It seems to me that there's only ONE reason you would say to a Jew "You'd better be careful, or they'll take you to the showers".

If he'd said that to, say, Emma Willis she'd be puzzled as to what he was on about. Saying it to Amy Levine, on the other hand, and there would be no mistake as to his intention; namely to make a Jew/shower connection.

Surely that HAS to be a deliberate intention to cause offence; the "joke" wouldn't work if he'd said it to an Atheist , Christian or Muslim.

Common decency surely dictates that you don't make "shower" jokes at Jews, in the same way that you wouldn't make "jokes" about Kenny Lynch's name to Kenny Lynch, or any black person.
Yeah, "lynch" .... just a bit of banter!


It wasn't an offensive "joke", it was an offensive remark, and there IS a difference.

THE POINT:
Political Correctness gets a lot of stick on this here Internet, but why should it be considered a bad thing to try and avoid causing offence, even if unintended offence.
If i step on someone's foot I apologise for the hurt caused, even if I didn't mean to step on their foot.


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As Darkus Howe used to say on dear old Channel4, "what say you?"

Exactly, often what is described as 'political correctness' is actually just basic respect.

I find a lot of people who are upset that we are now to PC are just upset they can no longer say what they want to other people.

They often seem to blame the one/s offended like it's their fault and it's the one who said it is the victim.

Some also feel just because they are not offended/upset about what was said then nobody else should be either.


Funny enough they often seem offended that somebody else was offended.

I can see both sides, to be honest. On one hand, I do not get offended easily but I understand that not everyone is like me. I think it is how you take it. I know that a lot of people who joke actually mean no harm. And some people will take offence, so do you have to change the way you jokes to suit others? In some ways I think you have to make light of things. is that what we want? A world where you cannot joke about anything? For example, South Park makes fun of everyone, they say then nobody is excluded. What i saw was Big Big Brother deciding who what was offensive and what was not, but them showing only the women and bisexual comments, but not the Nazi joke. I think that is unfair. Show it all, I say. Open up opinion so we can challenge it. If racists do not reveal who they are then they go underground. It's unpleasant, but it has to out there instead of hidden.

I think it was an attempt to bond with a form of banter/laddishness that shows you're comfortable enough with somebody to say something that would be classed as unacceptable if someone didn't know you. I heard an almost exact version of the gag at university.

Political correctness is about awareness as much as respect.

I think the reason a lot of people have a problem with it is not so much that they want to offend or hurt, more that they're just not aware of why something they see as reasonable - harmless even - may be very offensive to another person, hence the up-in-arms, 'free speech!!!' response when someone takes offence.

PC is most of all about education.

Yes, political correctness is simply being considerate of other people's feelings.

I'm a fan of both South Park and Family guy, so I'm not easily offended by any means.

I too think BB should have aired the joke because otherwise it showed that they value the feelings of one minority group above the other.
I'm not sure if Biggins should have been thrown out or not. In the Channel 4 days they wouldn't have done anything. It would have been entertaining to see how far he would've continued to take his 'humour' if left to his own devices.

If the context was in respect to having a conversation or a moan about BB being an oppressive regime then it would be obvious that it was a joke.
And I don't think we really know if was an attack on Katie being Jewish. That may have just been incidental. Or if it was a reference to her Jewishness he may have just thought it would be a joke TARGETED AT BB which she'd get.
Some people, you know, have a sense of humour where gallows humour is involved.

I'd be interested to see how Katie reacted. Because depending on how she reacted and whether she went to the diary room to cry about it or not, well what can you do? You're fukced.

It's possible that Biggins hates Katie, and may have tried to be nasty towards her, but I haven't seen any evidence of it, and therefore I don't think there was any nasty intent towards her.
And in my opinion the intent is more important than taking offence at a misplaced joke that was misunderstood.

I think that by BB not showing the original conversation, probably out of fear of showing it, it has possibly had the opposite effect from what they intended and caused more problems than if they had originally shown it.
This is what BB got into trouble with OFCOM before with the Shilpa Shetty situation. Not what they showed, but what they didn't show, so viewers couldn't get an accurate context.
The show must be run by idiots who haven't learned the lessons from before.

I've had personal experiences of being in a workplaces where we've likened the place to a nazi regime, or taken the mickey out of the boss for not being there because they're busy putting their jackboots on. Everyone got it was a joke.
But this was back in the 1990s where everything wasn't so po-faced and serious and people didn't tend to look for excuses to be offended.

it's a poorly judged joke , I don't think he meant to hurt her tho , at least he didn't threaten to have his boyfriend beat her up or spit in her food .

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We did (eventually!!!) get the context. It was in response to her saying she 'wasn't here to represent the jewish community'

No it's not. Because it has crept into becoming legislative law which infringes on people's right to free expression.
It is up to the individual to be considerate. Once you force people to be 'considerate' then it doesn't count because there is no moral accountability.
It becomes a case of people not actually being considerate, but just submitting their will and responsibility to a system where 'Vee haff ways of making you obey ze orders'.

'Political correctness' Just think about what that term means for a minute. Think about the words.
Consideration doesn't even come into it. That's a human thing which comes from within, it's not an instruction to a collective on how to behave.

You actually think that Biggins maliciously intended to upset her? Really?!

I agree, I don't think he deserved to be booted out.

Think Biggins made a mistake imagining he was with friends I would guess his friends joke like this amongst themselves with no one getting offended. Sadly Bb has no idea how to deal with these things and are scared to offend the viewers these days. Our fault for complaining do much in the past years bbs.

I think u are right. Like he said lesley joseph (who is jewish)is his best friend. If he said it to her she would just laugh. It depends how well u know the persons humour

An "instruction to a collective on how to behave" sounds rather suspiciously like something we have today called laws. These are kind of necessary in a functioning society. That's why you can't just run around naked in public places because of your freedom of expression or shout expletives to someone minding their own business in the street because it's your free speech, for example.

If it wasnt for these legislative law some find so needless, people would still be able to freely discriminate and offend (yes that word) others because of their differences. The workplace for example. Just because you're not in the group experiencing these things, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

what laws did Biggins break ?

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Political correctness may be uncomfortable for racist/bigoted/nationalistic type individuals who wish to believe all of their opinions are always valid, but for anyone who actually wishes to think about things with any empathy for others, it's not really a huge problem.

Great post. The ^BIBs above are at the real heart of PC.

Those who keep on seeing PC as curtailing their 'freedom of speech' need to take a long hard look at themselves.

Quit with that crap statement! You are just using that lame excuse to aim at people because it suits. People are only offended if they are genuinely offended.

funny thing is - back in the 80's someone like Ken Livingstone would've been considered one of the champions of political correctness , but look how many times he's fell foul of it recently .

the trouble is - pc , or what's considered pc goes in and out of fashion .

used to be that if you called a woman a bitch it was a horrible insult , and a CU next tuesday would be unbelievably shocking , but now it's ok apparently in the pc handbook .

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You are free to write your own handbook on what is acceptable and unoffensive.

In the past just because nobody complaned doesn't mean that they were not offended or upset it just means they were to afraid to say anything due to the backlash they would have gotten.

At one time someone could be verbally abused to their face and just had to stand there and take it.

At one time for women getting groped or worse was just part of the job and if they thought about complaining were seen to be the ones in the wrong.

Now we know both of them are wrong and thankfully most seem to be learning that words and jokes to can hurt and cause offence.

you can still verbally abuse someone in BB and get away with it , as long as you don't use certain words which pc deems 'offensive' .


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