I love newspapers and rue their demise in the face of the Internet’s news immediacy, nevertheless they don’t help their survival by pandering to every nutter offence-taking complainant who calls them.
Consider this disgrace by the New Zealand Herald yesterday. It was written by their Health reporter, Emma Russell, doubtless and understandably bored by writing endless bloody coronavirus stories.
Nevertheless Emma deserves having her pants pulled down and copping a damn good caning.
What happened was this.
A new Bay of Plenty coffee roastery opened and whimsically called itself OCD, this standing for “Obsessive Coffee Drinkers”, which a high percentage of us are and derive great pleasure from. All perfectly harmless.
Nevertheless this non-event sparked offence-taking, as always by a female, in this case a 40 year old New Plymouth woman called Francesca Eldridge.
What this sad sack whined about to the newspaper and began an online complain over, was the use of the word “obsessive”.
Francesca apparently suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, thus claimed “It was deeply upsetting and hurtful that a company had chosen to coin their business name from a mental illness that had caused her suffering.”
She babbled on at length in this vein; “feeling suicidal, loss of quality of life, massive impact on her ability to work, socialise and huge impact on my marriage”, none of which surprises.
Plainly she suffers from extreme self-obsession. She’s also either spectacularly ignorant or mad or both and it’s utterly disgraceful that the Herald gave her space.
Can we assume Francesca would have a fainting fit should she hear perhaps the Argentinian rugby captain say in a pre-match interview, the team’s obsessed with beating the All Blacks, which they later claimed, or me saying I’m obsessed with buying books, which I concede, or someone saying they’re obsessed with London, or eating Chinese (their food, not the people) and so on ad-infinitum.
Much more of this and Emma Russell will be combing asylums to pursue new creative complaining opportunities. The Herald publicising this crap simply encourages her as well as annoying its readers.
This non-event catering to the admitted mental problems of the complainant was a disgrace.
18 Comments
Totally agree
I thoroughly enjoy reading your entertaining blogs and totally agree with your sentiments here. Francesca makes a living from her OCD & it seems that NZ Media have accomodated her in the past. I’m not belittling her mental disorder but her outrage is unwarranted and her tolerance level needs a boost.
Hahaha absolutely fantastic post
According to the internet – so it must be true – “Obsessive-complaining disorder (OCD) is a disabling disorder which is characterized by an endless dwelling upon the negative. People with OCD may not be aware of how their protests, criticisms, whining, grumbling or nit picking can affect the joy and enthusiasm levels of those around them.”
Dave Lenny
Bob – on this one I have to totally agree. The lengths to which some people will go to find themselves offended is truly staggering. What’s even worse are the lengths that some people will go to to decide that SOMEONE ELSE is offended by something you or I say and do!!!! A classic example is NON-Muslims stating that Muslims might be offended by someone saying ‘Merry Xmas’ and yet while I worked in Oman the Sultan Centre Shopping Centre in Muscat (a very much Muslim company in a very much Muslim country) far from being offended had a whole section of their shop dedicated to catering for all those expats living and working in Oman who came from Europe, the Philippines, NZ, N. America, Aus etc etc etc etc who wanted to celebrate Xmas. If you don’t believe me below is a link to their on-line advert for this year’s Christmas offerings. It is simply staggeringly beyond belief that non-Muslims OUTSIDE A MUSLIM COUNTRY claim to have apparently superior knowledge than the Muslims themselves and are trying to persuade us that Muslims are offended by Xmas when this link shows the actual extraordinarily tolerant and welcoming and open armed approach that is actually extended by Muslims to those who want to celebrate Xmas IN A MUSLIM COUNTRY. What beggars belief even more is the number of people (including businesses and politicians) who listen to those promulgating this ‘offense’ nonsense and pass laws or discourage us from stating or doing things that might cause this fictitious offensiveness when those actually concerned are not even offended!!!!! This has to be close to the height of insanity!!! See:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VT8g_v03PE
When I skim read the same article this morning I thought it was a dose of ESP – Emotional Social Pandering then I realised that TLA was already taken! 😂
…I think we should all learn to be more deeply “O” fended. You would think somebody in this country might be “O” fended at the $51000000 the government has spent on nothing at Pike river….how many more people will die through lack of money available for health emergencies, bad roading, suicide, child murder, unconsciously biased stasi police….bla bla ??? No we’re “O” fended because somebody used the suggestion a certain word might be used on a shop bloody sign!!
FFS what does that suggest you S B s’ .
Sigh!!!
Cindy and her mob are all obviously sages.
They have for years flagged massive extra spending for mental health issues.
It is obvious they are right. The next candidates for assistance have to be Emma, her Editor in Chief and anyone who agrees with this crap.
I have left Francseca off as she is already costing us 10’s of 1000’s for having a common modern NZ disease namely “sever whining and whinging compulsion”.
O dear Bob- you are almost on the verge of suggesting a bondage session with Francesca will help. I have to advise the canings i got at school were no fun!
I love newspapers too but the media are becoming so “woke.” The Associated Press has changed its style guide saying that people should not use ‘derogatory’ words like ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, ‘nuts’ and ‘deranged’.
The AP says that even using such words in quotation should be avoided where it is not ‘essential to the story’.
In July, it had announced that people following AP style should capitalise the letter ‘b’ in the word ‘Black’, ‘conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community’. Apparently, the lower-case version refers to ‘a colour, not a person’. Yet AP continues to use the lower case for ‘white’.
Bang on sir bob ! I’m particularly pissed as this mole is dragging my hometown New Plymouth into disrepute , I’ve just cancelled my herald subscription this week as I’m tired of reading drivel like this …. feels like it’s open season on white males in this country , and abroad , and I’ve had a guts full .
As consumers we have the power IF we act.
I cancelled the Herald years ago. The direction was obvious then and the editor was making his own news.
Well done. I hope many follow suit sir.
Francesca Eldridge is a registered clinical nutritionist and OCD survivor. Isn’t it obvious to reader, and the NZ herald, this victim, has not fully come to terms with her mental illness.
Her obsessive-compulsive disorder (manifesting through use of the term OCD) renders her the victim. The Coffee business owner demonstrating the of the lack of compassion for the internal agony she and others like her are suffering. Systemic is societies in-compassionate use of the OCD term. This thankfully Franny has exposed this gross injustice. Social Justice for all.
Next step, lets start correcting the the word ” Black”, as in All Black, Black Fern, Tall Black, Black Stick, Socks etc. For that matter also we must seek social justice for the words “White”. Without doubt, these terms are perpetuating the systemic racism we suffer in this country? NZ needs to develop safe space terms which are gender, race, disorder, age, etc neural. There is no place in a civilized society, perpetuating these toxic stereo types, which Franny has thankfully, been brave enough to bring to our public consciousness.
Thanks Francesca and Emma.
Woke well done.
🤣🤣🤣🥂
Novella – “The Last Judgement” – Excellent
Let the silly bastards take offence, but why, invariably, do they find it necessary to give utterance to these feelings.
That they need public acknowledgement of their feelings is most insightful in diagnosing this debilitating mental disorder.
I have Obsessive Compulsive Delight in reading Sir Bob’s articles …
It’s clear this serial complaining whinger doesn’t in fact have OCD. If she truly suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, she would correctly label it CDO.
It’s critical to have the letters in alphabetical order, you see.