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No amusing quips or funny videos here, but an interview I found particularly interesting, regarding honor and how who is considered a hero these days has greatly changed:
Here are a few very interesting points, particularly the ones about the statue in Trafalgar Square of Alison Lapper Pregnant.
One such alternative to traditional honor culture is to be found in the exaltation of victimhood. The statue of “Alison Lapper Pregnant†placed among British war heroes is a good illustration of how the cult of the victim consciously seeks to supplant more traditional ideas of honor. Several people pointed out at the time that Admiral Nelson lost an arm, and an eye, and was eventually killed in the service of his country, but he was honored not because of what he had suffered but because of what he had achieved, which was the defeat of the Napoleonic navy and the establishment of British maritime supremacy for a century afterwards. The enshrinement of an image of Lapper in the same precincts is a deliberate statement of the contrary principle that it is victimhood alone which is worthy of honor. Lapper herself made the point when she compared herself favorably to Nelson by saying, “At least I didn’t get here by slaying people.†No, indeed! But national greatness and autonomy, which are invariably the products of slaying people, are correspondingly devalued and denigrated.
I’m not sure what you folks here think, but this is something I’ve had on my mind for a while now. It’s like that female soldier who was killed in teh Gulf recently recieved loads of press coverage about her life and how she’d died and how she’d been an inspiration to everyone and courageous blah, blah, blah. But then you had that guy who won the Victoria Cross for driving into an ambush twice, getting wounded in the head at the same time to save his fellow soldiers gets less press coverage.
It’s almost like people who genuinely do heroic things are somehow considered an embarassment 😕
Anyone else notice this, or am I going crazy?
I suspect the glorification of the female soldiers has more to do with the American military spinning the death of a woman (which always seems to appear more shocking to the domestic audience, and thus maybe stimulate the increasingly anti-war stance back in the USA) and rather less to do with a general denigration of the traditional hero..
And yeah..you are bonkers, clearly
i dont hink it has anything about embarrasment but in fact due to political fucking correctness. i get unbelievably wound up by the “we must be seen to be doing the right thing” shit. fuck ’em, if its worthy of news or in this case a statue then fine, but dont put a damn statue of a non-war hero in the same location.
im not saying i dont think that this woman has done an amazing thing and has achieved things that are clearly very hard for her. but please, she didn’t fight the French or any one of our other numerous hsitorical foes so why on earth place a non war memorial in a location surrounded by others. feel free to commemorate her achievements but not there.
as for the female soldier that was killed, this to me is a whole different ball game, women have been dying while in the service of their country, while in the military, oss, WRENS, auxillary services for years. it nothing bloody new. if they have done something during combat/war that justifies a medal for their valour then great, good on them and they should be celebrated for their acts of bravery and remembered for such actions. but dont bllody well go around making heroes just for the sake of it, if she did indeed show great heroism great, but theres no need to go around making every woman a martyr just because they died in conflict.
i apologise if this offends people but the whole political correctness nonsense/equality has been taken way beyond what it should be.
anyway rant over, please go back to reading another post that is slightly less controversial and definately funnier :p
lest we forget the women of WW2 who fought vallianty with the resistence movements across occupied Europe…..
The courage of women like Violet Szabo who fought and died at the hands of the Germans should never be forgotten.thankfully we finally have a statue dedicated to those women in Whitehall…..
http://clutch.open.ac.uk/schools/emerson00/soe_szabo.html
http://www.violette-szabo-museum.co.uk/foyer.htm
This is just one of many incredible women who served without any thanks during the war……..i agree with hippo, whilst that lady has shown courage to face her disabilities, its totally shadowed by what these women achieved at a time of real oppression.
This is just one of many incredible women who served without any thanks during the war……..i agree with hippo, whilst that lady has shown courage to face her disabilities, its totally shadowed by what these women achieved at a time of real oppression.
I agree with you guys about the war heroines, but I’m going to have to disagree about Alison Lapper.
When I was at school we got involved with that ‘children of courage’ thing, when they hand out awards to brave children. For our assignment we learned about two ‘children of courage’ who’d lived in Sudan and their parents had been killed. They left their country to live in the UK and recieved and award for being ‘children of courage’.
I got told off in class because I asked what they’d done to be so brave, and when I was told they’d lived in a country at war and their parents had been killed I asked if all kids from Sudan were children of courage?
So are all pregnant pyhsically handicapped women ‘courageous’, because there’s an awful lot of them? So what makes Allison Lapper so special?
In my opinion that statue in Trafalgar Square isn’t about ‘courage’, it’s about pity, just like those ‘children of courage’. Most were just children we felt sorry for. Incidentally, another child of courage was an 11 year old boy who saved his brother from being mauled by an alsatian dog by wrapping a bike chain around its neck until it let go. But clearly he wasn’t ‘courageous’ enough for us to do a project on at our school.
The kind of courage I think we should be celebrating is when you put yourself in harms way to save or help others, the kind of thing the emergency services do everyday. With these ‘children of courage’ or handicapped people, we are calling them courageous or brave or heroic for simply existing.
Check out this website My Hero. See how many heroes are there who you think deserve to be called ‘heroes’. Oh BTW, one of the heroes is Heather Mills McCartney and another one is Adam Sandler and also Peter Jackson. The man who directed ‘Meet the Feebles’ is on parr (heroically) with Ernest Shackleton (one of the few people there who deserves the title).
Most of the people on the site have done selfless things to help other people, but that doesn’t make them heroic, it makes them pretty fucking wonderful people, but not heroic.
Like they say the film ‘The Incredibles’, “if everybody’s a hero, then no-one is.”
“And so ended Neon’s long, ranting post that seemed really bitter, mainly because he’d only just got home from work and was probably tired. But it was 13 hour shift with only one break, and that made him a hero.”
guess your right there neon, i shall retract the word courage and replace it with determination….. 😉
And in case there is any doubt, i too think there is no need for that statue in Trafalgar Square and at the risk of getting shot down i will go so far as to say there is no reason to have a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square either!!! Why should we have a statue of some guy who has no association with the UK ? So he done fine by his Country, to some he’s a convicted terrorist, to others a freedom fighter………the same could perhaps be said of Martin McGuiness or Bobby Sands!
WeT dons flame proof suit and awaits his fate! 😉
@=XDC= wild egg tamer wrote:
guess your right there neon, i shall retract the word courage and replace it with determination….. 😉
And in case there is any doubt, i too think there is no need for that statue in Trafalgar Square and at the risk of getting shot down i will go so far as to say there is no reason to have a statue of Nelson Mandela in Trafalgar Square either!!! Why should we have a statue of some guy who has no association with the UK ? So he done fine by his Country, to some he’s a convicted terrorist, to others a freedom fighter………the same could perhaps be said of Martin McGuiness or Bobby Sands!
WeT dons flame proof suit and awaits his fate! 😉
Oh my dear WET,
That wasn’t a rant at you but and the faceless PC brigade, and probably a little bit at my emergency boss Anne, who managed to offer to help me with a PC move and then proceeded to double the amount of work I’d need to do. Gawd bless her.
I agree with the Mandela stuff too.
Uh oh. I’ve found another website dealing with Heroic Stories
But wait, let’s see what Heroic Stories are about:
HeroicStories do not have to be about life-and-death struggles! In fact, most aren’t. Heroes aren’t just people who dive into rivers to save others: they’re regular people who go out of their way to help someone else without expecting something in return. Or, as the first story below shows, they’re very very busy people who still have time to help someone else!
WTF? Heroes ARE just the sort of people who dive into rivers to save people, if you go out of yourt way to help somebody else, then you’re a nice, kind, decent person, not a hero! Bah!
I feel a fit of rage coming on for little or no apparent reason. GRRRRRR! Curse my lack of sleep!
i agree with 99% said here including the nelson mandela thing , yeah decent enough person – but in honesty did s.f.a for this country
just though i’d show my support
*runs away*
Good discussion !
they’re regular people who go out of their way to help someone else without expecting something in return. Or, as the first story below shows, they’re very very busy people who still have time to help someone else!
Well, I’m constantly helping people even though I’m very very busy, and I never expect something in return, so I’m a hero ?!
Excellent, I’ll have a think about where my statue should go !I’m definitely in agreement with the opinions already expressed.
To me Heroes are people who have done feats of courage and risked/sacrificed their lives for others.I think we live in an age where people are being blinded by being PC and trying to elevate things of mediocrity. Hence we have Actors who earn millions donating a few thousand to charity being seen as heroes. We have footballers being regarded as heroes and worshipped when all they do is play a game each week ( albeit quite well ) for up to £130 000 a week. You have singers, sportstars and actors being awarded knighthoods, but yet the true heroes who risk their lives to save others hardly mentioned.
Welcome to the world we live people !Interesting thread – good points by all I reckon. Im not sure about the aquare – is it solely war heroes or is there a variety of statues? If the former then the Lapper thing does sound a bit stupid… if there is already a mish mash of different icons I dont really have any objections…. art should stimulate discussion… I think the placing of her statue there is pretty armless really 🙂
See what I did there?
errrr, why has the layout of this thread gone tits up ?
very odd!! 😕
Anyhows, neon, i didn’t once think you were having a dig mate…….so no worries there!
I too have done selfess things….i lost an hours work the other day to return a mobile phone to a young lady who left it in my cab……she was leaving from Paddington to go to Bristol so i ended up waiting for her so she could have her phone back………phone returned, 1 hours money lost…..any reward ? nope!! does it matter ? Not really!! it helped her out and made me feel good……..
So if you would be so kind, i’l have my statue sited midway across Waterloo bridge looking across to the city…..many thanks. 😉
I picked up a fella the other day who served in Oman during the 70’s and saw action at the battle of Mirbat
http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Desert_song/Mirbat.htm
I was genuinely gobsmacked to be talking to the fella and my only regret is that the journey wasn’t longer and that i didn’t bring it up earlier…..hopefully i’l pick the guy up again one day 🙁
I was taking him to the special forces club, and we got chatting about the ladies of F.A.N.Y, an acronym for Field Auxillery Nursing Yeomanry, these were the ladies who i wrote about earlier, the name FANY was given to them as a cover for their presence in occupied France at the time. The guy was telling me how he see’s these little old ladies there; all in the mid-late 80’s and is still in awe of the work they done during the war! He mentioned Hereford and “the regiment” a few times so it was obvious who he was talking about…….it was only towards the end of the journey that i asked him his story and he told me about his 10 years in the army, 5 of which were with “the regiment” and that his personal war was Oman…I’m gutted i didn’t get to ask him about Mike Kealey or the feathermen; a group of individuals hired to track a group of assasins apparently deployed to kill senior SAS personnel, one of which was Mike Kealey who served in Oman…….the official records state that Mike Kealey died of exposure in the Breacon Beacons doing a selection excercise with potential SAS recruits but the story is that the feathermen got hold of the guy, injected him with something (he was diabetic) and left him out to die from exposure, knowing that the effects of whatever the injection was would render him powerless to do anything.
The book was written by Sir. Ranulph Fiennes who served in Oman himselfhttp://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747510490/026-3363521-5027617
Sorry, i’ve gone off on a slight tangent but by the very nature of what these guys done in Oman in the 70’s, the goverment obviously had to keep it quiet so no medals were awarded at the time and many think that the Fijian SAS trooper Sgt. Talaiasi Labalaba should have been awarded the VC for his actions…..once again an unsung hero.
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