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David Starkey calls Emily Maitlis ‘disgraceful’
Historian comes out fighting as Ofcom declines to investigate Newsnight over ‘racist’ comments
TV HISTORIAN David Starkey has called BBC presenter Emily Maitlis "disgraceful" after Ofcom refused to investigate complaints that he made racist comments on an edition of Newsnight.
Ofcom received 103 complaints from members of the public after Starkey said during a debate on Newsnight following the August riots "the problem is that the whites have become black".
Fellow television personalities also put the boot in, with Piers Morgan saying: "RIP David Starkey's TV career. And good riddance. Racist idiot."
But Ofcom declined to investigate Newsnight because "the effect of [Starkey's] comments was limited by the presenter's moderation of the item and his comments were countered by the views of other contributors".
Starkey, however, is far less complimentary of Maitlis's moderating skills.
"I thought that Maitlis was a disgraceful chairman," he told The Daily Telegraph. "Are chairmen supposed to attack one of the panellists?
"The question we were supposed to be answering was whether the riots were testimony to some sort of major cultural change in Britain. And I tried to answer that question.
"Nothing that I said on air could conceivably be construed as racist, but there is this hysteria about race. We have this situation in which we can't talk about it rationally or sensibly."
Starkey also rounded on those who attacked him in August, among them Labour leader Ed Miliband and Tory MP Lousie Mensch, saying: "You know yourself by your enemies, and I'm quite happy with mine. Isn't it wonderful that I was attacked by Piers Moron, Louise Mensch and Ed Millipede?" ·
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I caught part of the discussion on Newsnight and he was the embodiment of self-righteous xenophobia.
I read around on both sides of this before actually just watching it to see what Starkey said, in his own words. Being the contrarian that I often am, I was prepared to come down on his side, but I find I have to come down against him.
He made at least five erroneous assumptions: 1) that there is only one kind of "black"; thereby lumping people from Jamaican, Trinidadian, Nigerian, Somali, etc. backgrounds into one group 2) that there is only one kind of "black culture" - that of mugging, drug dealing etc and so on and that these things are exclusive to "black culture"; I went to school with black kids whose parents would have come down on them like a ton of bricks if they'd gotten mixed up with those sorts of activities. 3) that those activities are inseparable from certain aesthetics - gangsta rap, graffiti, urban slang and dialect (he mistakenly called it "Jamaican patois", which is something different again) 4) that those aesthetics were a primary cause of the attitudes which led to the riots and 5) that to "sound white" is to be rational, intelligent, educated and well-spoken, implying that "sounding black" is the negation of these qualities.
Mr. Starkey rather than being a true representative of an academic is an anachronism. He stands out because he speaks inelegantly about subjects that 1) aren't true and 2) the premises that he uses are outdated and outmoded.
I haven't listened to his rants about cross cultural mixing but one thing is certain, this kind of thinking is what leads to prejudice and bigotry of the highest order. His is one of the reasons that I left the Southern US for better more reasonable thinking parts of our country.