David Mitchell: "Sacked and fined £1,000 for a joke..."
I fell upon this and couldn't agree more.
David Mitchell writes:
"Sacked and fined £1,000 for a joke about an airport? You cannot be serious
The case of the man interrogated for seven hours for a silly quip he made on Twitter shows a depressing sense of humour failure
We live in serious times. Humanity is facing terrifying threats to its future, as usual. Most of them are self-induced, as usual. Britain feels itself to be on a precipice, about to plunge into a new canyon of mediocrity and self-chastisement, as usual. There are serious fears about disruption to people's holiday plans over the half-term break, as usual.
What is unusual is that this seriousness is being compounded by an intensifying national determination to behave terribly seriously about it. No one's buying frivolity or flippancy stocks at the moment. Piss-taking is falling on all markets and everyone's pouring their rhetorical investments into beard-stroking bonds, head-shaking futures and survivor's gilts.
Paul Chambers knows this to his cost. During the January snows, his hopes of a blind date with a woman he'd chatted up on Twitter were jeopardised by the closure of his local airport. He tweeted from his mobile to his 600 followers: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" He was subsequently arrested, interrogated by detectives for seven hours and fired from his accountancy job. Last week he was found guilty of sending a menacing electronic message and fined £1,000.
In the heady days of the boom, perhaps I'd have been inclined to laugh at this unfortunate idiot, pictured in the paper looking dazed and unshaven, tie at half-mast, still clutching his treacherous iPhone. He's executed a perfect and extravagant online pratfall – he's like a cyber-Frank Spencer – but, in the spirit of this serious age, I just feel terribly sorry for him. I'm not amused, I'm annoyed.
That's an attitude I suspect I share with the off-duty airport manager who spotted the tweet and informed security. He or she might have thought: "That's not funny. I work at an airport – what's funny about blowing it up? I'm going to take this further." But maybe it was more like: "I appreciate the dark humour of this frustrated remark but am duty-bound, under current security protocols, to pass this on to my superiors who, this being a sane world, will presumably ignore it."
What I can't believe is that anyone thought the message was a genuine expression of violent intent. I don't know much about al-Qaeda's MO but I imagine giving a week's warning of an attack, in the guise of an irritable and amorous accountant, would amount to a significant change in tactics.
Certainly, the threat – and I suppose it is theoretically a threat, in the same way that an aspirin is a food and George Osborne a successor to Gladstone – was classified as "not credible" by the airport. I don't know if that means they thought it was funny. Maybe these people sit in front of Morecambe and Wise, sides splitting, tears streaming down their faces, yelling "Not credible!" as Eric picks up André Previn by the lapels.
However, despite Chambers's manifest lack of credibility, the security people were apparently obliged to inform South Yorkshire police, who arrested him a week later. They were obviously convinced he was a man of his word in terms of the week-and-a-bit timescale. With many plausible terrorist threats, they might have rushed straight round there. Or maybe they're not morons and knew perfectly well that he had no intention of blowing up an airport but had decided to make an example of him.
It's vindictive and it's humourless. Could they not just have had a quiet word? Was bringing him to trial really in the public interest? Is a large fine, unemployment and a criminal record proportionate punishment for an irritated quip, albeit one made within the earshot of others? He didn't actually send the message to the airport, written in letters cut out from a newspaper, wrapped round a raw liver and a holy text (Christian, Muslim or SMS).
Or did some people resent his levity? While not deemed a threat, was his tweet considered "inappropriate" by those who had the means to elevate inappropriateness to a criminal offence? "In a world where people do try to blow up airports, such a remark can never be funny," they think. They've got it backwards: it's funny because such terrorists exist. If they didn't, it would just be wacky, like saying: "They've got a week and a bit or I'll cover the runway with jelly!" (not Napalm).
This aversion to levity certainly infused the election campaign. But there was a funny bit and most of us missed it. When Gordon Brown got in his car and called that woman a bigot, it was hilarious. It was a properly comical human moment, made funnier by the uncomfortable truths it hit upon, in terms of both the former PM's flawed personality and the jealous xenophobia that lurks behind many discussions of immigration.
But we forgot to laugh, because some of us have come to prefer the sensation of judging: judging Brown for the gaffe, judging the media for its reporting of it, poring po-facedly over the subsequent pantomime of apology. It was the equivalent of his accidentally showing his arse and yet all we could do was carp: "Has he been concealing from the public quite how fat his arse really is?" or: "Why, at this moment of crisis, are our media focusing on arses rather than policies?" No one said: "Ha ha! I can see his arse!"
Instead of finding genuine humour, we're expected to stomach the ersatz jokes that the leaders prepared for the debates, like Brown's "They remind me of my two young boys squabbling at bath time!" line – official moments of respectful jocularity, the humorous equivalents of a maiden aunt's one cream sherry every Christmas. And this in a country that used to like getting pissed.
We already live in a world where, when asked whether we've packed our own bags, we know that saying: "Yes, I put all the bombs in myself!" will not be taken in good humour; where a conversation with a US immigration official must be treated with all the piety of an audience with the pope. We have accepted that facetiousness, like smoking, while not officially illegal, is absolutely not for public places.
Well, I don't remember agreeing to it and I'm sick of it. It's boring, I don't believe it saves a single life and it could do incalculable damage to freedom of speech. I'm serious."
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/16/britain-turns-serious-david-mitchell
David Mitchell writes:
"Sacked and fined £1,000 for a joke about an airport? You cannot be serious
The case of the man interrogated for seven hours for a silly quip he made on Twitter shows a depressing sense of humour failure
We live in serious times. Humanity is facing terrifying threats to its future, as usual. Most of them are self-induced, as usual. Britain feels itself to be on a precipice, about to plunge into a new canyon of mediocrity and self-chastisement, as usual. There are serious fears about disruption to people's holiday plans over the half-term break, as usual.
What is unusual is that this seriousness is being compounded by an intensifying national determination to behave terribly seriously about it. No one's buying frivolity or flippancy stocks at the moment. Piss-taking is falling on all markets and everyone's pouring their rhetorical investments into beard-stroking bonds, head-shaking futures and survivor's gilts.
Paul Chambers knows this to his cost. During the January snows, his hopes of a blind date with a woman he'd chatted up on Twitter were jeopardised by the closure of his local airport. He tweeted from his mobile to his 600 followers: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" He was subsequently arrested, interrogated by detectives for seven hours and fired from his accountancy job. Last week he was found guilty of sending a menacing electronic message and fined £1,000.
In the heady days of the boom, perhaps I'd have been inclined to laugh at this unfortunate idiot, pictured in the paper looking dazed and unshaven, tie at half-mast, still clutching his treacherous iPhone. He's executed a perfect and extravagant online pratfall – he's like a cyber-Frank Spencer – but, in the spirit of this serious age, I just feel terribly sorry for him. I'm not amused, I'm annoyed.
That's an attitude I suspect I share with the off-duty airport manager who spotted the tweet and informed security. He or she might have thought: "That's not funny. I work at an airport – what's funny about blowing it up? I'm going to take this further." But maybe it was more like: "I appreciate the dark humour of this frustrated remark but am duty-bound, under current security protocols, to pass this on to my superiors who, this being a sane world, will presumably ignore it."
What I can't believe is that anyone thought the message was a genuine expression of violent intent. I don't know much about al-Qaeda's MO but I imagine giving a week's warning of an attack, in the guise of an irritable and amorous accountant, would amount to a significant change in tactics.
Certainly, the threat – and I suppose it is theoretically a threat, in the same way that an aspirin is a food and George Osborne a successor to Gladstone – was classified as "not credible" by the airport. I don't know if that means they thought it was funny. Maybe these people sit in front of Morecambe and Wise, sides splitting, tears streaming down their faces, yelling "Not credible!" as Eric picks up André Previn by the lapels.
However, despite Chambers's manifest lack of credibility, the security people were apparently obliged to inform South Yorkshire police, who arrested him a week later. They were obviously convinced he was a man of his word in terms of the week-and-a-bit timescale. With many plausible terrorist threats, they might have rushed straight round there. Or maybe they're not morons and knew perfectly well that he had no intention of blowing up an airport but had decided to make an example of him.
It's vindictive and it's humourless. Could they not just have had a quiet word? Was bringing him to trial really in the public interest? Is a large fine, unemployment and a criminal record proportionate punishment for an irritated quip, albeit one made within the earshot of others? He didn't actually send the message to the airport, written in letters cut out from a newspaper, wrapped round a raw liver and a holy text (Christian, Muslim or SMS).
Or did some people resent his levity? While not deemed a threat, was his tweet considered "inappropriate" by those who had the means to elevate inappropriateness to a criminal offence? "In a world where people do try to blow up airports, such a remark can never be funny," they think. They've got it backwards: it's funny because such terrorists exist. If they didn't, it would just be wacky, like saying: "They've got a week and a bit or I'll cover the runway with jelly!" (not Napalm).
This aversion to levity certainly infused the election campaign. But there was a funny bit and most of us missed it. When Gordon Brown got in his car and called that woman a bigot, it was hilarious. It was a properly comical human moment, made funnier by the uncomfortable truths it hit upon, in terms of both the former PM's flawed personality and the jealous xenophobia that lurks behind many discussions of immigration.
But we forgot to laugh, because some of us have come to prefer the sensation of judging: judging Brown for the gaffe, judging the media for its reporting of it, poring po-facedly over the subsequent pantomime of apology. It was the equivalent of his accidentally showing his arse and yet all we could do was carp: "Has he been concealing from the public quite how fat his arse really is?" or: "Why, at this moment of crisis, are our media focusing on arses rather than policies?" No one said: "Ha ha! I can see his arse!"
Instead of finding genuine humour, we're expected to stomach the ersatz jokes that the leaders prepared for the debates, like Brown's "They remind me of my two young boys squabbling at bath time!" line – official moments of respectful jocularity, the humorous equivalents of a maiden aunt's one cream sherry every Christmas. And this in a country that used to like getting pissed.
We already live in a world where, when asked whether we've packed our own bags, we know that saying: "Yes, I put all the bombs in myself!" will not be taken in good humour; where a conversation with a US immigration official must be treated with all the piety of an audience with the pope. We have accepted that facetiousness, like smoking, while not officially illegal, is absolutely not for public places.
Well, I don't remember agreeing to it and I'm sick of it. It's boring, I don't believe it saves a single life and it could do incalculable damage to freedom of speech. I'm serious."
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/16/britain-turns-serious-david-mitchell
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