AA Gill: a great advert against a Times subscription
I've only just caught up with AA Gill's pathetic comments about Clare Balding, via this excellent post at the F Word.
Gill is one of those casually offensive controversy-seeking professional trolls who spend their lives dancing around the boundaries of what's acceptable and what isn't. And occasionally not giving a shit about it:
Some time ago, I made a cheap and frankly unnecessary joke about Clare Balding looking like a big lesbian. And afterwards somebody tugged my sleeve to point out that she is a big lesbian, and I felt foolish and guilty. So I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise. Sorry.
Now back to the dyke on a bike, puffing up the nooks and crannies at the bottom end of the nation.
Yeah, hilarious. Sunday Times editor John Witherow wrote to Balding after she complained, essentially saying "You lot don't have special victim status, you should just get on with it". Which is entirely disingenuous and misses the whole point about abusing someone because of their sexuality. Calling someone a 'dyke' and chortling about 'nooks and crannies' isn't worthy of the playground, let alone a national newspaper shoved behind a paywall because it's so damn good you're going to want to pay to read it online.
Is it really acceptable to call someone a 'dyke' and snigger about their sexuality? I know AA Gill's TV reviews are rather baroque constructions, but this kind of monstrosity seems superfluous, not only because it's not about the programme, but also because it's just never needed. Slagging people off is fine, calling them names, saying they're rubbish, of course, and I'm all for a healthy freedom of expression and the 'right to offend' and all that; but calling a lesbian a 'dyke' and tittering like an adolescent about 'nooks and crannies'? Jesus, that's just painfully low. I think it's the out-and-out lack of class of it that's worse than the wanton offensiveness. Is this the brave new world behind Rupert Murdoch's Times paywall? It doesn't seem to be any bastion of quality at all.
I know that, just as when he shot a baboon for a laugh a while ago, any controversy that gets stirred up will probably be good publicity for Gill; he might even enjoy being in the crosshairs himself for a bit. But that doesn't mean that base homophobic insults like his shouldn't be tackled. I'm glad that Clare Balding hasn't meekly accepted the Sunday Times's attempt to fob off her entirely justified criticism; I'm pleased she's made it clear there's a difference between simple name-calling and something more unpleasant, which is what Gill was indulging himself in.
Now Clare Balding is going to try and pursue a complaint via the PCC, having found no apology from the Sunday Times editor. Of course I wish her luck - and I'm sure she knows she'll need it. If nothing else it will be a good test of Paul Dacre's claims that PCC regulation is a wonderful thing which works beautifully well, and that if only we weren't so ignorant about newspapers everything would work just fine. Maybe in this instance it might. Or maybe not.
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July 30th, 2010 - 15:57
Yes, he’s a troll.
You wouldn’t give him the time of day if he didn’t have a national newspaper column, so just ignore his inane ramblings.
July 30th, 2010 - 17:41
Yes, he’s a troll.
But he gets to spout his inane rubbish in a national newspaper, which unfortunately gives it a degree of legitimacy.
So let’s criticise it if it’s offensive shit.
Balding’s response is excellent. Homosexuality was only legalised 53 years ago, ffs, and to pretend that “oh, everybody’s post-homophobia now, so grow up” is outrageous. If Gill was writing about a black presenter, called him a coon and made some kind of slavery joke, would we just tell anybody who was offended by that to grow up, because genuine racism is so last season?
And a person’s sexuality isn’t equivalent to an aspect of their appearance that they can modify, or a way of behaving they should be expected to change – to pretend that it’s just like laughing at Clarkson for having bad hair (as Witherow claimed) is appallingly disingenuous.
Homophobia is alive and well in 2010, so this kind of poisonous rubbish should be shamed as such.
July 30th, 2010 - 17:55
Clare Balding personally mocked a guy having just won the Grand National for having horrible teeth, live on national TV. While Gill’s comments are pointless and (unintentionally, I wouldn’t give him that much credit) offensive, she should watch who she insults before getting on her high horse. Obviously many people would consider insults about one’s sexuality to be far worse than a jibe about teeth, but boiled down, they are both senseless throwaway comments that hurt someone’s feelings – it’s just that homophobia is in the top ten rant topics at this moment in time. Everyone says stupid, offensive things. Then we realise that there are far more pressing issues to talk about, and the greater problems of a world are solved. Or not, while this rumbles on for four days, knocking death and destruction out of the papers because secretly the British public loves a spat to brighten up the dreary lives they inhabit.
July 30th, 2010 - 18:31
Hi. She did indeed make a joke that fell flat about some geezer’s teeth. And then apologised. She didn’t say “Well you people without teeth need to get over it nowadays, stop playing the victim” did she?
July 31st, 2010 - 00:08
Quite, and also, “you have horrible teeth” isn’t usually one of the last things someone hears as they’re being beaten up. Unlike words like “dyke”.
July 31st, 2010 - 01:34
God. I have bad teeth and I’m gay. I think I’ll just cut my losses and take a toster into the shower.
August 1st, 2010 - 03:30
In solidarity, I will join you with my teapot.
A few more volunteers and we will be ready for a crappy breakfast!
August 2nd, 2010 - 13:44
Also, while crassly criticising someone’s teeth on live television in the frantic, immediate moments after the end of the world’s most famous horse race can acceptably be described as “a senseless throwaway comment that hurt someone’s feelings”, I’m not so sure it’s a description that can also be applied to a considered comment, written down (or dictated in Gill’s case) and placed in print; unless of course AA Gill recreates a pressurised live TV environment to generate his weekly fluff, which funnily enough would explain a lot.
August 1st, 2010 - 17:44
Clare clarified why she made that comment which entirely changes the story – she thought that he had, like a lot of jockeys, had his teeth kicked out by a horse, and was going to follow up with a comment about the less glamorous and painful side of the job – she was mortified when she realised that he just had bloody awful teeth and profusely apologised afterwards.
July 31st, 2010 - 11:44
This is a good article; more analysis of broadsheet bigotry is needed methinks (although it’s still fun to spit on tabloids).
July 31st, 2010 - 12:24
This is exactly why I hope The Times splutters and dies under its paywall. It’s journalism is crass, it is a reasonable newspaper only in name, and now people have to pay to read vitriol, I hope Witherow looses his job and quickly!
July 31st, 2010 - 13:45
Isn’t AA Gill gay himself? If not I thought so – see Tarzan hear Jane comes to mind!
August 2nd, 2010 - 11:02
Gill might be gay, but the fact of his having been married twice and not married to Nicola Formby for quite a while, together with having fathered three children, suggests otherwise. He is, however, still a titanic cock.
August 1st, 2010 - 08:20
Would the Times editor have the same easy going attitude to the word “dyke” if Jonathon Ross had used it? Nope, he’d be demanding his head on a pike.
August 1st, 2010 - 09:53
AA Gill is a reactionary, boring twat… exclusive!
On other pages; Alan Carr is gay and Pope professes interest in Rome-based cult.
August 1st, 2010 - 17:57
I think people tend to take stuff like this more seriously when it’s written down. I initially read it as a sort of Ricky Gervais-esque ‘saying entirely the wrong thing’ joke. Considering he’d already said calling her a ‘big lesbian’ was unnecessary that’s exactly how it came across to me.
Especially in the context on an otherwise positive review it does read just like that.
August 2nd, 2010 - 00:21
of course, even if that were the case, it still wouldn’t explain the line taken by the editor in his reply to balding.
August 2nd, 2010 - 13:20
Funny how some people like to go on and on about so-and-so being gay, even when it’s not at all relevant to the issue at hand – in this case a programme about cycling round Britain. Whilst on another page they’ll complain about how many gay-rights campaigners/activists go on and on about their homosexuality whilst ‘forcing it down our throats’ (and you just got to wonder about the terminology there!).
I’ve often heard people say (or read them saying), ‘I don’t mind gays, just don’t need to be reminded of their sexuality all the time’, whilst being happy to read articles about how lesbians are cycling around the UK!
August 3rd, 2010 - 08:55
I guess as a TV presenter you have to expect some ribbing if not abuse, but in my view, calling somebody a ‘d@ke’ in print is as offensive as calling them the ‘n’ word. It was certainly considered as offensive in my school playground when I was a kid, anyhow.
February 1st, 2011 - 00:45
I think they should just kiss and make up, we have greater problems that this
February 27th, 2011 - 14:26
I think he is a complete and utter self- opiniated tosser.
He has just made some typically offensive comments about Norfolk in The Sunday Times Style Magazine.