So Ofcom have cleared Dannii Minogue of breaching the broadcast code for making a slightly off key comment. The avid X Factor fans will remember the cringey moment when she cracked a pretty lame jibe about Danyl Johnson's sexuality and Simon pulled her up on it. You could feel her face burning through the TV. I had a little sympathy blush watching it.
However anyone with two eyes and half a brain should've been able to use their common sense and conclude that:
She meant absolutely no offense by it, and:
Danyl has himself declared that he is bisexual
It clearly wasn't the time or the place to have made the comment but you could see that Ms Minogue realised that pretty immediately.
And most importantly of all …. who the hell really cares whether he's gay/bisexual/straight.
How many times have we all spoken before thinking only to instantly regret what we've just said... classic foot in mouth stuff, no need to overreact. But, oh, overreact many people did, with Ofcom flooded with complaints, Twitter heaving with anger and a furious online mob calling for her to be axed.
It's not the first time, TV/columns/newspapers/opinions have been held up under a bright spotlight and questioned. You can't sneeze at the moment without someone calling you homophobic. It actually took me a good twenty minutes to think about whether touching on the whole Danyl being gay subject was all that wise. Dangerous territory when our freedom of expression and right to free and open debate is threatened.
In the past year we've seen comedians lynched for risque humour, a Daily Mail reporter practically driven out of the UK for an exceptionally ill-thought out article to poor old Dannii Minogue. Come on people. Remember that freedom of speech and freedom of expression is our right to speak without censorship and/or limitation regardless of the medium used – TV, blogs, newspaper columns, jokes.
The exception is words and phrases deemed to express hatred and contempt towards other people. Nowm in the case of Dannii Minogue comparing her ill advised "joke" to some of the vile jealous and just downright nasty rubbish that was written about her it's easy to see which side would be more likely to be classed as "hate speech."
Picketing the funerals of Aids victims and claiming the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality - as American baptist Fred Waldron Snr and daughter Shirley (who were quite rightly banned from the UK) do - now that is hate speech. Yet say those names and see how many people know who they are, yet pretty much everyone will remember Russell Brand's lynching for talking about someone he shagged once. It's not that people in the public eye shouldn't be held to account when they cross lines, but the sheer volume of anger at some of these incidents is so disproportionate its scary. Even worse it's downright hypocritical – baying for blood over someones slightly inappropriate comment whilst at the same time calling them names that you'd probably be arrested for if you said them in public.
So next time someone on TV or in the public eye makes a faux paus, rather than joining the droning masses, maybe we should take a second to think about it and just accept a good old fashioned apology.
Sara Firth is a finalist in stv.tv's The Write Factor competition. The views expressed are not necessarily those of STV plc. If you would like to read more from this writer, use our comment system below.
