Sean Penn criticized for "xenophobic" Green Card joke

Sean Penn's remark about Mexican-born Oscar-winner Alejandro Inarritu's immigration status at the end of Sunday's Academy Awards telecast struck many as an insult, but the director says it was nothing more than a brutal joke between old friends.

In announcing the win for "Birdman," Penn asked, "Who gave this son of a bitch his green card? Birdman."

The term "green card" refers to a document that confers permanent residency to immigrants in the United States.

"I found it hilarious," Inarritu said after the ceremony. "Sean and I have that kind of brutal (relationship) where only true friendship can survive."

Inarritu directed Penn in his 2003 film "21 Grams," and the pair remain friends. Penn posed for pictures with Inarritu after the ceremony.

The director, who won three Oscars on Sunday night, said he has told many similarly brutal jokes at Penn's expense. "I make on him a lot of very tough jokes that I will not tell you," Inarritu said.

Joke or not, the remark struck many online as problematic for an awards ceremony that had been criticized for not having more nominees of color.

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Affectionate abuse is a common thing among men

"N*gger privilege

Kanye West left his fellow stars speechless as he debuted his new single, All Day, at the 2015 BRIT Awards on Wednesday evening.

The controversial rapper delivered an expletive-filled performance [including "N*gger] as he revealed the latest single from his yet-to-be released album that drew mixed reactions from the likes of Taylor Swift and Lionel Richie.

In the ferocious performance which saw the star sharing the stage with British grime artists such as Skepta, Krept and Konan, Jammer and Novelist, the rapper was heard saying the N-word at least three times despite ITV’s attempt to mute his swearing.

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Must not joke about security frisking

A high-ranking corrections officer has been sacked after joking on Facebook that he had been 'groped' by guards during a tour of prisons.

Former state trooper Michael Allred had accompanied his boss, the secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety Stephen Moyer, on a tour of prison facilities in Jessup, Maryland on Wednesday.

Later that day he posted on Facebook: 'Visiting the prisons ... haven't been groped this much since the flight on the honeymoon ... and this is just the guards!'

Incredibly Allred tagged both his boss Moyer, and 'Maryland House of Correction' in the post which quickly circulated among other prison officers.

A statement  posted on the Department of Correctional Services website confirmed that Allred had been dismissed for 'inappropriate comments made on social media'.

'AFSCME members believe that Michael Allred's social media comments were inappropriate and insulting to 7,200 Maryland correctional officers,' AFSME said in a statement.

'The secretary has the utmost respect for correctional officers and requires all employees to respect the department, their authority, and their peers,' the department said on its website.

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Must not associate dreadlocks with marijuana

I guess Rastamen don't exist

Giuliana Rancic has apologized for making 'racist' comments about 18-year-old singer Zendaya.

In the Tuesday on air apology Rancic said she was sorry for claiming that the Disney star looked like she smelled of weed just because she has dreadlocks.

'I'd really like to address something that's weighing really heavy on my heart,' the TV host began. 'I want to apologize for a comment that I made on last night's Fashion Police about Zendaya's hair.'

'As you know, Fashion Police is a show that pokes fun at celebrities in good spirit, but I do realize that something I said last night did cross the line.'

Furor erupted online on Monday after Rancic claimed Zendaya smelled of patchouli just because she has dreadlocks.

The comments went further on the Academy Awards special when the show cut to a picture of the singer on the red carpet - a voice off camera could be heard saying that the Disney star smelled like 'weed'.

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LAPD Targets Citizens’ Free Speech Rights

Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), wrote a letter recently to Larry Page, CEO of Google, to complain about the Waze app’s ability to track the location of police officers.

Waze is a wildly popular mobile app, owned by Google, that lets users type in their destination address, and, while driving with the app open on their phone, passively contribute real-time traffic data. Users can also actively report accidents, traffic jams, police locations, or any road hazard by tapping buttons, giving other users in the area a heads-up.

It’s the police-location feature that Beck opposes.

“It is not always in the public’s best interest to know where police are operating,” Beck said, explaining the letter. “There is a criminal element that are able to ply their trade and ply their craft more effectively by knowing where police are.”

Beck concluded his letter by asking for a “dialogue” with Page on how “Google can prevent the future misuse of the Waze app to track law enforcement officers . . .” It is not a stretch to surmise that Beck wants the police button removed from the app.

Let’s be clear about what Beck is asking: He wants this app, and presumably any similar traffic app in the future, to not allow private citizens to communicate with each other about the public whereabouts of police.

If mandated by governments in the future, such a ban would be a clear infringement of citizens’ free speech rights, and a dark and dangerous road to go down.

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The ultimate sacrilege -- censoring Shakespeare

Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance claims he has to edit Shakespeare plays to remove 'antisemitic' lines.

The British actor and former artistic director at the Globe Theatre in London said he feels compelled to cut certain parts which have taken on more 'resonance' since the Holocaust.

Rylance, who plays Thomas Cromwell in the hit BBC drama, was speaking at the Globe where he unveiled a copy of Shakespeare's first folio - recently found in France.

'From what I know of talking to scholars, our own practices are not different from what they did at the time.

'If you went out and played in a puritan town in the north of England, you took out some of the things that were going to offend those people.'

Professor John Jowett of The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham said: 'Anti-Semitism is a fact of the early modern culture in which Shakespeare lived, worked, and thought, and he was not exempt from it.

'Critics have often remarked on his sensitive and to some extent sympathetic presentation of Shylock, but there is always an element of special pleading.

Shylock is a Jewish moneylender

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This is ridiculous.  There is a famous scene in "The Merchant of Venice" (Act 3 scene 1) which is widely held to be a plea by Shakespeare for Jews to be treated equally:

"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the  rest, we will resemble you in that".

Young woman forgets that only blacks can use the n-word

Kate Moss's model sister has been forced to apologise after sending an 'ill thought-out' tweet using the N-word.  Lottie Moss, 17, took to her account at 4am last night to tweet a lyric from Chris Brown's song Loyal which includes the offensive word.

She went on to tell her 7,000 followers how it had been a 'successful night' because she had thrown a drink over her ex-boyfriend.

The tweet, sent at 4am, featured a lyric from a Chris Brown song which included the offensive word

She tweeted: 'I just want a monkey,' adding afterwards: 'When a rich n***a want ya and ur girl can't do nothing for ya'.

A spokesman for the model told MailOnline that Lottie was 'hugely apologetic'.  She said: 'Lottie unfortunately made an ill-thought out use of a song lyric, and she is hugely apologetic if any offence has been caused.'

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Another quarrel with reality and history

Leftists seem to believe that if you don't think about it, it will go away

A tourist attraction popular with children has sparked fury by displaying a model railway version of Auschwitz complete with cattle trucks, labourers' huts and barbed wire.

A Holocaust survivor was among those to criticise Birmingham's Wonderful World of Trains and Planes for the 'crass' miniature railway set of the infamous concentration camp.

The static train set is a dark addition to the intricate village green, mountain and woodland rail layouts at the venue, which is popular with children and model enthusiasts.

The detailed model of Auschwitz, where at least 1.3million people were slaughtered during the Second World War, shows a train entering the Nazi death camp.

The model of the camp where around a million Jews were murdered is situated next to a 1930s seaside scene and Swinging Sixties London in the tourist attraction.

The exhibit claims it 'will take you on a journey of adventure past, present and future'.

Mala Tribich, a survivor of both Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps who now gives talks on the traumatic experiences, also criticised the model railway.

The 84-year-old said: 'What are they trying to say? They used trains in wartime and trains played a very big part in the Holocaust, they could not have done what they did without trains.

'They were moving millions of people, but then you have to show the whole exhibition in a different context. As it is, it is useless, frivolous, even.'

Visitor to the attraction Simon Hardy said: 'It's just unthinking and crass. Totally bizarre, those are the only words for it.

Peter Smith, managing director of Birmingham's Wonderful World of Trains and Planes, defended the piece and said it had proven popular with visitors.

He said: 'It's gone down very well. I have seen people in tears as they realise that without the trains the Holocaust would not have happened.

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Former Conservative candidate quits the party after calling feminists 'left-wing lesbo-groupies' on Twitter

Feminists are indeed generally Leftist and a lot of feminists are admitted lesbians so the man's biggest fault was realism

A former Conservative candidate has resigned from the party after calling a group of feminists 'left-wing lesbo-groupies' on social media.

Nick Morris, who describes himself as a Conservative 'activist', went on to call them 'cretins' in a later tweet.

He made the comments in response to a post by feminist campaigner @LiraelClayr who was tweeting about a campaign against male violence towards women. 

In the tweet, Mr Morris, who stood as a Conservative candidate for Sheffield Richmond in the 2004 Sheffield City Council elections said: 'Frankly I really dont care what you and leftwing lesbo-groupies think.'[sic]

Following a backlash on Twitter, Mr Morris hastily deleted the offensive tweets and his account. He later issued a statement apologising for his remarks.

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2 Broke Girls slammed for Aboriginal joke

The popular American comedy show was called out by Aussie viewers for the offensive remark, which occurred during the first five minutes into the season 4 episode titled “And the Fun Factory”.

In the scene a male character reveals that he has been flirting with an Australian girl online and says: “She’s part Aboriginal, but she has a great personality!”

Unhappy viewers took to social media, with former Nine personality and The Block contestant Chantelle Ford just one of the many to voice her disgust.

“They were inferring that Aboriginal means inferior. The other characters laughed like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.”

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Aborigines are generally very "disadvantaged" so the joke was just a bit of realism.

Clothing manufacturer forced to apologise for putting jokey 'Give it to your mum - it's her job' on washing label



An Italian clothing manufacturer has been accused of sexism after selling fashion items complete with washing instructions reading: 'Give it to your mum - it's her job'.

Politician Federica Mazzoni, who works at the equality commission at the legislative assembly in the country's Emilia-Romagna region, was incensed when a friend bought a cardigan for her son from the Shoeshine clothing brand and found the offensive label.

Ms Mazzoni, 28, has now lodged a formal complaint with Italy's advertising council the IAP - although the company that distributes Shoeshine clothing, Unipersonale, has dismissed the controversial washing instructions as 'a simple joke aimed at teenagers'.

Beneath a list of ordinary washing instructions including 'Machine wash cold' and 'Do not dry clean' the Democratic Party MP found the English language instruction: 'Or give it to your mum, it's her job'.

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Must not compare Greece to a kebab

The BBC has been criticised for stereotyping by using a kebab to explain Greece's potential exit from the eurozone. 

The news report explores how Greece might leave the EU - the so-called 'Grexit' - by comparing Greece to a kebab.

It comes as eurozone finance ministers are gathering in Brussels for make-or-break talks that could see Greece break away from the EU.

In the report by BBC journalist Dougal Shaw, he says: 'To understand this let's think of a more familiar kind of Greek exit. Let's do it with one of the Mediterranean's finest exports, the kebab.

Viewers took to Twitter to criticise the BBC saying it was stereotyping by using the analogy of the kebab.  Steve Giddens, a journalist, said: 'Grexit explained with a kebab - nice to see the BBC are not succumbing to racial stereotyping.'

University professor and author Stephen Westland wrote on: 'Greek euro exit explained - with kebab. Quite a pathetic analogy. You can do better BBC!'

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Krispy Kreme have dangerous initials



Doughnut chain Krispy Kreme has apologised after bizarrely branding a half-term club KKK Wednesday - the same initials used by the US race hate group the Ku Klux Klan.

A billboard at the Hull branch advertised the outlet's half-term Krispy Kreme Klub 'KKK Wednesday'.

But after details appeared on social media the company faced complaints that the initials were the same as the racist group, the Ku Klux Klan.

Krispy Kreme created KKK Wednesday with the store in St Stephen's Shopping Centre, Hull as part of a calendar of activities designed to keep kids occupied during half term.

The club will allow youngsters a chance to decorate their own doughnuts and also other activities.

Krispy Kreme issued a formal apology and said: 'Krispy Kreme apologises unreservedly for the inappropriate name of a customer promotion at one of our stores.

'This promotion was never intended to cause offence. All material has been withdrawn and an internal investigation is currently under way.'

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NZ Pork producers under fire for jocular advertising campaign which calls on men to 'give mums a night off cooking'

A new advertisement campaign telling men to 'man up, put on an apron' in order to 'give mums a night off' is under fire for pushing an outdated and sexist message.

The intention behind New Zealand Pork's television and Facebook ads appear to have been to send up sexism, stating: 'there are more women in New Zealand's workforce today than ever before but men are still not putting on an apron and doing their share of cooking'.

However it clearly backfired, with social media users taking to Twitter and Facebook to criticise the campaign, dubbing it 'sexist' and an 'embarrassment'.

Recipe names include the likes of 'your big pork balls', with a glossary definition for the words 'recipe book' being 'the thing your wife stands on to reach things'.

One of the instruction for a Pork Belly recipe states: 'Throw it in a 170 degree oven and watch a Grand Slam Final of women's tennis (roughly 30 minutes)' while the other instructions measure time in how long it takes to drink a beer - 15 minutes, according to the ad.

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Marquette’s dangerous subversion of free speech

Marquette University is a private, coeducational, Jesuit, Roman Catholic university located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  They seem to have strange ideas about what tenure and academic freedom mean

Marquette University plans to fire tenured political science professor John McAdams for criticism of a graduate student and philosophy instructor published on his blog.

Marquette is a private university, and thus is not bound directly by the First Amendment. Despite this, Marquette makes various promises of free speech and academic freedom to students and faculty that hold it to standards similar, if not equal, to those of a public university. And Marquette has been consistently backwards on free speech throughout McAdams’s case. While refusing to defend his free speech rights in the context of his private blog, for instance, Marquette has argued that graduate students, by the very virtue of being graduate students, have a right to be free from public criticism, an argument that does not withstand basic scrutiny.

Primarily, however, I want to focus on Marquette’s most dangerous argument, which is that McAdams himself bears direct responsibility for the harassing and threatening communications received by graduate student and philosophy instructor Cheryl Abbate from third parties after McAdams published his criticisms.

McAdams, of course, had no control over what unidentified third party individuals sent to Abbate. Yet Marquette justified revoking McAdams’s tenure in part by arguing that he “knew or should have known that [his] Internet story would result in vulgar, vile, and threatening communications” and that he thus bore responsibility for them.

On this point we cannot be too clear: Marquette’s logic is entirely divorced from basic notions of free speech. As Robert Shibley put it in FIRE’s press release, “A fundamental principle of our society is that you aren’t responsible for how unrelated and possibly unhinged third parties react to your speech.”

If bloggers like McAdams become vicariously liable for what others say or do in response to their writing, free speech as we know it ceases to exist, and industries like journalism immediately collapse under the weight of their collective liability. .”

The threats Abbate received from others are reprehensible. But McAdams is simply not responsible for them. If Marquette fires McAdams based on its profoundly misguided notions of free speech, it will have ended a lot more than McAdams’s professional career: It will have ended free speech and academic freedom at Marquette in any meaningful form.

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Abbate is a far-Leftist who says that  things like homosexual marriage are so obviously right that they must not be  discussed or challenged in her class.  A conservative student objected to that and McAdams publicized it.  So the university is backing up her censorship with more censorship.  The "tolerant" Left just cannot tolerate disagreement with their beliefs.  Rather like Muslims.

And a Catholic university going to extreme lengths to defend homosexuality is rich.  Would the Pope be allowed to address homosexuality there?  Apparently not.  Most nominally Catholic colleges in America seem to have lost their Catholicism long ago.  If I were a Catholic, I think I would be offended that they still represent themselves as Catholic.  It's false pretences.

No free speech about transgender people in Britain

Mary Beard says she was left 'wanting to cry' after she was bombarded with abuse for speaking out in favour of free speech.

The celebrated academic joined other campaigners in calling on universities not to ban speakers perceived to be hostile to transgender people.

But just hours after a letter - signed by Professor Beard and many others including gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell - was published, she faced a torrent of abuse on Twitter.

The original letter claimed it was 'illiberal and undemocratic' for universities to ban lecturers and academics deemed 'transphobic', meaning prejudiced against transsexual people.

But the letter sparked an angry backlash from some in the transgender community and Professor Beard was later branded an 'unrepentant bigot' and Mr Tatchell was called a 'parasite'.

 Mr Tatchell, 63, said he has received more than 5,000 messages attacking him since the letter was published, some of which, he said, were threatening.

He told the Independent: 'On Saturday night, after the first attacks started, I couldn't sleep. I was so upset about being misrepresented as an anti-trans bigot.

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An innocent joke heavily punished

The nastiness of the Left on display

A PR consultant has revealed how a tweet she sent to amuse her 170 followers ended up making her a global hate figure and ruined her life.

Justine Sacco's ill-thought-out message, sent before she boarded a flight to South Africa in December 2013 read: 'Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!'

It cost the 30-year-old from New York her job and her reputation after it was re-tweeted by tech blogger Sam Biddle to his 15,000 followers.

Tens of thousands of people responded in outrage accusing Justine of being ignorant and racist and calling for her to be sacked from her role as the senior director of corporate communications at IAC.

People continued to troll her and more dirt was dug from her deleted Twitter account with BuzzFeed posting an article called '16 Tweets Justine Sacco Regrets'.

Now more than a year on, Justine has spoken of the negative impact the incident has had on her life and how she never intended the tweet to be taken literally.  'I thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it was literal.'

'I had a great career, and I loved my job, and it was taken away from me,and there was a lot of glory in that. Everybody else was very happy about that,' she said.

She added that it has also ruined her love life: 'I'm single; so it's not like I can date, because we Google everyone we might date. That's been taken away from me too.'

Justine told Jon that she realised she 'couldn't sit at home and watch movies every day and cry and feel sorry for myself' forever and she needed to 'make steps to reclaim my identity and remind myself of who I am'.

As a result, she now has a new job and is wary of what she shares on social media.

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Lightning flashes incorrect

A University students' union has been forced to apologise after using a Nazi SS victory symbol to advertise a German-themed drinking event.

Dozens of students at Aberystwyth University complained after spotting the resemblance between the double lightning bolt on the Bierkeller advert and the Siegrune used by Hitler's bodyguard.

University chiefs insisted the logo was accidentally used to separate Welsh and English text on the poster for the sold-out night and removed it from the Facebook event.

But students branded the organisers 'insensitive and inappropriate' for using a poster which glorified the brutal fighting force responsible for the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity.

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"Girl" is a dangerous word

From national security to education, and from the corporate boardroom to raising children, the PC police are in full force. Becoming more emboldened every time their actions go unopposed, they now espouse a “one-up” mentality to outdo their comrades with the next outrageous act. And their momentum continues unabated, common sense and the Constitution be damned.

Consider these recent events:

 The president of the Professional Golfers Association of America, Ted Bishop, was fired for “insensitive gender-based” statements — codespeak for completely innocuous remarks — prompting the PGA to issue a nauseating response: “We must demand of ourselves that we make golf both welcoming and inclusive to all who want to experience it. ... We apologize to any individual or group that felt diminished, in any way, by this unacceptable incident.”

And what did Bishop say that was so heinous? He took issue with comments made by British golfer Ian Poulter criticizing Ryder Cup golf captains Nick Faldo and Tom Watson. Bishop tweeted that Poulter was a “Lil Girl,” while, on Facebook, Bishop wrote: “Tom Watson and Nick Faldo ... get bashed by Ian Poulter. Really? Sounds like a little schoolgirl squealing during recess.”

If you’re waiting for the bombshell language, sorry to disappoint, but there isn’t any. In other words, a top executive was canned for calling someone a squealing school girl in a tongue-in-cheek social media post.

Who in their right mind could possibly feel “diminished” by that? And what do Bishop’s comments have to do with being, or not being, “welcoming” or “inclusive?” What does that even mean? Have these people lost their minds from hanging out in the clubhouse bar too long?

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Copenhagen: the bloody, murderous denial of free speech

Another month, another murderous assault on those who believe in and exercise the freedom of speech. Today’s shooting at a free-speech debate in a cafe in Copenhagen may not have been as bloody as the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in January: according to reports, one person is dead, and the cartoonist who was presumably the target – the Muhammad-mocking Swede Lars Vilks – survived. But the intent seems to have been the same: to punish those who blaspheme, who dare to say offensive things, who refuse to bend the knee at the altar of PC and instead either say and draw scurrilous stuff or defend the right of others to do so. In the second decade of the 21st century, a couple of hundred years since those dark days when it was the norm in Europe for the spouters of strange or ‘wicked’ or simply unpalatable things to be executed, a fashion for killing the free-speaking seems once again to be stalking the continent.

What is especially disturbing about the shooting in Copenhagen is that it was an assault not only on Islam-ridiculing cartoonists — which would be, and has been, heinous enough — but on what seem to be ordinary, engaged citizens, keen to discuss the value of freedom of speech. This gathering of people, who had come to hear not only Vilks but also the French ambassador to Denmark, who was speaking about the post-Charlie Hebdo situation, found themselves under a hail of bullets simply for taking part in a debate on ‘Islam, blasphemy and free speech’. This should feel chilling to everyone who is interested in public debate and the liberty to think and say and discuss what we please. For now, even those of us who aren’t especially interested in drawing cartoons of Muhammad, but who do want to speak and argue in favour of other people’s absolute freedom to do so, find ourselves to be potential targets. Today, it seems, it isn’t only the exercise of freedom of speech that can earn you summary punishment; so, too, can simply thinking about freedom of speech.

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