Slip up of the year - early entry!
Posted by admin on 17 Feb 2008 at 11:58 pm | Tagged as: Disability, Irish Media, Uncategorized
Jim Rodgers - Lord Mayor of Belfast speaking this week on Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster on the matter of the state of Belfast’s appalling pavements at the moment. From the Belfast Telegraph.
During a live radio discussion yesterday about the poor condition of pavements in Belfast city centre, Mr Rodgers said the footpaths were difficult for disabled people to negotiate as well as “human beings”.
Lord Mayor Rodgers was quickly picked up on his comment by the presenter and later told the Belfast Telegraph
“I did correct it at the time and made it quite clear that the footpaths were problems for disabled people, able bodied people and also those with buggies. It was a genuine slip of the tongue made during an early morning telephone call - that’s all it was.
“There was absolutely no offence intended. As one who is actively involved with disability groups I would never intentionally offend anyone.
Ah yes, early morning unconscious dropping of the guard or something…or what?? Vaughan over at Ouch is being very charitable
Methinks you may be a bit previous on the slip up of the year Maman… Mel Gibson gifted us with two this evening at the IFTAs - started with the comment about the statuette - “Oh my God, what happened to his arms… I guess some people are like that” and rounded it off with a promise to come back to Ireland some time to see if our pigs had got any bigger… IFTAs? Iffies more like…
Oh Martina I saw it!!! Not long after I hit publish I heard the words uttered and had herself repeat them for me just in case I was a dreaming!! Am sure we’ll see the video!!!
[...] Oops. [...]
I suppose someone could draw an peculiar contrast between this highlighting of what may well be a slip of the tongue and which the person admitted wasn’t appropriate and much more deliberate and repeated use of language by others but what would be the point.
The point might be the context Dan! Dead horse and flogging come to mind here.
What context? I’m guessing he was looking to say “able bodied” but bumbled into “human beings” when talking about accessible pavements which is of course much, much worse than going out of his way to say it when reviewing movies. “Human beings” is a rare enough phrase to see in conversation unless folks are talking about Trek or some such. We can all misspeak so I would tend to be a little less Freudian about this instance than I would be about what someone chooses to write after they’ve given the subject some consideration. There again Jim Rodgers and Mel Gibson aren’t mates of yours so they don’t get a free pass do they?