Well you’d be forgiven for believing otherwise.

Well no continent has the monopoly on bigotry, though most can tell when a mass shooting is terrorism and not just business as usual.

It doesn’t matter if it changes minds, people will say what they want to say at their own kitchen table, but being compelled to change public behaviour, because no you are not free to arbitrarily make people’s lives a misery, is surely a healthy thing. Maybe eventually actions can moderate minds?

You are very welcome, you’d be surprised how many Brits don’t know that one. The world will fall on your head for racist slurs in the UK (and it really will and rightly), but you can still call the low-life’s on class, that’s allowed.

No. They just don’t have freedom of hate-speech and incitement to violence like the US.

Council House And Violent - means you are nasty and come from social housing. so not Nigger no. Not at all.

Yes I recall it then and absolutely agree about ubiquity and democracy of access and, heaven knows, I’d love to agree about there being an ethical dimension (though I find that a reach), but when was fashion anything other than frivolous for those who could afford it (and those who couldn’t)? I think the overall…

You’re right, what used to take effort and taste is now bought off the rack, quirky and individual is no longer embraced, everything is generic, flashy and herd driven, and that store was always the option for those too lazy and rich anyway - but it expressed an individual vision, and its passing is to be mourned for…

She’s just joyless.

If what you’re peddling and awarding is commodified rape, then there really is no such thing as bad publicity because you have parted company entirely with the concepts of good and bad.

Indeed. Some viewers are evidently not watching rape scenarios, they’re watching rape. There’s an entire industry so focused on peddling rape for cash that you can be raped in front of an entire film crew without anyone being in possession of sufficient moral compass or critical faculties to distinguish between what…

Yes, particularly as many of the other accusations apply to his conduct on camera, exploiting commodified sexual activity which facilitated the rapes you, and others, have accused him of via a rationale of self-interest and professional advancement is indeed problematic. Can we continue to watch the Cosby show with…

When charitable acts were not part of one’s vertically-integrated brand marketing strategy. She was a class act.

This will amuse you as much as I http://www.escapeartistes.com/2012/04/16/an-…

Yes. She writes fairly and with both candour and nuance - it’s an outstanding piece of writing about a very complicated world.

I agree, none of us knows anything about the veracity of this accusation, not the people involved, not the facts, no details, nothing at all. To take sides based on nothing but an abstract partisan faith in the assertions of one stranger against the other is just stupid where we know nothing. If there’s a case to be…

Her soul? That’s it?

The Pinterest Paris/London/Rome is all still there, for the rich. The poor and marginal were always out of sight, cleaning chimneys or floors, selling stuff or themselves, stitching in sweatshops or dying from tuberculosis in poor-houses. Picturesque is in the eye of the beholder. We still see what we want to see.

Careful, you nearly learned something there. In between the obtuse umbrage. Scholarly? Not really, to you perhaps.

Your perspective is mistaken on key points if well intended. Arabic is the lingua-franca of Islam even if the underlying culture expressed through the language of Arabic is frequently not at all Arabian (as much of Western culture is not necessarily English, although it may be expressed through that tongue). What you…