Pictures and images of interest and hilarity
- This topic has 1,408 replies, 20 voices, and was last updated 9 months, 2 weeks ago by
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How does that outfit stay on?
Magnets.
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Don’t forget Boys in the Hood:
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Someone in DC Comics editorial actually approved that outfit for Cosmic Boy.
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The Ronan Keating one was the worst, it used “you’re old and you’re haggard” instead I think. The main reason it was the worst was Ronan Keating though.
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The Ronan Keating one was the worst, it used “you’re old and you’re haggard” instead I think. The main reason it was the worst was Ronan Keating though.
I would like to take this opportunity to once again apologise on behalf of the Republic of Ireland for unleashing Ronan Keating on the world.
Also:
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Looked at the wiki, just out of general interest, and the Pogue’s stance in this, or at least McGowan’s, is a bit more complex:
Lyrical controversy and censorship
“It’s entirely appropriate that Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan was born on Christmas Day because his celebrated song Fairytale Of New York seems to be just about everybody’s favourite festive piece of music. The 1987 song by the Pogues – once censored by the BBC for its raw language – was announced as the most-played Christmas song of the century by music licensing body PPL.”
—Martin Chilton of The Daily Telegraph, “Fairytale Of New York is the true sound of Christmas”, December 2015.[4]
The song’s lyrical content attracted attention from the start due to language contained in its second verse, where MacGowan’s character refers to MacColl’s character as “an old slut on junk”, to which MacColl responds with a tirade that includes the words “faggot” and “arse”. When the song was performed on Top of the Pops on its initial release, the BBC requested that MacColl’s singing of “arse” be replaced with the perceived less offensive “ass”.[21] During a live performance on Top of the Pops in January 1992, MacColl changed the lyrics further, singing “You’re cheap and you’re haggard”. When Katie Melua performed the song with the Pogues on CD:UK in December 2005, ITV censored the word “arse”, but left “faggot” uncensored.[22]Wikinews has related news:
BBC Radio 1 reverses “faggot” ruling hours after initial ban
On 18 December 2007, BBC Radio 1 edited the words “faggot” and “slut” from the track to “avoid offence”. MacColl’s mother described the ban as “too ridiculous”, while the Pogues said they found it “amusing”. The BBC stated, “We are playing an edited version because some members of the audience might find it offensive”.[23] The BBC later announced they had reversed their decision and continued to play the song uncensored.[24] Other BBC radio stations, including the traditionally more conservative Radio 2, had continued to play the original version throughout this period, the ban having applied to Radio 1 only. The MTV channels in the UK also removed and scrambled the words “slut”, “faggot” and “arse” from the song.In December 2018, two broadcasters on Ireland’s RTÉ2 pop music station caused controversy by asking for the word “faggot” to be bleeped from broadcasts of the song. RTÉ announced that they would not censor the lyrics.[25] Some days later, MacGowan defended the lyrics in a statement released to Virgin Media Television’s The Tonight Show:
The word was used by the character because it fitted with the way she would speak and with her character. She is not supposed to be a nice person, or even a wholesome person. She is a woman of a certain generation at a certain time in history and she is down on her luck and desperate. Her dialogue is as accurate as I could make it but she is not intended to offend! She is just supposed to be an authentic character and not all characters in songs and stories are angels or even decent and respectable, sometimes characters in songs and stories have to be evil or nasty to tell the story effectively. If people don’t understand that I was trying to accurately portray the character as authentically as possible, then I am absolutely fine with them bleeping the word, but I don’t want to get into an argument.[26]
In December 2019, BBC Radio Solent radio presenter Alex Dyke announced on his Twitter account that he would not be playing “Fairytale of New York” on his show, calling it a “nasty, nasty song” and “an offensive pile of downmarket chav bilge”, although these remarks themselves drew criticism for classism.[27] Other journalists have also criticised the song’s lyrics.[28][29]
In November 2020, the BBC again announced that Radio 1 would play a censored version with the words “faggot” and “slut” removed, while Radio 2 would play the original, and 6 Music presenters would each decide for themselves which version to play.[30] In response musician Nick Cave accused the BBC of “mutilating” the song, stating it would be “stripped of its value”.[31] Meanwhile, The Pogues’ official Twitter account responded to Laurence Fox’s call to get the original to the top of the charts and “#DefundTheBBC” with, “Fuck off you little herrenvolk shite”[32]
On 19 November 2020, PinkNews journalist Josh Milton described the seemingly annual argument over whether or not the use of the word “faggot” was offensive as “Britain’s worst festive tradition”.[33]
In December 2020, an alternative version with MacColl singing “you’re cheap and you’re haggard”, replacing the contentious line, was included in the compilation album TikTok Christmas.[34][35] The same censored version was utilized for the official Marvel Entertainment playlist soundtrack of the 2022 special short film The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.[36]
I tend to agree with McGowan’s point there, and that’s the main problem I have with calls to edit sexist/homophobic/racist language on all levels at any time: in artistic contexts, you have to be able to depict those views and attitudes, or you lose the ability to discuss them or even appreciate their destructive potential. In the moment in which these slurs are used in the song, they demonstrate the characters’ nastiness, their toxicity towards each other and their self-destructive potential. The beauty of the song is that these two are both ugly monsters and a couple beautifully in love; the paradox is what makes the song great, and very beautiful.
On the other hand, there is certainly an argument that can be made that this kind of discussion can’t be had any time anybody is listening to a very popular Christmas song, so I can’t really see the harm in two or more versions of those lyrics being out there. I think I would hate it if the original disappeared entirely, that would be actual censorship, but as things stand some radio stations would just rather play a more tame version for christmas time. Which is fine.But I’ll still quote Nick Cave making the artist’s argument, because I don’t think that side should be left to little Herrenvolk shites and because I like the way Cave does it so much. He does have a way with words, that guy, maybe he should write some songs himself or something.
What is your view on the BBC ‘amendments’ to Fairytale of New York?
ROY, LINLITHGOW, SCOTLANDDear Joseph and Roy,
Truly great songs that are as emotionally powerful as Fairytale of New York are very rare indeed. Fairytale is a lyrical high wire act of dizzying scope and potency, and it rightly takes its place as the greatest Christmas song ever written. It stands shoulder to shoulder with any great song, from any time, not just for its sheer audacity, or its deep empathy, but for its astonishing technical brilliance.
One of the many reasons this song is so loved is that, beyond almost any other song I can think of, it speaks with such profound compassion to the marginalised and the dispossessed. With one of the greatest opening lines ever written, the lyrics and the vocal performance emanate from deep inside the lived experience itself, existing within the very bones of the song. It never looks down on its protagonists. It does not patronise, but speaks its truth, clear and unadorned. It is a magnificent gift to the outcast, the unlucky and the broken-hearted. We empathise with the plight of the two fractious characters, who live their lonely, desperate lives against all that Christmas promises — home and hearth, cheer, bounty and goodwill. It is as real a piece of lyric writing as I have ever heard, and I have always felt it a great privilege to be close friends with its creator, Shane MacGowan.
Now, once again, Fairytale is under attack. The idea that a word, or a line, in a song can simply be changed for another and not do it significant damage is a notion that can only be upheld by those that know nothing about the fragile nature of songwriting. The changing of the word ‘faggot’ for the nonsense word ‘haggard’ destroys the song by deflating it right at its essential and most reckless moment, stripping it of its value. It becomes a song that has been tampered with, compromised, tamed, and neutered and can no longer be called a great song. It is a song that has lost its truth, its honour and integrity — a song that has knelt down and allowed the BBC to do its grim and sticky business.
I am in no position to comment on how offensive the word ‘faggot’ is to some people, particularly to the young — it may be deeply offensive, I don’t know, in which case Radio 1 should have made the decision to simply ban the song, and allow it to retain its outlaw spirit and its dignity.
In the end, I feel sorry for Fairytale, a song so gloriously problematic, as great works of art so often are, performed by one of the most scurrilous and seditious bands of our time, whose best shows were so completely and triumphantly out of order, they had to be seen to believed.
Yet, time and time again the integrity of this magnificent song is tested. The BBC, that gatekeeper of our brittle sensibilities, forever acting in our best interests, continue to mutilate an artefact of immense cultural value and in doing so takes something from us this Christmas, impossible to measure or replace. On and on it goes, and we are all the less for it.
Love, Nick
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I think the whole discussion around the offensive language in Fairytale of New Yotk loses sight of the fact that it’s a bloody awful song to begin with.
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I think the whole discussion around the offensive language in Fairytale of New Yotk loses sight of the fact that it’s a bloody awful song to begin with.
As someone who likes the song, I think it’s gone from being that one song that was good and obscure to being totally overplayed at this point, and quite frankly it shouldn’t be in rotation on pop radio because of the language. I’m not opposed to the language but it’s like, say Closer by NIN – you don’t say fuck on the radio in the daytime and you shouldn’t say faggot either. As a result of the overplay it’s become a focal point for culture war bullshit the same way Blazing Saddles has. In both cases the humour of the offensive language is that the person using it is in the wrong – in Blazing Saddles the townsfolk are being manipulated by way of their racism, and in Fairytale of New York the story is a pair of drunks arguing while literally in prison, but the people who make a big deal about Fairytale being censored are doing it because they want homophobic language to be normalised as opposed to an actual free speech argument.
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the people who make a big deal about Fairytale being censored are doing it because they want homophobic language to be normalised as opposed to an actual free speech argument.
100%, the argument does seem to be about glee at permission to use the word and there’s a lot of context missing.
It’s a fictional song about a US immigrant couple from two people raised primarily in the UK (yes despite his image as the most Irish man in the world Shane McGowan is English born and privately educated at Westminster), where in the late 80s that word in truth was never used outside describing a liver based meat dish. To this day people making innocent food posts get banned on social media platforms for it. I was a teen when the song came out, had no idea what the word meant.
There’s no actual direct homophobic intent, the character at which ‘faggot’ is directed is clearly not actually gay, he’s one half of a heterosexual love duet. The fact that McColl and The Pogues have always been very happy to replace the lyric tells us they don’t consider it an important part of what they are trying to say because it isn’t. It’s a slur they picked up second-hand probably with limited understanding of what it meant. Which is why they have never defended it and happily changed it.
Yes the ‘free speech’ advocates are just really a bunch of arseholes looking for an excuse to use the language.
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Someone in DC Comics editorial actually approved that outfit for Cosmic Boy.
And it’s still better than any decision that DC editorial made in the 2020s.
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Someone in DC Comics editorial actually approved that outfit for Cosmic Boy.
And it’s still better than any decision that DC editorial made in the 2020s.
And someone at Marvel approved of those Emma Frost outfits 🤣
What held up Cosmmic Boys’ costume? Probably the same whatever that held up Emma’s… Unstable molecules!
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And everybody has been shitting on Greg Land for tracing porn pictures. When it’s actually a time-honoured tradition!
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And everybody has been shitting on Greg Land for tracing porn pictures. When it’s actually a time-honoured tradition!
Yeah. I can’t believe Vargas lightboxed Jack Kirby like that!
Wait….what?!
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Dungeon synth. Not even once.
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And I never did post nudity, but I digress…
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As someone who is on Signal just to arrange protests, I feel this deep in my bones
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“And then I walked put after the first 10 minutes of the movie, so I don’t know if he was any more villainous after that.”
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Henry Cavill at the meeting last night with James Gunn, probably pic.twitter.com/xZIKmB5Cd5
— InSession Film (@InSessionFilm) December 15, 2022
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No worries about that stuff to apply for a job, you can let the AI do that now.
You’re in New York, Al, right? Just took a look and there’s a job opening for a part-time news anchor at iHeart media.
And here’s your cover letter, written in five seconds by ChatGPT:
Christian U.
Write a cover letter for Alex to apply to a job as a news anchorDear [Hiring Manager],
I am writing to express my interest in the news anchor position at [Company Name]. As a highly skilled and experienced journalist with a passion for delivering breaking news to the public, I believe I would be a strong fit for this role.
Throughout my career, I have honed my skills in research, reporting, and on-air delivery. I am confident in my ability to convey complex information in a clear and concise manner, and I have a track record of staying calm under pressure. I am also skilled in writing scripts, conducting interviews, and working with a team to produce top-quality news segments.
In my current position as a news anchor at [Current Company], I have gained valuable experience covering a range of topics and events, including breaking news, politics, and sports. I have also contributed to the development of newscasts and contributed to the station’s social media presence.
I am excited about the opportunity to bring my skills and experience to [Company Name] and be a part of a team that is dedicated to delivering accurate and important news to the community. Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the opportunity to further discuss my qualifications and how I can contribute to the success of [Company Name].
Sincerely,
[Your Name] -
No worries about that stuff to apply for a job, you can let the AI do that now.
You’re in New York, Al, right? Just took a look and there’s a job opening for a part-time news anchor at iHeart media.
And here’s your cover letter, written in five seconds by ChatGPT:
Christian U.
Write a cover letter for Alex to apply to a job as a news anchorDear [Hiring Manager],
I am writing to express my interest in the news anchor position at [Company Name]. As a highly skilled and experienced journalist with a passion for delivering breaking news to the public, I believe I would be a strong fit for this role.
Throughout my career, I have honed my skills in research, reporting, and on-air delivery. I am confident in my ability to convey complex information in a clear and concise manner, and I have a track record of staying calm under pressure. I am also skilled in writing scripts, conducting interviews, and working with a team to produce top-quality news segments.
In my current position as a news anchor at [Current Company], I have gained valuable experience covering a range of topics and events, including breaking news, politics, and sports. I have also contributed to the development of newscasts and contributed to the station’s social media presence.
I am excited about the opportunity to bring my skills and experience to [Company Name] and be a part of a team that is dedicated to delivering accurate and important news to the community. Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the opportunity to further discuss my qualifications and how I can contribute to the success of [Company Name].
Sincerely,
[Your Name]That one is corporate-speak enough to pass the Turing test.
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That one is corporate-speak enough to pass the Turing test.
Yup. That fucking thing will pass any Turing test really, it’s kind of insane.
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You know… The “I” capital looks like the lower case L and I read it all quick and
taking it personally.
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Wow, that’s for real, huh? Seems like a very daft move. I mean, even if he did plan to step down anyway, that’s not exactly good PR. Or is he so deluded that he couldn’t imagine for this poll to go that way?
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Wow, that’s for real, huh? Seems like a very daft move. I mean, even if he did plan to step down anyway, that’s not exactly good PR. Or is he so deluded that he couldn’t imagine for this poll to go that way?
It’s really 50/50 between him being an idiot or in the world’s biggest echo chamber.
Meanwhile:
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Remember that time Dana Delany played burlesque Judge Dredd?
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