I didn't know you were so dirty

I'm not. I never said that. If I had you would have misunderstood me because I am smart and you are dim.
Anyone would think I said 'snogs fanjo' which I didn't except I did but I apologised yet now I am the bad guy. Wankers.

Yeah but no but yeah but it was Fanjo and she is mean but no one makes her apologise

Yes. That's what I said.

dammit!

Erm, I was on the first three pages, and I am in no dout I read your post right. I mean, how can you read "They should just call it 'Roll Up & See The F##### (But We Must All Pretend It's About Their Brave Struggle & How Normal They Actually Are)" as "C4 are making a mockery of them"?

You just said the aforementioned statement, nothing to follow it up. So you can see how it can be taken as how it was.

I believe it is obvious what I meant. In the original furore, a couple of people said that's how they understood what i meant, but were shouted down by those who were CERTAIN I was calling disabled kids freaks. These people who understood what I wrote promptly shut up.

I am sure, perhaps I am wrong, that I could put my post out as a reading comprehension question and the majority of readers would understand what I meant. And if people here keep telling me it was badly worded or that I was easily misunderstood I shall find a way of doing just that.

However, nobody responded to my analogy - If a group of people thought I'd said the N word, and were very angry and upset at me, and called me a racist, and then I proved they had misheard (or in this case misunderstood), should those people say...

A - 'Oh, sorry we misheard you. Sorry for calling you a racist, no hard feelings.

or

B - 'It's your own bloody fault for not speaking clearly enough, and even if you did speak clearly as there were a couple who did say at the time you didn't say the N word and we told them they were definitely wrong, its still your fault we misheard. Now apologise again. '

your example is bonkers, tbh, and you have 'proved' nothing. if you'd said of a show featuring black people living their lives with their families that it was ''Roll Up & See The Niggers (But We Must All Pretend It's About Their Brave Struggle & How Normal They Actually Are)" then REGARDLESS OF YOUR INTENTION people would be completely entitled to take offence. you must see how loaded that 'normal' is, quite apart from anything else.

the point is that you hadn't seen the show, catsmilk, and you mouthed off about it. it's just embarrassing that you can't hold your hands up to that.

I would have had no problem apologising if you hadn't acted in such a horrible, defensive, arrogant, patronising fashion ever since instead of being pleasant and apologising for causing offence.

Indeed you are now even implying that we lack comprehension by misunderstanding you.

Which I can assure you is not true, my comprehension skills are perfectly adequate, thank you very much.

Your version of my analogy fails because there isn't a slew of shows featuring black people acting as the N word might suggest, while pretending to be on their side.

A better example is if I'd complained about the recent Geordie Shore by posting "They might as well call it '"Roll Up & See The Thick Geordie Scum (But We Have To Pretend It's Ironic And We're Laughing With Them Not At Them" or something - would most readers get what i meant then? I'd have thought so, but after this incident, I have my doubts...

And for the millionth time Aitch, I said picking this show as an example of the more exploitative and voyeuristic end of the market was 'a poor choice.' That's holding up my hands to my mistake isn't it?

And still I am not certain this show is whiter than white, from the ads, from the worries expressed in that TV review - no I haven't seen it, and yes I lumped it in with those other shows - which I don't watch because they are exploitative. Now suppose I DO watch this show and find it exploitative - and I say so here. Nobody is going to believe that is a genuine response are they? They are going to say 'how convenient.'

You have the most fantastic sense of injustice. A very small minority of posters understood what you meant but in your head that completely justifies the wording of your post.

Since you love analogies so much, if in a reading comprehension test the vast majority of candidates (let's say maybe 95-98%) agreed with an interpretation which was different to what the Mark sheet said. Wouldn't you think that perhaps the piece was phrased badly or, at the very least, ambiguously? Would you expect the examining board to withdraw the question and apologise for their error? Or would you expect all the candidates to apologise for not grasping the intended meaning?

actually, in the states and on our cable channels here there are heaps of programmes about rappers and their families etc that rather play to the stereotype. i think ice-t and his former porn star wife recently re-made their vows for their show in front of a bunch of men drinking from pimp cups, for example.

you might have wanted to make your point about those types of shows, but the use of nigger would still have been offensive. particularly so, of course, if the programme in question WAS in fact about a perfectly ordinary black family getting on with their lives.

Well Fanjo, I reckon you speak for a few. From your point of view I should have been so upset that I had accidentally offended so many people that an apology should have just been the start, and there was no call for acting the victim myself, or demanding apologies. Mostly correct?

From my point of view, what I wrote was fair comment and it was obvious (to me) what I meant. Still 99% of the forum jumped to the unlikely assumption I would call disabled children 'freaks' and when I calmly explained my intention and apologised, I was accused of 'backtracking' ie lying, told it was my own fault because they misunderstood, and virtually nobody said 'Ah, I see. Sorry to have assumed the worst there.'

So not a bunch of people I feel like prostrating myself in front of for forgiveness after all that really.

here you go, catmilk.

Well, im a disabled person with a disabled child and i plan to watch every minute.

I don't really care if you apologise tbh..

will leave you to keep acting like a strange person if you like

Good morning!

"Since you love analogies so much, if in a reading comprehension test the vast majority of candidates (let's say maybe 95-98%) agreed with an interpretation which was different to what the Mark sheet said. Wouldn't you think that perhaps the piece was phrased badly or, at the very least, ambiguously? Would you expect the examining board to withdraw the question and apologise for their error? Or would you expect all the candidates to apologise for not grasping the intended meaning?'

I'd check if it was perhaps a statistical anomaly - if the statement had been understood (mostly) correctly in all other schools but one, it would be worth trying to find what it is about that one environment where the candidates all got a different answer.

And to apply that analogy to this forum, it's possible that factor is motherhood - so anything that could be seen as an attack on children is seen that way first, at the expense of considering other explanations perhaps more reasonable - it may be a type of paranoia, but it keeps the kids safe. If you know what I mean.

wrong forum, then. as well as wrong programme. you're really not doing well, catmilk.

The wrong forum to expect people to have basic reading skills, to work out intent and meaning from context, to honestly own up when they were mistaken, - apparently so.

lol.

Yes, I have no basic reading skills, don't know how I got into University.

It's because they let anyone in these days dear x

And it should be 'No, I have no basic reading skills...'