Ricky Gervais

[Onion_Bag_Dave]

I saw an article that read

'Gervais slams down syndrome sufferers' LOL

What a joke!

 

[Thorpe Groyney]

Okay, this is what Alice actually had to say, despite her weblink being disabled for some reason.


Dear Ricky,
From one Whitleyite to another (this will amuse my friends in Reading!), I have to tell you I am quite proud of you for sticking to your guns and not backing down, but unlike Mr Boyle, apologising for any offence made... well apologising in your own little way. I personally don't think you've done anything to apoligise for as, yet again, the hype has been over exposed and this was caused by people who just like to moan and be offended by anyone and anything they can because they are boring Cu.... you get my point!

this is he...

I have a 9yr old son with Down Syndrome and I use the word **** all the time. Never towards my son and never with any offence intended to anyone, but in a general everyday sentence it does sneak in on occasions, just like Spacca or Loser or Fatty or C**t! (as demonstrated above) I was raised in Yorkshire and up there, they say words and don't really understand the meaning behind them... they also make up words that they don't even know the meaning of, so how anyone else is supposed to understand is beyond me! In Yorkshire half the terms they use for things are out dated and can be classed as racist or politically incorrect in any other part of the country, they are basically behind with the rest of the countries Up Tight Word Association Game! Due to being up there for so long I am also very behind on what is and isn't acceptable, but I am getting bloody sick of people telling me what I can and can't say! I **** out on the sofa all the time!... so bloody what!


Surely if anyone had the right to be offended by the word **** it would be me, right? WRONG because i'm not an idiot! It was used as a meaningless word and if used as a term towards my child or any other Downs person in a horrible way, I would have personally cut your balls off but... sorry person with Downs not a Downs person... this is also politically incorrect you see, I am, even as a parent to a Downs child, always corrected on the way I say that, as obviously it may offend... ME, if I say it the other way round... I'm hardly likely to offend myself really am I? but apparently I can. Not being funny but does that really matter in this day and age... NO! People with Down Syndrome are so integrated into society now that people don't even notice them.. in a good way though. I have only ever come across one situation in the past 9 years where I have been slightly offended by something said... and that was for all of 2 seconds and then common sense kicked in and I realised there was no issue and if I made it one then it would be publicly making people feel self concious about what to say to me, or about words they can and can't use!... Here was my situation...


A lovely drunken Irish lady, at a doo at the Irish club, Reading, decided to come and chat to me in the toilets about my son, all was lovely until she said in her heavy Irish accent... 'Mongrels are all so loving aren't they...' you see that to me was a term that nobody had even thought about my boy, let alone said out loud... but amongst the shock, I took in the rest of the sentence and realised, in her odd little way, she was trying to be nice. I took a deep breath and nodded walking away thinking 'did that just happen' then sat down to talk to my friend who's doo it was and who's family member it was and explained... in horror he said 'No No No No No she wasn't being horrible, she is from a remote part of Ireland that is stuck in the 50's when it comes to PC terms' I fully accepted that, as I said before that is most of Yorkshire! I wasn't offended, I was shocked obviously, but not offended, because I'm not an argumentative, thick, idiot! What use would it be if I'd have taken offence and kicked off? It wouldn't have been for any other reason than to be an idiot and that is the exact problem that the people that are hounding you have created! A new conflict for our kid's to take on board!


Most of the people offended have no tie with Down Syndrome people themselves either, what is that about? Most parents have taken offence to the negative publicity towards it rather than the actual word itself! Again it is just the people playing this ridiculous Up Tight Word Association Game! Half the people offended by you would never have seen your twitter anyway, so how would they know if the papers and news hadn't got others wound up by it.


IT'S A BLOODY WORD! It hasn't got a knife attached to it and it isn't even used as anything to do with Down Syndrome any more! Not a single 'youth' knew what **** actually meant until those idiots who published their 'outrage' started piping up! We now have another problem on our hands as parents... If the nasty side of these youths decide to take in this small bit of knowledge, Our kids will now have to fight the same prejudice that they were trying to defend... WHAT A BUNCH OF *****! Sometimes it is better to leave the past in the past and let the generation that invent new meanings to these particular words that's meanings get lost in time, to create their own interpretations... they don't need educating on the terms that nobody uses... they need educating on being polite to people and pulling their jeans up above their pants!


Sorry I'm ranting now.... Anyway Ricky, I just wanted to say that as a parent, living in your home town, with a Downs child, I want to let you know that you have my full backing!


I'm off to **** out now mate I am well and truly hung over!... All the best!

​

Dear All Those Offended By The Word ****...

1. Take a pen and paper...
2. Got it?...
3. Now write down this at the top... Why am I offended? This is about why it offends YOU nobody else...
4. Now underneath write down all the reasons why you are offended by Ricky using the word '****'...
5. BUT... there's a catch... you can only write about the offence caused by using it in the term used with NO association with Down Syndrome...As Ricky did...
6. OR with no meaning behind the use of the word in general...
7. Done it??...
8. Now what have you got written down?

I'm guessing not much! Because there isn't really much to be offended by really is there?
Does it really effect YOU? As a person? To hear someone use a word that has been disassociated with the meaning, that may have caused offence at some point, since the 50's 60's??
Does it bother you to hear it used in a way that doesn't bother most people with Down Syndrome now a days, because not many of them know that it used to be aimed at them? Because it was, until now, just that IN THE PAST, it being past tense we didn't find it necessary to inform them of the past hatred and disgusting behaviour against them in a past life... you know, so not to scare or worry them!... We now have to explain to them all about it, because they are reading and hearing about it everywhere over offence taken on their behalf. Most people with Downs will be OK with it and understand because they're more intelligent than most of you... Others, with more serious problems, will struggle to get it and in turn it could cause a number of troubles for them... all because you thought you were offended on their behalf... making them still more intelligent than you!


Have you thought that now we have a new problem, now that you people have advertised to a whole new generation, the words true meaning, that this will back fire and cause a second round of grief and ignorance by this generations youth or even adults? Have you thought about this out come? Because lets face it, In a country that still sees racist hate crime, bullying, gang fights and constant discrimination, amongst other problems, we aren't able to rule out that you've just handed new ammo to the people we are trying to educate 'include in society' too. Well done you!! clap clap... :sarcastictone:


Let me put it this way.... We as parents, family and friends of people with Downs do not need you to be offended for us, People with Downs are clever enough to be offended for themselves and we do not need your involvement... We are not a project for you to work on or for you to make your self feel like you are 'doing something to help' We can pick, choose and even fight our own battles and that is when we feel like doing it not when others see fit!


Thanks for your concern but can you now f**k off and let us clear up the mess you've made...


Thanks and see ya!

​

 

[OldBlueLady]

That's a really great perspective to view this whole debacle from. And she's probably right about it now having been brought to a new generation's attention too. Still doesn't change how I feel about Gervais though! :raspberry:

 

[A Century United]

My wife has Huntington's and as a result her walk has become very unsteady. Was walking through Inverness shopping centre recently, and one of a group of school boys catching up with us said loudly "She's walking like a ****..."

Here is a perspective on the etymology and current use of the word that some might find interesting:

[h=1]The meaning of Mongol[/h]By Uuganaa RamsayMongolian author

Uuganaa with her Mongolian parents and niece
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Uuganaa Ramsay was raised in Mongolia but now lives in Scotland. She has recently been exploring why her ethnicity is linked to Down's syndrome, a condition diagnosed in her son.
"I don't like that word," says a woman sitting opposite me on the train, pointing at the title of the book I am holding. "Horrible word."
It's my memoir, but she doesn't know that. It was me who gave it the one-word title, Mongol.
I chose it because it has a deep meaning for me. It's the word I grew up using to describe who I am, reading it in poems, singing it in songs, writing stories with it and drawing pictures about it - it represents my identity and culture.
"Where are you originally from?' the lady asks. "Mongolia," I say. "Oh, of course. Of course you are," she says. I could see in her face that she had realised something that was now obvious but hadn't previously occurred to her.
The word Mongol is rarely used politely these days and is often unpleasantly shortened to "****" but how on Earth did my ethnic identity end up becoming a slang word for stupid? Even worse, used by comedians to "push boundaries".

While working at the Royal Earlswood Asylum in the 1860s, John Langdon Down started to categorise the patients known then as "idiots", noting that one group all had a similar appearance. Mentioning a roundness of cheeks, the shape of eyes and other physical traits, he wrote: "A very large number of congenital idiots are typical Mongols."
Julie Coleman, Professor of English at Leicester University, thinks Down is saying "these people have regressed to an earlier state of humanity, which is the state of being Mongolian," noting also that this observation came some seven years after Darwin started to talk about evolution.
The name Mongol stuck even though some of Down's contemporaries doubted the racial theories he documented in the paper Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots.
It wasn't until 1965 that the People's Republic of Mongolia complained to the World Health Organisation that the term was derogatory towards them, and it was replaced with Down's syndrome. The word was still commonly used in the UK in the 1980s.
But though my ethnicity is Mongol, the reason I get emotional is because we lost our three-month-old son, Billy, who was born in 2009 with the condition. Billy had a hole in the heart and died at three months old of a chest infection before being able to have surgery. The two meanings of Mongol collided for me then, causing pain, grief and anger.
When Billy was born it was suggested he may have Down's syndrome but before the tell tale extra chromosome was confirmed by a blood test, one doctor said that the original diagnosis may have been confused because of his ethnicity. So the link remains in people's minds.
For a BBC Radio 4 documentary, I returned to Mongolia after a gap of eight years. I love the country.

Uuganaa's son Billy was born with Down's syndrome but passed away from a heart condition
Mongolians have a nomadic tradition. I was raised in a yurt on the plains, have herded goat and sheep and journeyed by horse. We are good at adapting to different situations, have good survival skills and traditionally you can turn up at anyone's house and expect to be fed and get a bed.
John Langdon Down first stigmatised Mongols by linking them to the disability and 100 years later, after being widely acknowledged that the word Mongol shouldn't be used in the context of Down's syndrome, people frown on it or campaign against it because they know it's bad.
I started writing a list of countries where the term has been used in a derogatory way or to mean Down's Syndrome. I now have over 20 countries on my list.
I needed to speak up about it and I did by originally writing a book. Some people told me to be more resilient and follow what they did in their culture and just accept it. Some comforted me by saying languages change over time. But the question bugging me was who changes languages, because confusion over the term is still strong.

Uuganaa travelled to Mongolia to explore how the term Mongol has been used
One half Mexican and half Mongolian person contacted me to say that in the Latino community, the words "Mongolito" and "Mongolita" still have very ugly meanings. "Introducing myself as a half Mongolian to my Hispanic acquaintances proved to be almost embarrassing throughout my teenage years," they said.
And another person from Morocco told me they have a son with Down's syndrome and that neighbours call her Mongolian and throw stones at them in the street. Again someone from South Africa wrote to tell me they were "shocked to find that Mongolians refer to themselves as Mongols when I arrived in Mongolia".
In the US, some Mongolian friends of mine were stopped on the street by a lady insisting they should take their child to a doctor because she suspected he had Down's syndrome. And while on a course in London, my Chinese and French classmates told me: "We didn't know someone from Mongolia could be normal and clever like you."
I want people to know you can use Mongol in the same way as you would refer to a Scot, Turk or Pole. It's fine. We can unlearn negative connotations because we learnt them. You can call me Mongol because I am one.