Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/09/bbc-fires-racist-dj.html
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This is a shitty take. He just didn’t see the racial element in what he posted - it could easily be said to be classist rather than racist. Putting Danny Baker in the same basket as Anne Robinson and Piers Morgan shows just how off-beam this is.
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DB deserved to be fired it was a stupid thing to do not helped by his subsequent apologies. But the Authors damning take on British celebs is rather odd. Although I would say the worst tend to end up in the US so if he’s viewing it from that perspective then yes they do get all our crap,
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I am going to have to disagree with this wholeheartedly. The practice of comparing those of African heritage with chimpanzees has a deep deep history in western culture. The pearl clutching that greeted the mixed race heritage of Ms. Markel certainly would support the racist interpretation of this asshats’s tweet.
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Not seeing “the racial element” in posting a photo of a chimp to cebebrate the birth of a mixed-race UK royal is a fabulous illustration of the problem.
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The innocence act here reminds me of controversies around the term “niggardly”. People will sanctimoniously explain the etymology, say that “they” are stupid for thinking it means what “they” think it means, but then the sayer utters it one too many times with that smirk on their face, and can only sputter with indignation when they are seen and consequences happen.
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Rubbish.
He later commented the following:
Speaking to the media outside his house, he told reporters: “I do not, not understand all of this, I get it. But for 5 Live to chuck us under the bus like this, dear lord.”
When quizzed on what he would do next, he added: “I’m annoyingly ebullient and if you’re accused of the kind of grotesque racism but you’re not, you don’t wring your hands. Ill advised, ill thought out and stupid but racist? No, I’m aware how delicate that imagery is.”
What, he suddenly learned, because he was fired, the words “imagery” and “delicate”?
He’s a self-indulgent twat who fell prey to an impulse that balanced people do not have, and he could not control.
He is a racist, bigoted, wagon-riding twat.
Posting a picture of a chimp as someone’s child is bad, posting it in the context of the Meghan Markle media racism fest, why that’s just weak-spined racism.
Face it, he’s a bigot, a racist, a has-been, a twat, and @beschizza is right, the UK is carrying these useless unimaginative nobodies because anyone half-decent escapes this stupid place quickly, and the luvvies are an inside job keeping the old boys going.
I bet he was a mate of Jimmy Saville.
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A lot of what you said is accurate about the mediocrity of British TV in the 90’s and the non-celebrities that existing within it (and i’ll be damned if i’ll ever defend Piers Morgan) but this seems kind of harsh on British culture.
We’re talking about a racist tweet from a racist moron.
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Please find me another example of Baker being racist and I’ll concede this. Until then, your seething is just reads as 4chan level B.S.
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Let’s not forget that lots of those pearl clutchers only have pearls to clutch because their thieving ancestors snatched, imprisoned and transported Africans for sale.
The UK has very, very dirty hands, and as the centre of global money-laundering, does not seem to have changed its ways.
Danny Baker is just one of the kinetic balls that pops over the top of the cup. He personifies, and perfectly demonstrated, the hypocritical undercurrent of bigotry in the UK (famous for its xenophobia, frankly).
I’m 100% British caucasian (well, at least by looks, that’s all I know) and I’m so ashamed of this fuckwit’s words that I want him and the BBC to be more deeply examined.
He must have felt “safe” with that tweet, maybe thought it was a little edgy, and that can only be because he exists in an environment where it’s actually OK to laugh at the non-white folk.
This is in no way OK.
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I miss Benny Hill.
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Not needed. This is it, the big one.
Why protect him? Are you empathising?
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o_0 Uh… wut? “He just didn’t see the racial element in what he posted”?
So he’s lived 62 years on this earth and is some how ignorant of the racist caricature of black people compared to apes and chimps and the like? Yeah, I am all for giving people the benefit of the doubt - but give me a fucking break.
Maybe he’s not a KKK type racist, and more of a casual racist, remembering when he was 14 and something like this could have gotten a guffaw and not condemnation. But it isn’t 1971 anymore and he should know better.
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Then he should have. I’m sorry, but you don’t get to unthinkingly bandy racist tropes and then act all surprised and hurt when the national broadcaster sacks you.
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The thing about “casual racism” is that it creates the permission cake for the active racist icing to sit on.
It creates a cultural petri dish that, either increment by increment, or in a surge, supports deeper racism both emotionally and sociologically.
What we should really be looking for is not that the BBC lazily say this “goes against the values we as a station aim to embody”, but that it is abhorrent and goes against the values THAT they embody.
Even they won’t step up.
So you can see where the rot starts. It’s shameful.
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As someone on another blog pointed out, apart from anything else he’s a Millwall supporter. He’s never in 40+ years noticed one instance of monkey noises coming from the stands when a black player gets within jeering distance?
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He is a mate of Paul Gascoigne
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I’m a little younger than him and grew up in the UK in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s before moving to North America.
The UK was grotesquely racist (by modern standards) in those days. I shudder at the casual racism and bigotry that we saw on the TV and read in books and newspapers and expressed ourselves. This wasn’t the same racism that was in the US south or South Africa at the time, and we congratulated ourselves on that, but it was pervasive nonetheless. My grandparents were lovely people, but just as racist as any cop in Alabama or Boer in SA.
Danny Baker has made a career of being a guy who reminisces on the past and he obviously remembers those days warmly. I’m sure he doesn’t think of himself as racist, but (in this case) his actions clearly show that he is.
Whether public shame or education is the best remedy for this, I’ll leave to other people
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