I see Stephen Fry has been bantered off with ****.

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Housery.

He's such a delicate little flower, isn't he? And yet he was so unpleasant about God. He didn't mind hurting God's feelings, did he?

[Ashberto]

No-one could say the same for poor Stephen.

What hapened,anyway?

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

One could say that he has been hoist by his own petard there, really.

[Ashberto]

[Monty91]

http://theshake.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/offended.jpg

[Ashberto]

Was he not involved a few twitstorms of his own outrage, though? ISTR...

[Berni]

It essentially seems to be an argument suggesting that a man shouldn't have been given his job because of his religious beliefs (despite the fact that those beliefs do not appear to affect his ability to do his job at all). In short, it is anti-clerical bigotry.

While it's a tired trope to suggest such an article would only ever get written about a Christian and never about a member of any other mainstream religion, it's f**king true.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/bbc-bre akfast-dan-walker-creationist-fact-fiction (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/14/bbc-breakfast-dan-walker-creationist-fact-fiction)

[Monty91]

fervent defender of free speech.

[Berni]

[Monty91]

- naturally, given that I have unmitigated contempt for anyone religious - and ended up thinking the same as you.

[Berni]

http://www.theweek.co.uk/19081/fry-s-twitch-hunt-of-moir-set s-press-freedom-back (http://www.theweek.co.uk/19081/fry-s-twitch-hunt-of-moir-sets-press-freedom-back)

[Monty91]

person whose views you dislike the right to express them.

I think it's great when scum get outed and humiliated for their actions. They are scum. It's what they deserve :shrug:

[Berni]

The bloke has said some pretty anodyne stuff about being part of God's plan and not wanting to work on Sundays and this cow basically wants him sacked.

[Monty91]

article, probably called her a few nasty names and encouraged people to complain about it to the PCC.

Hardly contributing to the death of free speech

[Monty91]

for a nice easy bit of click bait.

Which is fair enough, I'm sure you'd agree. And indeed have in the past, I recall.

[Berni]

you that the clickbait strategy really isn't working, so I think there is reason to believe that, rather than cynically sucking us in, they do actually believe this ****.

[Luis Anaconda]

[Monty91]

Without it they’d lose you as a reader, for starters.

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

:wave: Ash.

[Berni]

with has written something loathesome and inhumane."

He then went on to gloat about (and thus tacitly applaud and encourage) the number of complaints that had been registered on the PCC's website, saying ""The Press Complaints Commission website is down. Sheer volume of traffic. That says something about the strength of feeling I think."

That's both a clear example of someone whipping up the 'offence' industry and encouraging the idea that someone ought to be censured for expressing their opinion.

[Luis Anaconda]

[Monty91]

Yes, I’m sure he had plenty of offence-mongers and free speech objectors riding on the coattails of his comments, but that is n more his fault than a public figure speaking out against immigration indirectly encouraging racists

[Berni]

acolytes would be likely to have? Bull****. He's an intelligent man and was setting out to give Moir and the Mail a good kicking by whatever means necessary. I didn't say he was suggesting censorship, but there are more subtle ways than outright censorship of rendering certain things unsayable and the use of Twitter when you have as many followers as he does is one of them.

[Monty91]

of my ire a good kicking, I might struggle to resist too. And he did then back down and apologise, from the sounds of it.

Don’t your Guardian comments encourage the same? In fact, didn't you and others end up getting the Cologne article taken down, even if that was not your intention?

[Berni]

perpetuity as testament to the writer's idiocy.

What Fry did was - at least initially - whip up a storm against the paper and the writer. That's playing the man, not the ball, which suggests a wider motive than merely taking issue with the views expressed.

[Monty91]

a smaller but not entirely inconsequential scale.

[Berni]

likely to disagree with me than agree. By contrast, Fry knew he was preaching to the converted and tacitly encouraging them to share his outrage and act accordingly.

[Monty91]

The only way to avoid doing so would have been to have not commented at all

[Berni]

because I didn't share the article on Twitter, I simply commented in the place allotted for such comments. At no point did I encourage the ire of others, I merely expressed my own. That is quite different to Fry essentially holding out the article to millions of people and saying 'LOOK WHAT AN AWFUL PERSON THIS WRITER IS!' and then acting all shocked when she gets hounded.

Besides, people like Hinsliff love a rape threat on twitter. It validates them because all dissent can be ignored because one loon wrote a rape threat.