General butthurt & pc faggotry etc

[ARKHE]

It's a nice little painting though. http://www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur--nojen/konst--form/konstrecensioner/stulen-aska-banaliserar-folkmord/
In his first response to the artwork, Schulman actually doesn't condemn the artist or the gallery, as I remember it.

[tiny_tove]

Pretty amusing news from couple days ago. Finnish politician Pertti Salolainen expressed in TV interview that influential jewish population of USA is among reasons why solutions for crisis of middle east won't happen. Internal issues prevents them to take more active and neutral role in middle-east.
Immediately in same day, Simon Wiesenthal center announces their statement, that mr. Salolainen "parroted the anti-Semitic canard that an evil cabal of Jews control the media and the US government....". And with same breath, they demanded "At this point, Finland must immediately act to show that it remains committed to these ideals," by officially condemning and repudiating Salolainen's remarks said Weitzman, who also urged that the government take steps to remove the parliamentarian from any official position.

So lets see... hmm... demand for neutral handling of middle east situation. Just because he said influential internal jewish lobby may have have effect to make foreign politics biased...   follows declaration by one of leading jewish "human rights organization" demanding the man be removed from any official positions in politics...  ? eheehehh...   It's hard to say whether they realize that instead of proving assumption false, they proved it to be true? But of course, intention probably remains favorable anyways: To derail attention from original question somewhere else.

On the subject, this is causing some stir:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qHZi_9oUNhM

[ARKHE]

Expecting some controversy about kids dressing up as traditional "ginger bread men" coming up in Sweden in one, two.... (based in what seems to be a misunderstanding & local newspaper desperately wanting a scoop by highlighting a school's supposed attempt to not appear racist - no matter what the truth is about that particular, there will be a lot of fuss about the dress-up thing...



definitely a stroke of racism & exoticism, no? nice swastikas, though)

[bitewerksMTB]

How is a gingerbread man racist? Over here, a gingerbread man is a cookie. I can't remember having ever eaten one.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Swastikas are always good, but yea, I'm confused too. I see a cute kid in a cute costume, so that local newspaper you mention must really be scraping the bottom to conflate that with racism.

[Andrew McIntosh]

This is bullshit -

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-11/health-workers-told-not-to-use-mate/4420180

[HongKongGoolagong]

This is bullshit -

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-11/health-workers-told-not-to-use-mate/4420180

Well I got a kneejerk and furious IT'S PC GONE MAD reaction to that, then read through to the last lines  - "I think this is more referring to cold-call situations where you're talking to someone on the phone for the first time." If that's true then fair enough.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Firstly - those last sentences where added just recently to the article. "Updated 37 minutes ago" according to the sub-header I'm reading at this time. They must have got some comment from someone to get some context. Thank you, twenty four hour news cycle.

When I read "the need for professional language within the workplace at all times" I assumed "all times" meant "all times". If that was the language of the memo, it would be a fair enough assumption.

But there's an important cultural context. In this country, "mate" is one of the most commonly used terms. You call people you've never met before "mate", even meeting them for the first time. It's instinct. The same for many of the other words. How such common courtesies can be referred to as "disrespectful" and even "disempowering" is absolutely beyond me.

[HongKongGoolagong]

In this country, "mate" is one of the most commonly used terms. You call people you've never met before "mate", even meeting them for the first time. It's instinct. The same for many of the other words. How such common courtesies can be referred to as "disrespectful" and even "disempowering" is absolutely beyond me.

Yeah, same in the north of England - it's simply being friendly to be called 'mate' by say a shop assistant you've never met before and something I welcome. But I'm picturing phoning for an ambulance and some fucking patronising idiot saying 'so is the pain in your chest mate' and haha I guess I'm thinking about this too much.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Sure, and I wouldn't put it past it happening every now and then, but of course I'd like to imagine in situations like that the great majority would be more interested in getting the info. The real issues there are, of course, getting an ambulance at all - there's been a lot of ambos getting sick of the job and leaving.

I've been thinking lately, perhaps too much myself, about the issue of "professionalism" within the workplace and how it tends towards a lack of genuine honesty in place of starchy ultra-politeness - a sort of corporate correctness. I haven't quite gotten those thoughts in order yet, but at the moment I'm thinking that the urge many middle-class corporate types feel for a sanitised language that doesn't address real emotions but tries to cover them with a restrictive gloss is becoming more regular for even workplaces that don't normally use such language. I'm sure there's been other people thinking and writing about this.

[hsv]

How is a gingerbread man racist? Over here, a gingerbread man is a cookie. I can't remember having ever eaten one.

It's all really stupid, and kind of funny. The swedish S:t Lucia celebration on the 13th of december usually involves children doing a musical/theatre performance of some sort featuring Saint Lucia, elves and other christmassy things & characters. At some school somewhere, some kid was told he couldn't dress up as a gingerbread man for the performance because the school hadn't included the "Gingerbread man song" in the program and thought it would make more sense not to have any of those characters in the show.
Only the first half of the story was made known at first, so the anti-PC people went crazy about percieved PC-over-sensitivity, etc. (clearly the character was banned because some brown person objected!) and then the PC people replied that it was racist to regard the gingerbread man tradition as more important than the possible discomfort of brown skinned people, and so on and so forth. When it was made clear to both sides that there never were any racial-equality motives, the debate didn't even stop, it just went weirder.

[Andrew McIntosh]

That's the problem with context - one person's endearment is another's offence. Which is why control of culture is important. US blacks calling each other "nigger" - sounds stupid to me but to people involved in that context it makes sense. They have some control over their culture. People in workplaces define the culture of those places, for better or worse, but then management gets jumpy about someone taking offence and go running to a lawyer. That's usually the incentive for these kinds of things.

[HongKongGoolagong]

"Chief" in the UK is most certainly a double-edged word which lurches uneasily between friendly banter and outright disrespect. In one of Martin Amis's novels - 'The Information' I think - a character flips out violently at someone for 'chiefing him out' (calling him chief). I remember Matthew Bower calling me chief sixteen years ago, the bastard :D

[HongKongGoolagong]

Any backlash on brit's using the word 'cunt' all the time?

Cunt as an insult is almost exclusively used between men and men in the UK, and not always in a hugely insulting way - 'ah, you silly cunt' can be almost affectionately indulgent. Unlike what I understand of the American usage, women are largely exempt from being called cunts.

A great PC force in this country right now is Laurie Penny - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Penny - her newspaper columns infuriate just about everybody. She'll probably end up Prime Minister when I'm in the nursing home.

[online prowler]

US judicial system on child support vs. procreation:  

http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/deadbeat-dad-sentenced-to-probation-ordered-not-to-procreate/article_50347514-3d80-11e2-9eee-0019bb2963f4.html

Swedish artist uses 'ashes from Holocaust victims'

"Artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff said that he stole the ashes from the Majdanek camp during a visit in 1989. The camp, now a museum in Poland, has called the alleged theft an "unimaginably barbaric act"."

"Salomon Schulman, a key figure in Sweden's Jewish community, told Swedish television that the art was "repulsive in the extreme", according to news website The Local."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20622289

So Micky have had the ashes around for 23 years before using them? Sorry I don't buy this for a second.

I don't know what to make out of this. Could be true, maybe not. Nevertheless it seems to me as a not too interesting art project. The starting point and point of view for the work seems a bit too easy, too obvious, with a blunt provocative edge to it. But the again ... here we are discussing it ... On and end point I have to give it to Carl (if true) that he is probably the first person on planet earth to make lye (water+ashes=a corrosive alkaline substance) from human ashes. That has to make up for something?