March 11, 2001

7:10 AM

BBC to repeat 'racist' remarks. On Monday night's Room 101 show, Anne Robinson (currently preparing to launch the US version of her quiz show The Weakest Link) launched into an attack on Welsh people and their language. Despite protests, and the fact that North Wales police are investigating Robinson's remarks, the BBC has rejected requests not to broadcast tonight's repeat of the programme.
posted by ceiriog (30 comments total)

I've read the linked articles and am sincerely curious to know what Robinson actually said, since none of those references repeated it. I understand (at least at some level, since I'm neither Welsh nor a UK citizen), that she's said something that's perceived as negative about the Welsh. Is there some word or phrase, akin to what we in the US now euphemistically call "the N word" in reference to black Americans, that's pretty strictly taboo? Or, is it more like calling Southern Americans "Rednecks," which is considered less offensive but still highly impolite? Or, is it just the idea behind being relegated to Room 101?
posted by m.polo at 7:28 AM on March 11, 2001

anne's comments were along the lines of "what are the welsh for?". interestingly, des lynham, a uk sports commentator, was on the same show recently and he was much more rude about the french with no media comeback.
posted by quarsan at 8:04 AM on March 11, 2001

The term "redneck" isn't used to refer to people from the South. It's used to refer to "uncultured" people, often from rural areas and often white, who do physical work for a living (you get your neck sunburned if you're working outside). In Washington state, loggers are often referred to as "rednecks". So far as I can tell, "redneck" isn't a racist word... it's a *classist* word.

posted by muppetboy at 8:09 AM on March 11, 2001

What's interesting to me is that this incident has caused a reaction. Even the more progressive elementsof the English media routinely trot out stereotypes of Welshness , or assert that it's not racist to make jokes about Welsh people because we don't get firebombed for being Welsh.

quarsan: you're right about Lynham and the French, unfortunately. But how many French people watch Room 101? Or know who Lynham is?
posted by ceiriog at 8:46 AM on March 11, 2001

Anne Robinson (currently preparing to launch the US version of her quiz show The Weakest Link)

Ooh! I can't wait. Judging by this Private Eye article, this show could be an unending source of unintentional humor.
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:56 AM on March 11, 2001

I wonder if Anne Robinson has even considered what will happen when the Welsh-American 'legal defence group' Twm Sion Cati get hold of this?

As a result of that lawsuit, which generated more national publicity about Wales and the Welsh than anyone could remember, the media generally ignoring matters Welsh, settlements were reached in which the Los Angeles Times, Times-Mirror Company, National Broadcasting Company (NBC), KNBC, Universal Press Syndicate, and other defendants, agreed to change their "style books" to treat "to welsh" and "welsher" equally with comparable slurs; that is, to cease using them. NBC broadcast an apology on 300 stations across the nation to "Americans of Welsh descent and the people of Wales." That, indeed, was unprecedented.

Guess which US network has the rights to The Weakest Link?

MrBaliHai: you are my new hero.
posted by ceiriog at 9:21 AM on March 11, 2001

muppetboy, that's misleading. There may be other uses (I hadn't heard of the PNW reference), but it's primarily understood to mean a rural, white Southerner. I wouldn't call it racist, since originally it was indeed a term used by whites to refer to other whites. (For a sense of the cultural divide here, check out Deliverance: men from Atlanta venture into the hill country.) A related term would be the one recently used in an egregious television moment by Sen. Robert Byrd: "white niggers".

There's a close correspondence here to stereotypes about drunken Irish-Americans. Turning St. Patrick's Day into an alcoholic Mardi Gras for everyone is OK; calling a police van a "paddy wagon" is not. Timing and tone are important.

m.polo, for a list of the phrases she used, look around the middle of the very first article linked. Frankly, I found her attitude much closer to that Deliverance rural/urban divide than anything else, but then I have a perspective from half a world away. Would someone get the same flak for referring similarly to Cornwall or the Midlands?
posted by dhartung at 11:22 AM on March 11, 2001

aaron: the First Amendment doesn't extend to North Wales. Sorry.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. I don't think she should be prosecuted, and I doubt very much that she will be.

dhartung: Would someone get the same flak for referring similarly to Cornwall or the Midlands?

Probably not (the Cornish language and national identity was killed a couple of centuries ago), but the real comparison, as you say, is with Ireland and the Irish. Wales is not a region of England, it's a nation within the UK - for the moment.

To play devil's advocate for a minute, imagine a Chinese TV personality making these remarks about Tibet, or an American making them about the Hopi people.

Britain is a Welsh word; Wales is a German one. It's a long story.
posted by ceiriog at 11:43 AM on March 11, 2001

Bullshit.

aaron, take a deep breath. Calm, calm, calm.

I have personal experience of how little the average American knows about Wales. So what?

My point was that NBC might have reason to put pressure on Robinson to retract her statements. To apologise for offending people. She would be free to refuse to bow to such thought control, of course. It would be interesting to see if her devotion to her persona as the 'rudest woman on television' is stronger than her greed.

That may be against everything you believe in. Sorry. The last time I spent a week in England I was called 'Taff', 'boyo' and 'sheepshagger'. When I told a taxi driver where I'd travelled from he asked me where my wellies were. In a bar, someone asked me had I 'heard of MTV'.

The Welsh are all, by nature,Wilder than the beasts of the field.Chrétian de Troyes - 1181

See that date? We've put up with this shit for long enough.

Sorry to be all righteous and indignant, again, but I've just heard that there's a suspected case of foot and mouth within 30 miles of here, so I've got better things to do than tiptoe round your particular version of compassionate conservatism.
posted by ceiriog at 1:48 PM on March 11, 2001

And, Ceiriog, see Shakespeare, Henry V...eat my leek remarks...
posted by Postroad at 2:39 PM on March 11, 2001

Shakespeare's a little out of fashion.
posted by ceiriog at 3:26 PM on March 11, 2001

blackbeltjones: Well - I watched it last night and wasn't at all offended.

Good for you. Where were you watching it?

I watched it in Llangrannog, Ceredigion. Our local (Welsh medium) nursery school doesn't have a single child from a Welsh speaking household. About half of the houses in the village are empty during the winter.

I'll try harder to see the funny side.
posted by ceiriog at 12:57 AM on March 12, 2001

The Anne Robinson publicity machine is certainly working overtime at the moment.
It's all cheap publicity at the expense of the Welsh, unfortunately due to the (understandable) reaction to her remarks, she got exactly what she wanted and probably more. That's all there is to her, image and publicity. nothing more, there is no character or personality there, As a consequence she has to try harder on the self-publicity side.
The sooner she's off the BBC the better, I only feel sorry for the US, our gain is your loss.
posted by Markb at 3:50 AM on March 12, 2001

I only feel sorry for the US

Twm Siôn Cati are on the case.
posted by ceiriog at 4:10 AM on March 12, 2001

Oh, her comments about 'all the Welsh' flooding into Liverpool every Tuesday? 'Welsh Day' in Liverpool is on a Thursday.

Seeing the words 'Welsh', 'flooding' and 'Liverpool' in the same sentence reminds of another reason why a Liverpudlian should be a little bit more sensitive.
posted by ceiriog at 4:16 AM on March 12, 2001

Please correct me if I'm wrong here, ceiriog.

My understanding is that "Welsh" was originally an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "foreigner", i.e. not of English descent. The Welsh call themselves Cymry and their country Cymru but this word Welsh was applied them even though they had inhabited Britain long before the English even got there (from Germany).

So, it seems that the word was never a very friendly one. Perhaps the word "welsher" is just an extension of that xenophobia?

I also understand that the Walloons of Belgium and the Wallachs of Rumania got their names much the same way.

posted by lagado at 5:31 AM on March 12, 2001

lagado: spot on. And thanks :)
posted by ceiriog at 7:22 AM on March 12, 2001

There is no proof that the etymology of the verb "to welsh" has anything to do with Welsh people.

I've been writing about etymology for years. There's rarely proof of a word's origins -- people don't normally document the first time they used pejorative slang. The books I have here indicate that the concept of welshing on a bet became popular in England around the same time as anti-Welsh nursery rhymes like this:

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy wasn't in,
I jumped upon his Sunday hat, and poked it with a pin.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a sham,
Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of lamb;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was away,
I stuffed his socks with sawdust and filled his shoes with clay.

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a cheat,
Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of meat;
I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not there,
I hung his coat and trousers to roast before a fire.

Sounds to me like the British were more than capable of associating the Welsh with walking out on an obligation.
posted by rcade at 8:52 AM on March 12, 2001

Sounds to me like the British were more than capable of associating the Welsh with walking out on an obligation.

Yes, except 'British' and 'English' are not synonyms. It's fairly important in this context. :)

'English' and 'Welsh' are both sub-sets of 'British'. I mentioned before that 'Britain' is a Celtic word (modern Welsh Prydain), and Brythonic (the 'language of the Britons') is now known, by English speakers, as Welsh (the 'language of the foreigners')

The Welsh word for 'irony' is 'eironi'. These things never happened until the English turned up, so we stole their word for it.
posted by ceiriog at 9:41 AM on March 12, 2001

Sorry ... I could never tell when to use British, English, or UK correctly, so as a newspaper writer I avoided the region as much as possible.
posted by rcade at 10:12 AM on March 12, 2001

I saw the program last night and although it did not offend me it did make me uneasy, I felt like I was listening to a bigotted old aunt who you humour because she's just ignorant.

Admittedly, her remarks were not as bad as the PR machine made out (just the usual racism lite which certain middle class people seem to have a knack for) but it is symptomatic of the steady drip drip affect which paints a picture of my home as unimportant both culturally and economically. They were mostly ignorant (it's true one of her complaints was that we speak Welsh) which is the most suprising thing, considering this is the year 2001

We are a small nation bordered by a large and powerful neighbour so our national psyche is one that leans towards insecure, which may have explained the somewhat over the top reaction.

I think Simon hoggart's "you can't be racist about the Welsh" comments are more damaging and more offensive myself.
posted by fullerine at 11:32 AM on March 12, 2001

It's a storm in a teacup, but I also think that there's an element of "tall poppy syndrome" here. The past five years or so have seen a renaissance in Welshness, helped by devolution, the Manics, Catatonia, the SWS, etc etc. And to be honest, the Welsh have the coherent distinctive national identity that "middle England" (ie London-centric Englishness) always lusts after.

Once the ad money rolls in from "The Weakest Link", NBC won't worry. Now, if she'd said the same of the Irish, there's a demographic that can really affect US revenues.
posted by holgate at 5:55 AM on March 13, 2001

Yeah, because several million Americans who think they're Irish would get all flustered. America celebrates St. Patrick's day more ferociously than Ireland does.
I don't see any Americans celebrating St. George's Day though ;-)
posted by wackybrit at 4:02 PM on March 13, 2001

That's coz St. George was British, not American :)
posted by sonofsamiam at 4:05 PM on March 13, 2001

Oh. wait. Scratch that.

*sigh*
posted by sonofsamiam at 4:05 PM on March 13, 2001

Well done. I was almost about to point out that St. Patrick wasn't American either. Dang.. just did.

It was a bit nasty of me to compare St. George's Day to St. Patrick's Day anyway. Even the English don't celebrate St. George's Day.. y'know part of being unpatriotic English folk and all that.
posted by wackybrit at 4:33 PM on March 13, 2001

Um, St Patrick was Welsh. ;-)
posted by ceiriog at 1:03 AM on March 14, 2001