THE PSYCHOLOGIST

ABC is forced to pull two episodes of kids' favourite TV show Bluey over claims they include racist language

Almost any word can be offensive in some context. The context matters. And there is no abusive or offensive context in the show mentioned below

In a famous comic book ("The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie") written by Barry Humphries, the word "feature" was treated as very indelicate -- but in all other contexts it has no offensive character at all

The ABC has pulled two episodes of its most downloaded kids show after receiving complaints they contained racist language.

Episodes of the show Bluey were taken down on August 10 after a viewer complained about the use of the term 'ooga booga' in the 'Teasers' and 'Flat Back' episodes.

The complaint said the phrase had racial connotations which referred to a 'problematic history for Indigenous Australians.'

'The ABC sincerely apologised to the complainant for any distress caused by the term,' an official statement read.

'The ABC has a strong record for giving voice to Indigenous Australians and an ongoing commitment to helping reduce discrimination and prejudice.'

The complainant was also told the ABC and the external producers of the show weren't aware of the offensive language.

Bluey is the ABC's most downloaded show on Iview, having been watched more than 200 million times.

Outraged fans took to social media to slam the broadcaster for taking down the episodes. 'Can't people just enjoy Bluey as a wholesome cartoon?' one fan wrote. 'Can someone explain to me how 'ooga booga' is racist?' another added.

However others praised the decision and one woman explained why the term 'ooga booga' was racist. 'I well remember a time growing up in Western Sydney where the phrase 'Ooga Booga/s' was used conversationally to describe a dark skinned person/s,' she wrote. 'It was used in social circles, in movies or TV depicting black indigenous people as 'uncivilised fools'.

'I personally balked at hearing it used in Teasing , but never said anything because I thought it was maybe just me.'

The ABC will change the dialogue prior to future broadcast or publication of the two episodes.

SOURCE

1 comment:

Maybe more cowbell will make the song great?August 20, 2020 at 11:29 PM
There is an aspect to what is percived to be offensive that is likely to be shushed by those taking offense and that is their responsibility for how they react. If "I cannot help myself" the response then it is evident why they make others responsible for their dislike and inability to control themselves.

They do not like a term and and I do not like boy bands, yet there are no laws against boy bands if I were to be offended by them.

If there is to be an Australian boy band called Ooga Booga I will not be first in line to listen to their relationship songs drenched with didjeridu, boomerang clapsticks and folded leaf whistles.
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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

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Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

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Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

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R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

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A good article on Leftist hate

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Memoir highlights