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Still Waters No Longer Running, Derp.

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  • Registered Users Posts: 510 ✭✭✭tawnyowl


    Hmmm if JW is back in the saddle so as to speak, does that mean we can't include Breda on this thread any more?

    She had a laughably bad piece in the IT on Saturday.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/bert-and-ernie-s-romance-offers-a-lesson-in-tolerance-1.1863318?page=1



    I'm pretty sure that's the most stupid sentence I've ever seen written in a broadsheet newspaper.
    Strong in the derp this one is!


  • Registered Users Posts: 807 ✭✭✭Vivisectus


    Reporting the bakery sends the message that it is not okay to disagree, only to capitulate. If legislation for gay marriage is passed, are we to expect more of this kind of behaviour, more targeting of businesses and even attempts to put them out of business? Are we to expect more demands for tolerance from people who exhibit little tolerance in their turn?

    Amazing that Breda can spout this a few months after the Iona institute, of which she is a patron, threatened to sue the RTE for someone merely expressing the opinion that they are homophobes, and received a large chunk of public money as a result.

    Amazing how intolerant these gays are of intolerance to gays!

    So lessons here from auntie breda:

    1: Homophobia hurts homophobes when they get called on it. This is gay peoples fault because they are so intolerant of homophobes.
    2: Lawsuits against people who refuse someone equal treatment because they have decided a political slogan is against thgeir religion = persecution. Lawsuits against people who campaign for the unequal treatment of gay people = defending the freedom of expression.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,371 ✭✭✭TheChizler


    Vivisectus wrote: »
    Amazing that Breda can spout this a few months after the Iona institute, of which she is a patron, threatened to sue the RTE for someone merely expressing the opinion that they are homophobes, and received a large chunk of public money as a result.

    Or even expressing the opinion that their acts were homophobic.

    Interestingly, lately I'm of the opinion (hear me out!) that his wateryness might not actually be homophobic (:eek:).

    Recently I was having a conversation with a psychotherapist about the matter. It went along the lines of, some people can feel threatened when they see the world that they're familiar with, or even their perception of the world, changing, and respond to that by reacting inappropriately or doing everything in their power to prevent it changing, even if that change is inevitable and their actions don't address the core of the matter.

    So it might be that his actions and words appear, and at times definitely are, homophobic, but at the core might just be cover for insecurity and resistance to change. A horrible way to do it though, with no regard for others, and definitely not ok.

    Thought it might be interesting to throw a different opinion into the ring. "They're just homophobes" might be overly simplistic. 'Know your enemy' they say!


  • Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,780 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    TheChizler wrote: »
    Or even expressing the opinion that their acts were homophobic.

    Interestingly, lately I'm of the opinion (hear me out!) that his wateryness might not actually be homophobic (:eek:).

    Recently I was having a conversation with a psychotherapist about the matter. It went along the lines of, some people can feel threatened when they see the world that they're familiar with, or even their perception of the world, changing, and respond to that by reacting inappropriately or doing everything in their power to prevent it changing, even if that change is inevitable and their actions don't address the core of the matter.

    So it might be that his actions and words appear, and at times definitely are, homophobic, but at the core might just be cover for insecurity and resistance to change. A horrible way to do it though, with no regard for others, and definitely not ok.

    Thought it might be interesting to throw a different opinion into the ring. "They're just homophobes" might be overly simplistic. 'Know your enemy' they say!

    It's an interesting perspective, but if you pick it apart a little further, the question becomes: what is a homophobe, if not simply someone whose words and actions are informed by homophobia?

    If I said of (say) Donald Sterling that he's not a racist, but just an insecure person whose insecurity happens to manifest as racism - is that anything other than a distinction without a difference?

    Put another way: if someone who says homophobic things isn't necessarily homophobic, how do you identify "genuine" homophobes?


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,371 ✭✭✭TheChizler


    oscarBravo wrote: »
    It's an interesting perspective, but if you pick it apart a little further, the question becomes: what is a homophobe, if not simply someone whose words and actions are informed by homophobia?

    If I said of (say) Donald Sterling that he's not a racist, but just an insecure person whose insecurity happens to manifest as racism - is that anything other than a distinction without a difference?

    Put another way: if someone who says homophobic things isn't necessarily homophobic, how do you identify "genuine" homophobes?
    Yeah, it's all about subjective definitions. I suppose it's all to do with intent behind actions (think we've heard that phrase before in the abortion thread). Actions are objective, whereas character/personality/intent traits are subjective. You could say that a homophobe was someone who just doesn't like gay people for the sake of it, but does anyone at the root of it just not like gay people for the sake of it? There's general something behind it, like a book, or traditions, or non-exposure up to now.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    Only Waters could (or would) drag gay marriage into an article about RTE Long Wave closing down:

    http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/rtes-all-too-blunt-message-for-the-irish-diaspora-to-hell-or-the-internet-30628452.html
    RTE informs us that the "vast majority" of its listeners will be unaffected by the move - 98pc, which by my calculation leaves 2pc, a proportion more or less equivalent to the number of citizens potentially implicated in a certain referendum coming up in the next year.

    Very oddly for him, he didn't actually mention that apart from the very few people not able to get either Saorview or Radio 1 FM, the only reason to listen to LW (in one's home, at least) is that it carries religious programming on Sunday morning which isn't on Radio 1 FM.

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    Nation breathes a collective sigh of relief
    “I’ve no intention, nor ever had I of dishing the sexual dirt (it mostly wasn’t that interesting). I merely had to come up with a funny quote to attach with the press release for the book.”

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,386 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Didn't realize that John Waters was in The Life Of Brian - there he is, in between John Cleese and Eric Idle!

    324571.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin




    'the horror, the horror......'


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 18,174 CMod ✭✭✭✭The Black Oil


    Only 2pc.

    Is that John-speak for telling the gays to f**k off?


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  • Registered Users Posts: 11,815 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    Hey, I know someone else on Boards who uses that sort of majoritarianism AND verbose prose to justify discrimination!


  • Registered Users Posts: 807 ✭✭✭Vivisectus


    TheChizler wrote: »
    Yeah, it's all about subjective definitions. I suppose it's all to do with intent behind actions (think we've heard that phrase before in the abortion thread). Actions are objective, whereas character/personality/intent traits are subjective. You could say that a homophobe was someone who just doesn't like gay people for the sake of it, but does anyone at the root of it just not like gay people for the sake of it? There's general something behind it, like a book, or traditions, or non-exposure up to now.

    Homophobia is an irrational dislike of, fear of, or aversion to homosexuals.

    As such it seems to me that it does not matter what the intent behind it is. It is actually a morally neutral term: you can be homophobic without wanting to be homophobic. That is actually morally OK as long as you realize it is an irrational fear, and do your best not to treat gay people differently because of it. By the same token loads of people are mildly xenophobic, but do their best not to let it influence their relationships with people from other ethnicities and cultures.

    People tend to use the phrase to describe people who are actually bigots: people who ascribe negative traits to homosexuals based solely on the fact that they are homosexual. Most anti-gay bigots are also homophobes, of course. But it is possible to be a non-bigoted homophobe.

    Waters, of course, is probably both. He certainly is bigoted. He thinks gay people make bad parents, for a start.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,798 ✭✭✭goose2005


    Amazingly, the Áras Attracta débacle came about because of not enough Jesus.
    Hidden RTE cameras saw things we had been rather intent on avoiding. Obsessed with discovering the mote in the eye of the past, we have turned away from the beams in the vision of the present. In this sense, among others, it was an important piece of journalism.

    I recently participated in a day's "think-in" with members of a Catholic order involved in a related area who were seeking to review their operations and renew their vocational energy. A genuinely nice man from the HSE made a lengthy but impenetrable contribution with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation. He explained to the care workers - both lay and religious - how they might adapt their procedures to the betterment of what he called their "clients".

    I started from the position that no "system" could be capable of improving on the charisma the order had been implementing for hundreds of years - based on the idea of an encounter between two people, each of whom is deemed to represent the person of Jesus Christ. No matter what we claim to believe, all of us who have lived our lives in this culture have some idea what this means. If I am called upon to help someone, I must ask myself how Jesus would act in this situation, and at the same time remember that the person I am called to help might be Jesus in disguise. Something further from the culture of Bungalow 3 would be hard to imagine.

    At the Q&A session afterwards, I found myself under attack from the floor from an individual who appeared to be interpreting my observations as dismissive of regulation. What, she demanded, of all the abuses we had been hearing about in recent years?

    It has latterly become way too easy to close down arguments by being the one who appears to hold exclusive rights to compassion for the victims of past abuses. But I held my ground and said that, once you prohibit the person at the cutting edge of the ministering activity from being totally and uninhibitedly herself, you create conditions where authentic human contact ceases, and then you're a short step from patients getting beaten up by their "carers". Regulation is necessary, yes, but the current obsession with developing perfect systems and protocols invites a creeping dehumanisation because it removes the possibility of a true encounter. My point was that the abuses which flow from the elimination of the human encounter are likely to be far, far worse than anything arising from human frailty of itself. The interim outcome has been an escalating formalisation in which the process of dehumanisation works both ways. Absent the encounter, both the helper and the one requiring assistance are reduced. Because the "care worker" cannot be fully herself, there is no one to conduct a relationship with the resident.

    '''

    When I was growing up, the potential for informality in relationships between authority and citizens came with risks that we now understand better than we did then. Allowing a garda discretion to deal with things unofficially meant that sometimes a fractious youngster got a kick up the arse. Overall it meant that "the system" remained broadly human because those working it were enabled to be themselves rather than automatons representing an apparatus. When our hospitals were run by nuns, they were clean, efficient and humane; now, operated by a bureaucracy, they are dirty, overstaffed and competence-deficient. The nuns had one boss and He required minimal paperwork, but today about 70pc of the energy of our health service is sucked up in box-ticking. This ensures that individual workers become more interested in covering their asses than looking at the person in front of them.


    It is quite astonishing that anyone could actually claim that the institutions of the past were better than those of the modern day - they are universally viewed as cold (in both senses), cruel, violent, abusive, uncaring places. Is JW's solution really more nuns? Less oversight? More "discretion" for gardaí to assault suspects / turn the blind eye to crime?

    And I'm sick of hearing about how 'clean' hospitals were in the good old days. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were very rare, you can't compare rates of nosocomial infection back then with now. Moreover, if someone did get an infection in hospital back then, they wouldn't know because of trust in institutions and lack of oversight.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,109 ✭✭✭Skrynesaver


    goose2005 wrote: »
    Amazingly, the Áras Attracta débacle came about because of not enough Jesus.





    It is quite astonishing that anyone could actually claim that the institutions of the past were better than those of the modern day - they are universally viewed as cold (in both senses), cruel, violent, abusive, uncaring places. Is JW's solution really more nuns? Less oversight? More "discretion" for gardaí to assault suspects / turn the blind eye to crime?

    And I'm sick of hearing about how 'clean' hospitals were in the good old days. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were very rare, you can't compare rates of nosocomial infection back then with now. Moreover, if someone did get an infection in hospital back then, they wouldn't know because of trust in institutions and lack of oversight.

    Fair enough, what gets me though is Waters having a dig at the "nice man from the HSE" for having "made a lengthy but impenetrable contribution".


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,798 ✭✭✭goose2005


    Fair enough, what gets me though is Waters having a dig at the "nice man from the HSE" for having "made a lengthy but impenetrable contribution".

    John's one to talk...


  • Registered Users Posts: 33,650 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato
    Restaurant at the End of the Universe


    I'm sure John could very easily find the neonatal and maternal death rates from those wonderful nun-run hospitals, if he were so inclined.

    It took a while but I don't mind. How does my body look in this light?



  • Registered Users Posts: 12,644 ✭✭✭✭lazygal


    I'm sure John could very easily find the neonatal and maternal death rates from those wonderful nun-run hospitals, if he were so inclined.

    It's not like any services provided by nuns in the last century had higher than average death rates or anything.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 18,174 CMod ✭✭✭✭The Black Oil


    Amazing how people trot out this misty eyed 'shure, in my day it was grand' routine.
    goose2005 wrote: »
    Amazingly, the Áras Attracta débacle came about because of not enough Jesus.

    The Mike Huckabee defence.


  • Registered Users Posts: 12,644 ✭✭✭✭lazygal


    Amazing how people trot out this misty eyed 'shure, in my day it was grand' routine.



    The Mike Huckabee defence.

    Why didn't god just smote all the baddies and stop this from happening?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,438 ✭✭✭TwoShedsJackson


    lazygal wrote: »
    Why didn't god just smote all the baddies and stop this from happening?

    It takes time to work up to a good smiting, you know. God was probably too busy helping NFL players score touchdowns or finding peoples car keys for them to bother with some abusers.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,232 ✭✭✭Brian Shanahan


    It takes time to work up to a good smiting, you know. God was probably too busy helping NFL players score touchdowns or finding peoples car keys for them to bother with some abusers.

    And don't forget the famines. Ignoring them is hard work, especially when you've the dastardly duo, Bob & Bono, pretending to care about starving kiddies in order to boost record sales.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,163 ✭✭✭Shrap


    What really got me was his inverted commas here:
    "He explained to the care workers - both lay and religious - how they might adapt their procedures to the betterment of what he called their "clients"."

    Should the nice HSE man have called them "penitents" instead?


  • Registered Users Posts: 17,470 ✭✭✭✭Mr. CooL ICE


    For a while, I missed John Waters nonsense.



    There, I said it.


  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,341 Mod ✭✭✭✭CramCycle


    I wasn't paying attention and I clicked on the link. Therefore helping JW to remain a voice at the Indo due to traffic, I wish to apologise.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,232 ✭✭✭Brian Shanahan


    CramCycle wrote: »
    I wasn't paying attention and I clicked on the link. Therefore helping JW to remain a voice at the Indo due to traffic, I wish to apologise.

    As punishment thou shalt be forced to drink your favourite beer and eat your favourite dessert and do nothing else on christmas day. Now go to your room, young man/woman/hermaphrodite/transgendered person (delete as appropriate) and think about what you've done!


  • Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,341 Mod ✭✭✭✭CramCycle


    , young !

    Hurrah, someone thinks I am young :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 73 ✭✭Smiley92a


    I think he wandered around in the *neighborhood* of a good point or two (the argument that such institutions are inherently alienating and dehumanising maybe) He didn't really make that argument, though. Too much regulation, not enough Jesus. After all, the church-run industrial schools were left to their own devices for decades, and there were no serious ramifications at all!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 46,938 ✭✭✭✭Nodin




  • Registered Users Posts: 3,532 ✭✭✭swampgas


    Nodin wrote: »

    He hasn't lost the old magic:
    If God did not exist, there was no reason to be good, so evil and "freedom" became the same thing.

    Yeah, there is no ethics or morality without God. Such insight.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    The Irish Times has an article on Hubert Butler.
    ..Butler’s decision to travel to Vienna and try to save Jews was forged from the universal demands of humanity. But it also contained a self-conscious assertion of an Irishness at odds with the Irish government and with Irish law. He was disgusted by the anti-Semitism expressed most infamously in Oliver J Flanagan’s statement in the Dáil about Jews: “They crucified our Saviour 1,900 years ago and they have been crucifying us every day of the week.” Butler felt, as he later wrote, that “I was as Irish as Oliver Flanagan and I was determined that Jewish refugees should come to Ireland”.
    Shamefully, Butler was not, in any official sense, as Irish as Flanagan: Irish policy was infected with a toxic combination of anti-Semitism and self-pity. The Jews were not to be allowed to compete with the Irish self-image as the Most Oppressed People Ever.

    Butler attended the Evian international conference on the plight of Jewish refugees in July 1938 and was sickened by the attitudes of the Irish delegation, one member of which said to him: “Didn’t we suffer like this in the Penal days and nobody came to our help?”
    This was not mere individual idiocy. The Department of Justice delegated power over refugees to a body called the Irish Co-ordinating Committee for the Relief of Christian Refugees. The rule adopted was that only Jews who had converted to Christianity should be allowed to settle in Ireland. This committee was given the power to vet applications to settle in Ireland made by European Jews. Its secretary, TWT Dillon, wrote openly in the Jesuit magazine Studies that non-Christianised Jews would be well looked after by the Jewish community in the US and that those who had converted to Catholicism were Ireland’s main concern.
    If JW and the Ionanists could go back in time, I could see them fitting right in, back in that little world of Holy Catholic Ireland :mad:


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