Danny Baker should be sacked immediately

....but didn't think of it at the time of making the tweet. Because he is a thoughtless idiot.

I understand what you’re saying Baggs. We disagree with each other in this discussion.

Have the hyper-critics among you never done anything thoughtlessly—not necessarily on this scale—that turned out to have relatively awful repercussions?

It was more than a piss take. As I said in my last post - DB is well enough informed to know the connotations of using a monkey in relation to a black person.

(that was to the search engine)

Ah! right! (about the ducks) Bit annoying though.

Don't understand how you can be so sure. There are two perfectly good explanations of the tweet. You have taken the one that condemns him. (And perhaps, shows your hatred of the likes of him?)

I can understand that in a way.

I think he was piss-taking about the RF and that it was a horrendously ill-thought out piss-take for which he has paid the price.

I think gonegirl understands what I'm saying.

you're imagining something of someone who is well aware of the above in order to excuse his behaviour.

No, you've misunderstood what I'm saying if you think I'm excusing DB's tweet.

Ducks - if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck etc

Yeah, it does make it racist. If you have all those facts to hand as DB did and you still choose to post that photo you're racist. The truth can be unpalatable but it's important to own it.

Yes. He would have known Sirthingie. Doesn't make his tweet deliberately racist though.

What's with all the ducks?

trish - you don't have to like the royal family to be aware of who they are! And really - living in London and working for the BBC he will be well aware of the fact that MM is the first black woman (and American) to have married into the RF.

breeze mycatisahacker answers to mycat. I have found.

As his role on the radio programme is most likely a role involving stupidity, I think he should be reinstated. (If it is popular. And it probably is. Sigh.)

I don't think I realised she was mixed race until I saw them all on the balcony together at some point. She did look darker than the others.

I can't really remember though.

I am not defending DB, except in this instance. This one tweet. I don't think I would like him very much.

Iam & trisher I suspect PR companies have been rushing to his door to recruit him. They will always be there when a well known person is in trouble.

Idiot, but not racist.

To say he didn't know Meghan was mixed race was stupid. Of course he did. That was doorstep panic. He should have thought it out more before tweeting. Idiot.

JenniferEccles said (from Jeremy Vine prog) "It seemed to be that his intention was the crucial point."

Exactly. And I believe his intention was the non racist one. Not the racist one. He would never have deliberately committed career suicide like that.

I imagine he used a monkey to show the way (in his opinion) the royals dress up their children for photo shoots. Ie making little performing animals out of them () That is his way of thinking , not mine!

SirChenjin He likes football and music. He doesn't like the RF why on earth would he bother about them?
I watch TV, I listen to the radio, I read everything I can get hold of. BUT I avoid news about the RF like the plague because I don't care about them. Not everyone is a fervent royalist!

So I can imagine and understand someone not knowing it

That might (at a stretch) be a fair comment if that someone was like you - not media savvy, not particularly aware of current events (you said yourself earlier that you don't watch TV or listen to the radio), completely unaware for whatever reason of the historical links between monkeys and racism. DB is none of these things - you're imagining something of someone who is well aware of the above in order to excuse his behaviour.

When one cannot imagine how someone could think x or y, one doesn't understand their viewpoint yet. I think it was someone like John Stuart Mill who said that, though more lucidly.

If media had not told us at the time of her and Harry's engagement I would not have known MM was mixed race until I saw pictures of her parents. So I can imagine and understand someone not knowing it.

And when I did realise I thought "So what?" Having read this thread I now realise that the what of the matter is that there exist racists who will use any chance to hurl abuse at other people (I think DB was not doing that). I can't help thinking that perhaps we shouldn't focus on a person's race. Instead of ramping up the intersectionality, why not ramp it down? That's what Martin Luther King and others like him wanted. We seem to have gone the opposite way.