Kelis and other questionable news items

I'm getting a little nervous about journalism. Don't get me wrong, I love newspapers and magazines, I love the fact we're not censored and we have the right to free (if slightly over politically correct) speech. No, what currently concerns me is the, apparently necessary, speedy nature of journalism. The fact that bagging a major news scoop equals big sales, a front page and journalistic glory is not an unknown fact, and therefore it's totally understandable that there is always competition to be the first to break a new story. Until recently this meant hitting the earliest deadline possible to get your story into the paper before anyone else did. Nowadays, thanks to the internet, stories can appear online on news websites or on twitter just minutes after they occur.

I complained a couple of months ago about Amy Winehouse's death being reported online allegedly before her father had been notified. The article on the Daily Mail website had been re-edited by the time I went back to take a quote from it an hour or so later, but this displays the completely unacceptable things that can be posted around the world when the need for speed outweighs proper editing and censorship.

The most recent example of this was that of the American singer Kelis tweeting about her experiences when a British man in an airport queue called her 'Kunte Kinta' and demanded she call him Sir. Without a full transcript of the conversation it's impossible to know the exact vein of the conversation but I imagine there is very little likelihood that any extra information about the incident will redeem this man's behaviour. It seems he was indeed an ignorant, nasty and, above all, racist individual and it's correct, in my eyes, that he is held up as an example of how not to behave towards others. I highly condemn racism of any kind and am saddened to hear that this sort of attitude still exists in any society regardless of whether it's the one I happen to belong to.

Kelis has 163,792 followers on twitter. She knows that anything she says a) will be read by a large number of avid fans and b) potentially utilised by the press. I see no issue with her using twitter to express her distress and raise the profile of an issue she feels passionately needs some attention, but the fact that she not only took this experience with one man and linked it to an attack on the state of British society, but also wrote this at a time she was still feeling furious and upset without waiting to calm down and reflect before editing and publishing this on the world wide web was, I feel, quite a bad move.

The story was, predictably, immediately picked up by the British press and headlines such as 'Kelis Reveals the face of casual British racism'(The Observer), 'Kelis: Racism in the UK is 'disgusting''(The Sun), 'Kelis: I was racially abused at London airport'(The Telegraph) and many more began to appear. Again, this isn't just the fault of Kelis, frankly I don't know why newspapers aren't checking their facts before copying and pasting from twitter but regardless it was the singer's posts that began this tirade of anger focused towards Britain. The reason this is totally unfair or, at the very least, pointless in the circumstances is that Kelis later had to go back and point out that the confrontation actually occurred at a Spanish airport and not a UK one. She says in the later post, 'I didn't think to make that clear at the time because I was shaken and furious. Now you know.' Although I applaud her for taking the time to make the clarification, the damage had already been done. The passport control officer who 'shook his head in agreement I guess' now appears to be Spanish and therefore quite likely had no comprehension of the exchange that had just taken place. This alters the tone of the story fairly considerably.

I'm not trying to claim that Britain is not racist. As a white person writing this blog I do, of course, have no real comprehension of what Kelis and other black people may experience during their travels around the UK. However, at the beginning of this blog I pointed out how free we are in this country to talk about the issues that affect us. Although we do have racist people and problems in our society, I feel that Kelis' suggestion that 'the racial issues in the uk are disgusting. Its racially decades behind progression because everything is swept under the rug. People don't talk about it. People don't fight about it.' is totally unsupported. We have a large number of arts groups funded by the government that are dedicated to giving a voice to people of all different colours, races and cultures, we have anti-racism groups such as Runnymede, frequent special reports in the major newspapers on the state of racism, million pound police enquiries into racially motivated attacks (e.g. the Stephen Lawrence enquiry) and many television documentaries or specials such as Racism in Multicultural Britain on Panorama.

I appreciate that Kelis was treated very badly and that social media has long been a mode in which people feel they can vent whilst simultaneously garnering sympathy and/or spreading important information. I mentioned earlier that Kelis has a huge number of followers who most likely take her pronouncements very seriously. Perhaps this was exactly what she was counting on. Perhaps she believes she was making a worthy and important point. Perhaps she was. My overiding feeling about this whole affair however is a slightly sour sensation that a combination of internet access, competitive journalism and celebrity has culminated in a single, idiotic, disgusting man being held up as the apparent blueprint for British society. And that's neither fair nor helpful.

Humour - The best form of defence?

It has long been accepted that, in the never-ending procession of defence mechanisms that mankind inevitably carts out one after the other, humour is one of the most present, one of the most human and one of the most controversial. Whether you're consciously constructing a joke to calm your nerves or momentarily lose control and blurt out laughing at a sad story, there will always be someone ready to slate you for doing so and someone gratefully commending you.

Stand-Up Comedy, a practice revolving entirely around the art of making people laugh and entertaining them, doesn't necessarily seem like the most natural choice of vehicle with which to express sadness, depression or fear. Indeed, not all, but most of the comedians we see on television are of the 'poking fun, buying into stereotypes and exuding cheerful charisma' variety. But step into a comedy club and you'll see humour being used to delve into the psyches of these performers who have entered a profession stereotypically famed for attracting 'damaged' people.

Stewart Lee (famed for co-creating hit musical Jerry Springer the Opera) is known for his angry tirades about...well, about pretty much anything. For example, talking about TV programme Top Gear, he easily explains away Jeremy Clarkson as someone with 'outrageous, politically incorrect opinions which he has for money'! Andre Vincent and Dr. Oliver Double both created stand-up shows that deal with health problems, the former's battle with cancer (Andre Vincent is Unwell) and the latter's experience of his two sons having diabetes (Oliver Double in Saint Pancreas). In a moving documentary Conflict Revolution, comedian Andrew Maxwell uses humour to try to bring two warring Irish neighbourhoods together with the tag line 'Can laughter unite what religion and politics divides?'

Even outside of the comedy sphere humour is used daily by all sorts of people to help defend against fear, melancholy or worse. I remember standing by my father's hospital bed when he had a heart attack and joking about him looking like a turkey in his heat protective clothing and him not wanting to leave the hospital because he fancied all the pretty nurses. I knew a very shy, socially awkward boy at university who suddenly came out of his shell to present a play he'd written about how he used humour to try to mask his shyness. In Howard Jacobson's novel 'The Finkler Question' he says of a dying wife lying in bed next to her husband 'she could look deep into his eyes, beckon him to her and whisper what he thought would be a fond memory into his ear, but which turned out to be a raucous allusion, an obscenity even. She wanted him to laugh, because they had laughed so often together. He had made her laugh at the beginning. Laughter had been his most precious gift to her. And now she wanted laughter to be her final gift to him'.

I embrace humour with my whole being. For me, it's one of the most inspiring and natural comforts I can hope for. There is, however, a fine line between the kind of humour as defence that I condone and another, far less tasteful, type. While it's impossible to find a universal line to draw, recently my personal boundaries have been so pushed that my acceptance of 'humour as a defence mechanism' has been sorely tried.

In the past two weeks alone we, as a country, as a world, have been inundated with catastrophe. There is famine in Somalia, massacre in Norway, economic difficulties and we still have wars raging left, right and centre. We've always fallen back on humorous newspaper headlines (thanks mainly to The Sun), television political comedy programmes and, nowadays, facebook and twitter updates. This 'chin up' culture is, and has always been, a major part of the British attitude. But what about when gentle joking turns into spiteful jibes? Is this still an acceptable response to tragedy, or have we lost our compassion as a people? I leave with you a selection of these 'jokes' and let you decide for yourselves. Who knows...maybe I'm just a tad touchier than others.

For example:

DEATH OF AMY WINEHOUSE

Brazilian comedians have made a mockery of mourners at Amy Winehouse’s funeral Tuesday, as they cried crocodile tears to infiltrate the private event in London reserved exclusively for family and close friends of the famous singer.Two Brazilian comics, Daniel Zukerman and Andre Machado, who work on a Brazilian comedy TV show called Panico na TV (Panic on the TV), were seen posing as friends of Winehouse...The tasteless stunt included the two comics giving comments to German broadcaster RTL, and they could be seen smirking on the verge of laughter as they told the interviewer: “Amy changed the world. We lost a friend, the greatest singer. It is difficult to explain how we feel.”

In honour of Amy Winehouse, we shall all be doing 15 lines in the pub toilets, tonight!

It seems that this is the end of the line for Ms. Winehouse.

Elton John will perform at Amy Winehouse’s funeral with a beautiful rendition of Candle Under The Spoon.

Before telling such sick and abusive jokes about Amy Winehouse, think about her poor close friends. Imagine how they’ll feel on Thursday, when they finally come round and find out.

NORWAY MASSACRE

I want to go to Norway, I heard its the bomb. Mate went there last year but she just shot through. Utoya Island must be a great place. People are dying to be there.

DISAPPEARANCE OF MADELINE MCCANN

'Patrick Kielty joked that if the McCanns wanted to dispose of the body of their daughter, they should have checked her in as luggage on a Ryanair flight. He added that the couple had been backstage but had disappeared two hours later when he went to check on them. The sick comments prompted members of the audience to get up and leave the show.' (Sept, (2007), Dailymail.co.uk)

HOLOCAUST

'Trouble is with Holocaust films is there’s never any gag reel on the DVDs,’ (Ricky Gervais, (2009), Golden Globe Awards, dailymail.co.uk)

COMEDIAN LINKS

http://disappointingchildren.com/2011/07/stewart-lee-angry/

http://www.chortle.co.uk/shows/edinburgh_fringe_2002/a/635/andre_vincent_is_unwell

http://www.diabeticinfo.co.uk/#/oliver-double-diabetes/4526898630