If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Rupert Everett...what was he on about?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7445535.stm
From the Beeb; Rupert Everett appears to have committed a spectacular career suicide today, with impeccable timing given the milestone reached yesterday.
Amid all the back-tracking, can anyone possibly fathom what possessed him to say this?
From the Beeb; Rupert Everett appears to have committed a spectacular career suicide today, with impeccable timing given the milestone reached yesterday.
Amid all the back-tracking, can anyone possibly fathom what possessed him to say this?
0
Comments
I read them in an interview in the Tele (I think Sat, may have been Sun)
Though as SG would say all the BBC execs are Guardian readers so they probably didn't pick it
We have gone from one extreme of the spectrum to the other in less than a century. As recently as WWI soldiers were considered nothing more than cannon fodder, nearly worthless units officers could send to their deaths in their thousands daily in the most flippant manner. Those who rightly didn't want to find themselves in such hell, or who did a runner when they did, were branded cowards and demonised by society/shot for cowardice respectively.
Now, every single soldier's death gets reported as major news, sometimes even making it the main news event of the day. Some people, here and elsewhere, actually complain when such a death does not get a big enough mention in the press. As Private Eye satirises often enough with its mock newspaper headlines, "SOLDIERS DIE IN WAR SHOCK". FFS...
The other thing that might have been getting on Everett's nerves- it certainly gets on mine no end- is the pandemic use of the word "HERO" all over the gutter press. I'm sorry, but simply dying in a war does not make someone a hero- let alone simply being in a war and returning alive and well, as the S*n and others insists on claiming.
As part of their job descriptions, soldiers might have to go to war. Some might get killed. Such is life. One thing is deserving our respect and sympathy- and then some might even argue that anyone who fights morally abhorrent and completely unjustified wars does not deserve much of that either- and another elevating every serving soldier to the category of demi-gods and treating every casualty as the worst national disaster this country has suffered.
So yes, Everett said some poor and wrong things, but there is a genuine case for being a bit fed up with the media hysteria regarding "Our Boys".
I think the same goes for everyone really. I don't think politicians are necessarily any more informed than the rest of society at least from some of the ones I've spoken to.
I still don't know who he is. Is this equivilent to mel gibson going off about jews then? Cos I thought that was funny more than anything...
That's a very dangerous thread to pull on, this whole site might unravel.
An actor ... not been in much recently but did a documentary last night on sex, the Victorians and the explorer, Richard Burton (which I didn't watch).
:thumb:
I'm not sure I'd agree politicians aren't more informed - or at least they ought to be given that they pay people like me to make sure they are. However, politicians views do matter. (though informed doesn't always mean right)
if Brown says something there's a chance it may happen, so if Brown says he thinks we should jail people for 42 days that matters more than me mouthing an opinion down the pub
I post as an ego trip, not because I think that the world's going change by me spouting off
As for Aladdin's moronic statement that dying in a war does not make someone a hero - well, let us put that to the test. If that is what you really believe, get on the next plane to Afghanistan and fight for your country, along with all those other armchair critics. I wonder why you've suddenly gone quiet...
Please do provide some examples of this agenda the BBC apparently has against British soldiers
And no SG, simply dying in a war does not make someone a hero, any more than dying at a construction site does. Look up the definition of 'hero' in a dictionary if you don't believe me.
It should be nice and easy for you to find a few examples of the BBC doing this if it happens all the time.
The BBC has been critical of sending troops into battle because of lies and false information, without decent kit or back up and without properly functioning equipment. But I've never ever seen it be critical of individual soldiers.
Is coming home from B.F.P.O.
I\'ve a bunch of purple flowers
To decorate a mammy\'s hero.
Mourning in the aerodrome,
The weather warmer, he is colder.
Four men in uniform
To carry home my little soldier.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a rock star.\"
But he didn\'t have the money for a guitar.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a politician.\"
But he never had a proper education.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a father.\"
But he never even made it to his twenties.
WHAT A WASTE --
Army dreamers.
Tears o\'er a tin box.
Oh, Jesus Christ, he wasn\'t to know,
Like a chicken with a fox,
He couldn\'t win the war with ego.
Give the kid the pick of pips,
And give him all your stripes and ribbons.
Now he\'s sitting in his hole,
He might as well have buttons and bows.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a rock star.\"
But he didn\'t have the money for a guitar.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a politician.\"
But he never had a proper education.
\"What could he do?
Should have been a father.\"
But he never even made it to his twenties.
WHAT A WASTE --
Army dreamers.
Sounds bang on the money to me. The "wimps" thing is just silly, but as for the above, you can see it in the incessant reporting of the dead soldiers - what exactly was supposed to happen when the death clock struck 100? It is a war. Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were making this point a hundred years ago and it's just as relevant today: that the 'heroic' rhetoric, celebration of soldiers and sanctimonious shows of mourning over their nasty deaths jars very badly with the realities of war.
The Hero
‘Jack fell as he’d have wished,’ the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.
Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.
He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.
Suicide In The Trenches
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
- Sassoon. War not so abstract and lofty. The 'hero' stories you don't hear about in pro-war rhetoric - strange, isn't it, that they don't want to linger on what happens to these people. "100 bravely fell" is much easier to swallow.