Mark_Chid

No I'm saying that all English mobs are made up of the working class, but that only a small fraction of the working class join such mobs.

I'm a bit surprised you didn't understand that.

Mark_Chid

This racist Southerner is a stereotype, based on reality, however adding the word ALL into the equation turnms it into prejudice. Even 'most' is wrong. The correct word would be 'many'.

An accurate stereotype will tell you that a Southerner is MORE LIKELY to be a racist than a New Yorker - I would consider that pretty undeniable.

Mark_Chid

Its an observable truth. You will not be able to find a counter-example. I speak from within the british working class, I know my own culture.

The idea of a middle class mob is pretty laughable

Jane Bovary

I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something very middle class and white about the whole phenomenon, which I find very artificial and hypocritical.

I think Mark is right...it's much more a working class phenomenum and it's not stupidity...but ignorance.
I suspect too, that finding ways to unleash frustration and anger is a more pressing reality for those who struggle more on the economic scale.

Mark_Chid

Well - its mostly ignorance, but there is certainly a link between ignorance and stupidity - stupid people are more likely to be ignorant and hence are more likely to react in such a way. There are stupid people in all social classes, its just that this is something stupid working class people do with their spare time

Jane Bovary

*lol*...hmmmmm. I wonder what stupid middleclass people do with their spare time?

Write fatuous dissertations on discussion boards...?

echidna

Arrowman

Well, rolled umbrellas make for really bad torches, for a start

case

I think now might be a good time to define what we mean by stupidity. If I may be so bold, I would assume that by stupid we mean people who would win a Darwin Award, or who have trouble understanding that 2+2=4 (excluding graduate students in logic who have turned their brains into something resembling super-heated Play-Dough).

Are stupid people more likely to be ignorarnt? Yes, I would agree with this. Are the English working class stupid? Some yes, but so are plenty of the middle and upper-class (our president would be a good example). Are they ignorant? Depends on what we are talking about. Maybe the average working class Englishman couldn't explain how evolution works, but I doubt your average middle-classer could explain how the engine in his car works. Second that for the upper-class. And it might be worth pointing out here that for most of the world, knowing how to fix an engine is much more important then knowing about natural selection (and I just know I'm going to get reemed for that statement).

Now, back to the original argument: Is the outcry over these girls mainly due to stupid working-class people? Well, let's see...if we assume this, then I think we should assume that stupid working-class people also includes newspaper and television journalists (after all, it was these people who brought this to national attention in the first place), police officers, tabloid yellow journalists, the reporters that continued to give coverage to the outcry, the girls' families and friends, and various politicians.

If we can include all those people under the heading of stupid working-class people, then yes, I would agree that they are the cause of the mass hysteria that has swept the nation. That's one hell of a heading though, and one that I can't quite swallow.

(It has occured to me that this thread is dangerously close to turning into a socio-economic pissing contest. Not that anyone is out of line, but I think that if it continues in this spirit, we might want to move it over to RRP, or start a new thread. Either way, I'm game.)

Mark_Chid

The papers that feed the frenzy, the Sun, the News of the World etc are targetted at a certain type of working class readership by journalists who know what sells, whether or not they believe it.

The original point was the hysteria over Holly & Jessica. That exists in the trashy tabloid press, not the Times or the Guardian. this isn't because the JOURNALISTS think differently, its because the people they aim the stories at do.

The thing you have to remember is I AM working class. I grew up in a rented house, my father a bricklayer my mother a school cook. I went to the football at weekends, went to a comprehensive school etc etc. I don't have a middle class up ringing, I'm talking about the worst elements of my own kind, its not snobbery!