New royal baby’s name

You know why I'm not totally convinced by the 'it was an innocent blunder!' explanation? Those two other photos he tweeted after a royal baby tweet. An American beer with a 'bit of brown' in it and a picture of himself holding a banana. Still visible on his Twitter timeline. Not sure whether the chimp photo was before or after or in-between them, since it was deleted, but given that context it seems like a theme emerging. I do not believe at all that he needed to be reminded about the baby's racial heritage.


Yes, he picked the wrong picture for his joke - one that was blatantly racist instead of one that merely hinted sideways at racism.

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I don’t follow football but I was horrified immediately when I saw the photo Baker tweeted. It had been retweeted by someone etc otherwise I would not have seen it. The connotations are very clear and I don’t think can be explained away. He found the picture and linked it outrightly to the new royal baby. The origins of the photo are explained in the newspaper today. The monkey was a talented act, could bang on a piano and drink coco cola and acted like a little kid. Different times as were the monkey tea ads, v sweet from one perspective and appallingly offensive from another. Baker perhaps need to go on one of those courses that consider points of view in the modern world. He could in fact come back as an ambassador for better understanding and continue in the entertainment business. Other comedians have spoken out saying he is a good chap. So let him sort that out. But he did know - little kids in the playground know - and he did it all the same.

So the UK's resident breakfast twerp who is christened Piers says the royal baby's name is "Silly".

Hmmm.

He also criticised Madonna's "pathetic attention seeking." That's Piers Morgan by the way, saying that.

His original “apology” was glib in the extreme. I’ve come across too many coy “who, me?” responses by people whose bigoted jokes fall flat. The point of a comic is to poke fun of social mores and hypocrisies but that doesn’t mean they are immune to certain kinds of nastiness themselves. I have little respect for provocateurs who blame everyone but their own pen.

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As for Dara O’Briain’s response of “The Irish were called monkeys too, you know!”, the less said the better.

This is why I utterly disagree with the comment upthread that “over-reacting and not accepting and moving on when there is an apology is also bad”. Sure, it’s all very nice and respectable and not-messy if this is the case and the injured party “moves on” without causing bother, but the reality of apology and forgiveness is two-fold.

From spiritual/psychological perspective the purpose of forgiveness so the injured party is no longer burdened by the harm that has been inflicted upon them. In practical terms, forgiveness is comes not after an apology but after atonement which can be verbal, an action or nothing at all but it’s the the person who has been harmed who can grant forgiveness, it’s not owed by the apologee. Likewise if you have genuinely exhibited regret at causing harm whether you meant to or not, then you’ve done all you can do, no owes you forgiveness and your conscience is your own business.

Celebs f*** up on social media all the time. They suffer and if they honestly own their own words people move on. James Gunn apologised for his bad taste tweets in the past, and the majority of people believed him, as did Disney eventually. Natalie Portman talked about the teenage Jessica Simpson encouraging the virgin/whore dichotomy and her remarks were publicised, she apologised to Jessica and better explained her remarks.

I believe the only things Danny Baker are sorry for are all the horrified tweets he received in response and the bad publicity and unemployment he caused for himself. Them’s the breaks.