I am utterly and completed disgusted at what I have seen on Channel 5 tonight. Rich and I were watching a program entitled "The Most Outrageous TV Moments Ever" and the commentators were so incredibly anti-American!! It was completely unbelievable. And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, Vanessa Feltz made a comment that made me angrier than I have ever in my whole life been. She was commenting on something that Ali G had done in the US (in the South, obviously, because you know we're all redneck hicks *sarcasm*), and she said that it was deserved by those "cretinous" people in "that part of America"!!! I was sooooo shocked that this was actually broadcast on national television!! I have sent a complaint to Channel 5. Here it is below.
Dear Sirs,
I'm writing to express my anger and disgust at this programme. Not the "outrageous" clips - which ranged from the frankly tame to the merely unpleasant without inspiring more than a shudder from me - but the grossly offensive and ill-judged remarks of your motley collection of commentators. In particular, as an American living in Britain, I was increasingly incensed by the steady accumulation of slanders against my country and my countrymen.
I understand it is the British custom to make mock of Johhny Foreigner and since 1776 you have, as a nation, taken particular delight in caricaturing the "Yanks" (another term I find personally offensive having been born and raised in the South); before moving over here, I had a sense of humour about it. But it isn't funny, any more than it's funny to laugh at people in wheelchairs or turbans - two targets the likes of Vanessa Feltz are far too pompously PC to take aim at.
I resent in the strongest possible manner the ubiquitous double standard that, on the one hand, allows programmes such as this to praise the "tolerance" that makes incest, blasphemy and psychiatric illness acceptable viewing, and on the other, peddles a line of anti-American propaganda that is no different, and certainly no better, than the isolationist rhetoric of a Hitler or a Mussolini. I'm all in favour of tolerance where it is a product of an educated outlook; but tolerance as a mask for prejudice is despicable.
You have a responsibility as a broadcaster - to paraphrase Lord Reith - to educate, entertain and inform your audience. You do bear part of the responsibility for every single person I will meet tomorrow, and next week, and next year who agreed when they heard Vanessa Feltz say how "cretinous" the people from "that part of America" (that is, my part of America) are. Would you have aired her comments had they been about black people, or Muslims? And, although it's easy to retort that this question is itself somehow prejudiced, that doesn't change the fact that your answer would be no.
Racism doesn't become more acceptable because I speak your language with a "funny" accent; it doesn't become more acceptable because I come from a more moral background than your oh-so-trendy talking heads. It's ugly and it's cowardly and it has no place on television. I hope you bear that in mind in future.
Yours more in sorrow than anger,
Lynn Hall
Do you think this was acceptable to send? Please let me know what you all think of the letter and, if any of you saw the comments on the programme, do you agree? Do you think there should have been some editing or moderating of the comments? I'm still completely flabbergasted and extremely hurt by these comments. Maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about this one incident if I didn't see it on television or in newspapers or on the street every single day! There is not a single day that goes by that I don't have someone make a very rude comment about me either being American or from the Southern US. I don't know how much more I can take of it before I really let someone know exactly how I feel about it!!!! And that won't be pretty!
Dear Sirs,
I'm writing to express my anger and disgust at this programme. Not the "outrageous" clips - which ranged from the frankly tame to the merely unpleasant without inspiring more than a shudder from me - but the grossly offensive and ill-judged remarks of your motley collection of commentators. In particular, as an American living in Britain, I was increasingly incensed by the steady accumulation of slanders against my country and my countrymen.
I understand it is the British custom to make mock of Johhny Foreigner and since 1776 you have, as a nation, taken particular delight in caricaturing the "Yanks" (another term I find personally offensive having been born and raised in the South); before moving over here, I had a sense of humour about it. But it isn't funny, any more than it's funny to laugh at people in wheelchairs or turbans - two targets the likes of Vanessa Feltz are far too pompously PC to take aim at.
I resent in the strongest possible manner the ubiquitous double standard that, on the one hand, allows programmes such as this to praise the "tolerance" that makes incest, blasphemy and psychiatric illness acceptable viewing, and on the other, peddles a line of anti-American propaganda that is no different, and certainly no better, than the isolationist rhetoric of a Hitler or a Mussolini. I'm all in favour of tolerance where it is a product of an educated outlook; but tolerance as a mask for prejudice is despicable.
You have a responsibility as a broadcaster - to paraphrase Lord Reith - to educate, entertain and inform your audience. You do bear part of the responsibility for every single person I will meet tomorrow, and next week, and next year who agreed when they heard Vanessa Feltz say how "cretinous" the people from "that part of America" (that is, my part of America) are. Would you have aired her comments had they been about black people, or Muslims? And, although it's easy to retort that this question is itself somehow prejudiced, that doesn't change the fact that your answer would be no.
Racism doesn't become more acceptable because I speak your language with a "funny" accent; it doesn't become more acceptable because I come from a more moral background than your oh-so-trendy talking heads. It's ugly and it's cowardly and it has no place on television. I hope you bear that in mind in future.
Yours more in sorrow than anger,
Lynn Hall
Do you think this was acceptable to send? Please let me know what you all think of the letter and, if any of you saw the comments on the programme, do you agree? Do you think there should have been some editing or moderating of the comments? I'm still completely flabbergasted and extremely hurt by these comments. Maybe I wouldn't feel so bad about this one incident if I didn't see it on television or in newspapers or on the street every single day! There is not a single day that goes by that I don't have someone make a very rude comment about me either being American or from the Southern US. I don't know how much more I can take of it before I really let someone know exactly how I feel about it!!!! And that won't be pretty!
