By Enrique Tessieri
Even if Helena Eronen’s boss, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari wants to play down the impact of his aide’s blog entry by claiming that we do not know what satire is, the whole affair exposes something far worrying: It is a new dive into the depths of these shameful political times.
I don’t know what is worse: what Eronen wrote or Hirvisaari’s defense.
As everyone knows, Eronen published a column Wednesday on Uusi Suomi suggesting how foreigners should wear armbands to help the police to distinguish whether the person is a Finn or not.
Hirvisaari wrote on his blog Wednesday evening that the scandal exposed the “ever-evident rot of the [Finnish] media:”
Now, folks, think about it. If an MP says that Finnish media is infested with rot, what words would he spare for immigrants never mind Muslims?
Hirvisaari was fined for hate speech in December.
One of the questions we could ask about what the Eronen scandal reveals is wrong with Finland today and where is it heading?
What do we accomplish by writing and suggesting that foreigners should wear armbands especially during these difficult times? Nothing at all. Instead we do nothing more than promote greater polarization of our society by stressing “us” and “them.”
Much of the persona of the PS as a party relies on promoting “us” and “them.” The racism and prejudice that festers in the PS, and which gets a lot of attention from the media, will destroy it in the end.
But not all agree with Hirvisaari’s take on things. Possibly one positive matters to emerge from this scandal is PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner, who condemned what Eronen wrote.
“I hope that we can distance ourselves totally from these types of writing,” she was quoted as saying on MTV3. “They bring harm to our party and parliamentary group.”
I’m in no way agreeing with the writing of Ms. Eronen, however I have to say it was 100% clear for me that the writing was sarcasm. Maybe in bad taste, but sarcasm nonetheless. If that gets prohibited by a court or a lynch mob mentality shown by the society, free speech is over.
While the readers here are not generally affluent in finnish and might thus miss the nuances, for a iltalehti etc native finn journalist there shouldn’t bee any doubt that the writing was sarcastic. Shame on them for trying to sell their papers by exaggerating the case. But that’s what tabloids do, and she served this to them on a silver platter.
But then we come to you Enrique. I don’t believe you mistook the text to be serious either, but that didn’t stop you from reporting on it as if it was some manifest and connecting it with every right wing evil that comes to mind. (Seiroulsy, mountain effin nazi commandos!)
What do you think of all the commentators here that have clearly taken your message of this Eronen being 100% serious? Do you feel you are somehow contributing positively to your readers’ lives when they read this and think she wrote it seriously? You are a false prophet my friend.
Maybe Mark or Justicedemon as other regulars here can chip in, I’d be glad to hear your opinions on this.
Marian, there are many ways we can look at what Helena Eronen wrote. I personally thought it was in bad taste and she should have thought twice before publishing something like that. One of my biggest gripes about the PS is that they like to polarize society with their views.
The other matter is the PS party which is looking for scapegoat called Eronen who could absolve them of all the bad things like racism as the municipal election nears. Jussi Jalonen writes about this on Uusi Suomi.
You are avoiding the question. Jussi Jalonen’s writing is 100% in line with my interpretation of Eronen’s text. Your’s is not in line with his. You are saying that a possible positive outcome is the condemnation of Eronen by PS, which is completely opposite of what Jalonen is saying.
No Marian, what I am saying is that the PS don’t care either way and are willing to sacrifice Eronen as a scapegoat.
Eronen used to belong to Muutos2011, which is a pretty far-right party when it comes to immigration.
So it seems I should hope for a reply from Mark or Justicedemon before you come straight?
I know very little about Muutos2011 but I had a feeling they were a very mixed bag of ideologies with just suora demokratia in common. You are saying she used to be a member, I’ll take your word for it.
None of this matters though, as the task at hand is Ms. Eronen’s sarcastic writing which you chose to report as she was being dead serious. I repeat, you’re using tabloid tactics. Not to sell a shitty newspaper but to act as a scaremonger. This kind of take the air out of you saying things like this:
What, Mark and JusticeDemon are going to save your view. Good luck.
Muutos2011 is a pretty far-right party created to galvanize anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment in Finland. This direct democracy stuff is a bunch of baloney. Yeah, right, let’s have a referendum to put group x in a ghetto and while we’re at it let’s deny them a basic civil right, religious freedom.
Tabloid tactics? Nice try but no cigar.
None of us on Migrant Tales make a cent out of this. All we do is with our hands in our heart. Nothing “tabloid” about that. That’s what you call principles.
Hi.
The irony of Ms. Eronen message is that Finns start to defend her by stating that her blog is a satire. A sarcastic piece of writing. Thanks very much but, you defenders, you don’t get it, do you!!
It is not you who are to decide whether this message is sarcasm or not. It is us foreigners who are targeted. And we can judge the writings of Ms Eronen as sarcistic, insulting, a joke. We can very well assess this message as such!
Disclaiming is an joke in itself as is the Hirvisaari section of PS.
Marian
As I stated in the previous thread, this is completely out of order. Is this PS flirting with Nazi era Star of David iconography really the image we want to project of ourselves abroard?
Is this the kind of society we want to raise our kids in?
These people think they’re funny but when MY MIXED RACE kids get bullied at school using the hateful fodder their bullies are fed by these PS idiots, it causes real damage.
This is why I find this type of “sarcasm” in extremely bad taste especially after Hakkarainen said that Somalis and homosexuals should deported to Åland, Nazi party member Johanna Tukiainen is still working for Juha Eerola, Halla-aho “joking” that Greece needs a military dictatorship, Jussi Niinistö “joking” that Finland should have armed paramilitary groups to hunt gypsies.
Halla-aho and Hirvisaari have been CONVICTED of hate speech and recently Freddy Wonterghem has been CONVICTED of inciting ethnic hatred.
These are no joking matters!
Eyopener
You have your opinion. To me you are like a living proof of my message to Enrique.
BlandaUpp
At what point did this persons bad sarcasm, that was removed swiftly by the blog operator, turn to represent “ourselves” abroad? All kinds of filthy shit get written everyday all over the world, not even in a sarcastic tone. Do you make up your world view based on that?
Btw. you have that Juha Eerola’s assistant’s name mixed up and I’m not sure Ms. Tukiainen appreciates being called a nazi party member.
Migrant Tales
Yes, I think both Mark and Justicedemon are sensible people. You might be suprised by their view.
I’m not interested in your Muutos2011 talk, like I said I know next to nothing about them. As do 99,9% of Finland.
You have misunderstood my message totally, which seems to be your way of doing things. Keep avoiding the real question.
Actually I would appreciate if that mention of person Tuk… is removed from my message also just to be safe.
Dear Marian.
I took the text of Ms Eronen very very serious. Because in my opnion she was as serious as can be. In contrast of your interpretation I don’t see this as a joke but as a well-planned assault on the integrity of any foriegner in this country.
In contrast to your “frivolity” I consider “sleeving” as an insult on the human right to be foreigner.
Like I have say somewhere else, it is not you who decides what is sarcasm in this case. It is us foreigners. I very much dislike your downplaying of Enrique’s comments.
Must give you a fine feeling to be Finnish, doesn’t it??
You build a lot of your IDEAS of quick-sand like “I know very little about Muutos2011 but I had a feeling they were a very mixed bag of ideologies with just suora demokratia in common.
When you use these lines I would suggest that you inform yourself better.!! And you are very quick to express your agreement with somebody else. Without knowing?? Very simple don’t you think?
Scaremonger?? MT?? What about your no-level accusations of “tabloid approach”. Has Marian the diguise of Ms.Eronen?? With or without Edelweiss!!
Marian
Try to diminish facts all you want, these are facts and she still has her job: http://www.iltasanomat.fi/kotimaa/juho-eerolan-kohuavustaja-ulla-pyysalo-eroaa/art-1288425922440.html
Eyeopener
The amount of sarcasm in the text doesn’t depend on you being a foreigner or not or affluent in finnish or not. The amount of sarcasm understood does.
Hs.fi writes:
Here we see Enrique’s favoured i-do-not-see-the-sarcasm-even-if-it-is-obvious TABLOID antics taken a bit further. Now uusisuomi is a “nationalistic portal”. Convienient ain’t it?
Marian, if you look at the damage her “sarcasm” caused it sure makes her look bad. In order to get so much attention even from abroad you must have done something really wrong.
Here is what Eronen said on YLE in English: “I absolutely did not mean it seriously; it was intended as satire,” Eronen told Yle’s Swedish-language news. She said it was intended as a humorous response to a news story about police stopping foreigners to check their identity papers.
“Of course I can only blame my own ignorance. The strong reactions to it were to be expected,” added Eronen.
If you are white and try to be “sarcastic” about other nationalities, belong to a party like the PS and your boss is none other than James Hirvisaari, you are going to get in hot water.
Blandaupp
I’m not diminishing anything, you just have the name wrong! Check you post!
If it is your kind of sarcasm, then what can I say.
Marian.
Apologies to the much classier Johanna Tukiainen for the naming mixup. Ulla Pyysalo is the Nazi party member who still works for MP Juha Eerola. Glad to be of service¡
Migrant tales
This is like citing yourself as a source. Of course foreign tabloids will translate juicy news and release them without any thought. It doesn’t make it any more true!
From what I read on that Jalonen blog she is not a member of PS. Even if she was, and even if her boss is Hirvisaari it doesn’t matter. You can’t say that membership of a certain party means you are not allowed to be sarcastic!
Enrique I ask you once again. Do you think Jussi Jalonen’s grasp of Finnish language is incomplete when he is saying that what Eronen wrote was humour?
Marian
MT has it about right:
That’s it in a nutshell. Yes, Enrique is a journalist, and as such doesn’t let the scent go when there’s a juicy story in the offering. He makes me squirm sometimes too, Marian, with his bloodhound journalistic instincts and willingness to turn the screw on a public figure. But that’s the game of politics.
And regardless of his or any of the media’s response, this was a totally predictable response, as even Eronen admits, and for good reason. People in public office or in the pay of public servants are held to higher standards of public conduct. Her crassness reflects badly on the party once again. And that’s why they rightly demand that Hirvisaari shows her the door.
She strikes me as arrogant, that she can happily use foreigners as a political football just to get a laugh. I mean, what the hell was her point anyway, can you tell me? It seems to have been submerged under her own satisfaction of caricaturising foreigners. How was this satire supposed to be an intelligent, even if disguised as funny, response to the issue of police profiling foreigners based on race? If there was more coherance to her satire, then perhaps I would appreciate it.
But, there are certain things you do not lampoon, for good reason, and especially if you are within a bargepole of politics – and one of them is the extermination of 6 million + people by the Nazis as an effort of national socialism. You just cannot trivialise that. Unless you are a fool or unless you really are intent on trying to desensitise people to the associations of fascism with mass murder.
Thank you for the ‘sensible’ comment, I appreciate it, even if we agree to disagree about this.
BlandaUpp
Yes that is what I was saying! The Pyysalo charachter is disgusting and 1000 times less classy than Tuksu.
Even so I would as a healthy precaution remove this mix up of names.
Marian
I hope Enrique can edit out the mix up and replace it with the proper name.
Mark
Thanks for a response!
I have to say I got a bit sidetracked here with all the talk of sarcasm and media response. Like I originally said, she got what was expected with that kind of writing. It was in bad taste, but it was sarcasm. I think the biggest failure lies with her, albeit I am very disappointed also with Turun Sanomat that should be a proper newspaper. If you compare theirs with for example Hesari’s article on this, they look like a tabloid.
The thing that made me post in the first place was that Enrique uses that journalistic touch of his for an English speaking audience that has no way to read the sources themselves. Even more so an audience that is potentially gravely insulted. Words are weapons, and Enrique to me is indeed taking advance of this language gap. One would think that PS does enough on their own without a little push by scaremongers? Are the readers of this blog benefitting more from scare tactics than if there were be a more compromising tone?
How about if you’re citing to an audience in a foreign language a text that mentions them in a rotten way, should you be careful to note that it was sarcasm, even if it wasn’t all that amusing?
Seems that we have lots of ignorant people here who either don’t understand Finnish, or doesn’t want to understand it.
So I’m going to help you understand by an example what Eronen actually wrote.
Let’s say someone complains that he has too small house to live in. And other one then responses that “well would it be better to live outside then?”.
That is exactly what Eronen’s writing was about. People complained about police stopping and checking identity of people who looked foreigners. Eronen then humorously asked that “would it be better to mark people with sleeve badges?”
That is very clear to anyone who understands Finnish. But seems that many are commenting just based on the news and haven’t even read the actual writing by Eronen at all. The fact is that Eronen didn’t suggest anything.
Marian
I really don’t know the answer to that. In one sense, i do think that there is no ONE way to do this kind of social activism. Different things touch different people in different ways at different times in our lives. blah blah blah… you get my drift.
I’m really not sure what the readership of this blog is. I spend half my time here responding to very obvious misrepresentations of people that practice a form of extreme cultural pessimism. I really wouldn’t know what the silent majority of readers represent in terms of ideas, or whether they are even foreigners. Maybe they are just mostly skeptics of immigration who want to sharpen their arguments by seeing what their critics have to say. I don’t know. 🙂
The foreigners and Finns I do know that read the blog generally say the same thing – thank God there is at least someone trying to give voice to the interests and rights of immigrants in the face of this public outpouring of skepticism towards immigrants.
This is one thing I will agree on with you Marian. The ‘sarcasm’ angle is part of the story now, and as such, Enrique should probably report on it to give the story a fuller perspective.
Then again, if this reflects Enrique’s tendency to sensationalize a legitimate story, it really is nothing compared to the hysteria being churned out by PS supporters about immigration in Finland. Is there room for a compromising tone? Probably. What are we compromising over though?
I’m still left wondering what Helena’s real point was with the article, satire or no satire! I’m also left wondering why she had that Edelweiss badge on a military cap.
Farang
Why is it humorous? I accept that it’s satire, but that certainly doesn’t make it funny! The hamburger jibe is a cheap shot, especially given the rising obesity rates in Finland. 🙂
Why is it funny to say ‘hey, let’s behave like the Nazis they all think we are and put badges on foreigners’. It’s only funny to a group of PS followers. That’s the problem. This group really do not see what the vast majority of people see – the holocaust is not a joking matter. But hey, we know several of this group of followers are Holocaust deniers anyway. Go figure. So we are to take lessons in satire about the holocaust and fascism from the aide of a politician convicted of hate speech. Just how far do we have to bend to this evidently warped way of looking at the world to give these people the benefit of the doubt?
“Why is it humorous? I accept that it’s satire, but that certainly doesn’t make it funny!”
And why should it be funny? What is the difference in this context? Maybe she is a failure in comedy, who cares? Maybe all the bad writers, or in the context those who once wrote a bad piece, should lose their day jobs too?
“It’s only funny to a group of PS followers. That’s the problem.”
You are wrong. Do you read Finnish? If so, go and check it out yourself from the news comments, forums, blogs etc. The majority of people who thought it funny are not persus. Yeah, I know that scares you, the racism in Finland 😀 I didn’t really get the blog, I didn’t find it funny, I didn’t find it anything. I understood though that it was about people nagging about asking ID’s. I have been asked my ID for no reason (from my view point but I fit the description from the police view point). It’s no reason to cry about and play victim.
But I did find out that some people are hungry for blood. They want to rip this very nice woman (you should read her other entries, she is really, really nice and friendly to ALL) apart. They want her to lose her job even though she is not actually a politician but an assistant which is more like a secretary. The bloodlust is the tragedy in this case.
And there’s more. The big wigs are going to throw her to the wolves. There’s an outrage in Blogistan about that. The persu supporters are really really disappointed that people like Ruohonen-Lerner are so willing to stab their own small people in the back and just discarding them like trash. We Finns have a sore spot for the small people. We don’t like bullies. This case is all about bullying. It’s all about dirty media game. Helena Eronen is collateral damage. I don’t accept that and neither should you.
“But hey, we know several of this group of followers are Holocaust deniers anyway. ”
Like who? You said several, so it should be easy enough to give a quick list?
Did you know that there were no sleeve badges in there but yellow stars in the left chest area and in the back? But hey, give me a lesson in history because in your own words I’m a fascist too and a bigot and a racist and *insert name calling here*. My mistake was linking to stats from a govermental office. Maybe I should lose my job too because those stats were not funny at all?
“So we are to take lessons in satire about the holocaust and fascism from the aide of a politician convicted of hate speech.”
This is interesting. So “the aide” is responsible for the words of his boss? That it so not generalizing. 😀
You are an example to us all why they even do it, convict people with laughable excuses in these politically motivated trials. It’s all about handing people weapons to use as an “argument”. It was hate speech because he was convicted. Yeah, and the prisons in China and North Korean are also known to be full of hate speechers 😀
Eleven
Hey, it was a little more than ‘bad writing’ that would lose her this job. How about a complete lack of political judgement in satirising fascism and the holocaust!
I did read a lot of comments and actually nowhere did I see people identifying their political allegiances.
Yeah, cos I’m such a girl, aren’t I, Elven, and you are the man, THE man!
Gosh, we agree!
Yeah, let’s all be tough and thick-skinned. There are NO victims in this world!
Yikes, you are naive!!!!!!
Yep, because she shows some actual perspective, which most of your lot are completely lacking!
Hup, speaking for the nation again are you Elven! lololol. YOU DON’T LIKE BULLIES! So picking on immigrants who are among the most vulnerable, marginalised and isolated people in society is not actually bullying? But pressurising a political aide from her taxpayer paid job for turning fascism and the holocaust into a subject for satire merely to somehow repost against the criticism of police racially profiling immigrants! Yep, I can see she was just an innocent bystander!!!!!
Elven, no amount of spin will change the fact that she showed a complete lack of sensibility and political judgement. Is that necessary when you work for a politician? I think it is.
“So we are to take lessons in satire about the holocaust and fascism from the aide of a politician convicted of hate speech.”
This is something else. This really is the essence of things. So the facts are related to whom said it. It’s not about truth. It’s not about arguments but the person behind it. Oh wait! It’s not even that! It’s about who is the boss of the person behind it. Is that a some kind of record?
That really explains a lot about your views, Mark, doesn’t it?
Elven
Actually, if I remember right, you didn’t link to anything. You refused to offer a source for your stats. Elven, keep your knickers on, you are just a prat that likes the sound of his own brain cells randomly firing.
No, she’s responsible for her own words. Her bosses conviction for hate speech is just context!
Here we go, time to get personal 🙂 You don’t trust your own legal system? What, cannot face the fact that he was convicted in a court in Finland by his fellow Finns that you have to somehow weave a thread all the way back to Migrant Tales. NOW that’s stretching it just a little, don’t you think!
Pathetic lot of hot air from you, as usual!
Elven
So, it’s the usual tactic from you, drown this blog with lots of drivel presenting itself as reasoned response!
It’s about her words, it’s about the job she was in, it’s about the context of his views and his party. That is why the party wants her out. Even PS agree with us here that her article was completely inappropriate from someone employed in her position. If you don’t like it, go spray your adolescent gripe juice all over their wall!
“How about a complete lack of political judgement in satirising fascism and the holocaust!”
How about she’s not a politician?
“I did read a lot of comments and actually nowhere did I see people identifying their political allegiances.”
That’s your bad, not mine. I read blogs.. a lot. My memory is excellent, well for a fascist bigoting pig anyways. 😀 But to the point, I remember most of the people’s background in the blogs and forums I follow.
“Yeah, cos I’m such a girl, aren’t I, Elven, and you are the man, THE man!”
Da Man, yah man. Actually I’m not. Do you think elves to be a very masculine bunch? But I’m thinking about dwarven fighter next. They are tough, but you can’t tell a woman from a man because they all have beards and nobody even remembers ever seeing a dwarven woman.
“There are NO victims in this world!”
Not in this rate. When everybody is a victim, nobody is a victim. I really would like to save my comdemning to real crimes to the people and acts which deserve it, wouldn’t you? Helena is a very friendly woman and a very popular blogger who doesn’t deserve the kind of witch hunt this modern inquisition is giving her.
“Yikes, you are naive!!!!!!”
Excellent counter argument, just your style, Mark! But I’m childish, not naive (if there’s a difference in English, I don’t know. I like to play, I like “high fantasy”).
“Yep, because she shows some actual perspective, which most of your lot are completely lacking!”
Perspective in what? Playing like politician, teflon coated and all? No, not even that. She’s angering persu supporters who don’t like bullies or people doing the final dirty work for them.
“Hup, speaking for the nation again are you Elven! lololol. YOU DON’T LIKE BULLIES! So picking on immigrants who are among the most vulnerable, marginalised and isolated people in society is not actually bullying?”
What picking? I defend immigrants and that includes defending from everything giving them a bad name. You just say the silliest things, silly you 🙂
“But pressurising a political aide from her taxpayer paid job for turning fascism and the holocaust into a subject for satire merely to somehow repost against the criticism of police racially profiling immigrants!”
I didn’t know she was all powerful and omnipotent to change the past? But hey, if people call them nazis or maybe label them such because of their bosses, maybe they are intitled to make it a satire? And there’s also the space nazi movie in theaters now? Have you seen it? It is a comedy. A comedy. About nazies. It makes nazis and their actions look funny. How dare them? Using maybe even tax payers money (some movies get support)? A satire, one would say! This is an outrage!
“Elven, no amount of spin will change the fact that she showed a complete lack of sensibility and political judgement. Is that necessary when you work for a politician? I think it is.”
No amount of spin would change the fact that I really don’t care. And listen to yourself, political judgement. Yeah, that’s a very good and rightful reason to small people lose their jobs! Oh, my god (The Flying Spaghetti Monster)… Speak like a politician or it serves you right to lose your job as an assistant. Way to go, Mark!
“Actually, if I remember right, you didn’t link to anything. You refused to offer a source for your stats.”
The always honestly speaking Mark with a very good memory which servers his purposes just right. Well, if linking is not linking in your dictionary, there’s not much to say about that. If you have not deleted my posts, they are there. Hurry, maybe you can get them in time 😀
“No, she’s responsible for her own words. Her bosses conviction for hate speech is just context!”
Of course. The facts, the words or at least the meaning changes because of his boss. It’s nice you too are not about labeling people. But let’s call labeling an individual person a context, so it would be okay… Your mind and how it works it’s a wonderful thing, Mark.
“You don’t trust your own legal system?”
I sure don’t. Do you, in this nest of institutional and every kind of racism? 😉
“So, it’s the usual tactic from you, drown this blog with lots of drivel presenting itself as reasoned response! ”
Yeah, I was the one flooding the same post over and over again and not you, Mark. Certainly not you. I was the one doing a whole blog entry in here about the same post after flooding it? Okay, Mark. Let’s make it so, so you won’t lose your temper again and start flooding again.
A little math exercise for you, Mark. Count the blog entries in Uusi Suomi Puheenvuoro about the Erosgate. At the moment a majority of blog entries are about that and the clear majority of those (almost all of them) defend Helena. Check the parties involved behind the bloggers. They go from end to end. This thing is not about persus. This is way bigger. This is about small people against bullying and in that we stand united. We but not you, Mark. You made that one clear. You have chosen your side and it’s about politicians and their political judgement like you said. It is not unexpected but still a pity, really.
By the way, did you even notice that all references to jews and nazis came from the journalist who wrote the “news”. Eronen didn’t make any references to those in her blog. Those references were added to the news article only to make Eronen’s blog look something that it isn’t.
Farang, yeah, I noticed. But like there were actually no badges in *sleeves* in this particular history, people want to fullfill their bloodlust and so these things, the facts, seem not to matter. They would only get into a way of a perfectly good witch hunt. So burn, witch, burn. This is group mentality at … well not worst, but it’s still pretty bad for a so called civilized country. She has a wrong boss in the wrong party and like we have seen it’s the reason many want to see this lovely, in reality very humane woman sink. If she floats, she’s a witch. If she doesn’t… that’s not good either at least for her.
Eleven Archer
So, more of the same drivel. You sound like a hysterical teenager.
Employed by a politician to help him in his political work, I assume with a salary paid for by taxpayers. Writing about immigration – a political topic that is the raison d’etre of her boss’s party and her boss. Do you know anything about politics Eleven?
I see, so what crime have I committed that brings your bellicose bellyaching to this blog, I wonder? You are more than happy to condemn anything and everything that doesn’t fit to your own view of the world, Elven, and you can’t bullshit anyone on this blog about that.
I love the way to bring this kind of irrelevant crap into the discussion. It’s about the old vs. the modern, eh? Not about the rights of minorities to be respected, no, that doesn’t sound very modern, does it.
lololol. You wouldn’t know an argument if it jumped up and bit your elvish nose off!
No-one here suggested she should lose her job. That suggestion came from the political party that she works for, surprise surprise. Now that they’ve said it, I can only agree. That kind of job requires some kind of awareness and sensitivity to the political debate. She can have a laugh on her own time!
And back to bullying. PS have the bullying of immigrants down to an art form. I’ve no sympathy for her. Show me where she writes to defend immigrants. Then I might have more sympathy!
“You sound like a hysterical teenager.”
But I bring the best of you out here for everybody to see, don’t I? 😀
Oh, I forgot. LOLLOL (that’s an argument, I learned it from you, you wise old man).
Elven
I can see that you are rather busy this Friday afternoon, and can only spare a few of your precious thoughts. So – what do you have to share? Ah, yes, a bit of baiting of Mark! Glad to see you have your priorities sorted outed Eleven.
Her writing was brilliant and funny, rest of it is just political media spin which I’ve lolled to many times during this comedy. Didn’t vote for PS last time, now I will. Besides, Ms Eronen is hot, I’d SO do her.
Well, Jouko, you are entitled to your opinion on Migrant Tales. There are many here that see things differently. We have amply covered this issue on our blog.
Jouko
Obviously your standards are fairly low if you thought this was brilliant. Her point in regard to police profiling was almost non existent, as she appears to have got lost in weaving that wonderful joke: if you don’t like racism, you can have fascism! Yeah, really really funny! Mark rolls his eyes…!
I imagine this is the reason for half of the support that she’s been getting. Maybe we can start calling the PS the ‘little heads of Finnish politics!’
Nice way to weave your supremacy wand. My standards sure are different, but “lower” than yours? That’s a horribly oversimplified way to look at things, which seems to be your special super power. That, and feeling hurt by a hilarious writings.
Also, I want some of that you’re smoking, sinceif you actually understood her writing to say “if you don’t like racism, you can have fascism” I can think of few finnish medias which would be willing to hire you.
For a low pay.
Very low.
–Also, I want some of that you’re smoking, sinceif you actually understood her writing to say “if you don’t like racism, you can have fascism”
I understood perfectly well what Eronen wrote. I don’t need anyone to tell me.
Moreover, there are a few things here you should take into account:
1) Is/was a Muutos2011 party member. Muutos2011 is pretty far right along with Vapauspuolue.
2) PS MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. Hirvisaari is a well-known Islamophobic.
3) Has visited Auschwitz and written about it. She knows what the Holocaust is. She knew perfectly well what was at stake when she pressed the enter button.
4) Works in parliament but has little idea what that institution is there for or what civil rights. Suggesting sleeve emblems, or suggesting ethnic profiling, is illegal in Finland.
Migrant Tales
“Suggesting sleeve emblems, or suggesting ethnic profiling, is illegal in Finland.”
This shows just how out of this world you are. Suggesting those is NOT illegal in Finland. Stop lying.
And secondly, Eronen didn’t even suggest either of those.
Farang, you like to use that word “lying” pretty liberally. And by the way, for a person to even play around with the things Eronen did in her blog doesn’t takes a lot of brains. I personally feel that she did it in the worst of intentions in mind and that is why it backfired. She was really mocking at the office of the Ombudsman for Minorities and praising the police to use more of their powers so they could carry out ethnic profiling with her blessings. Another thing that didn’t help her was her ideological anti-immigration view of the world through Muutos 2011 and working for PS MP James Hirvisaari.
Looks like the matter isn’t over whether Eronen will get sacked or not. Here’s something from Iltalehti: http://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/2012041515454863_uu.shtml
I don’t agree with her at all either (being a foreigner myself), but yeah, the dead give-away of sarcasm in her post was the “sleeve with burgers for USAmericans”.
However, sarcasm or not, it was a completely misplaced article and I agree with OP that this only shows the decline of political ethics. Not only here, but throughout the world.
One would think that, “intelligent beings” as we humans are (supposed to be), we would’ve learned from our mistakes in the past.
Clearly we haven’t.
Hi Arno and welcome to Migrant Tales. I totally agree with you: it was totally out of line especially coming from someone working as an aide to an elected representative in parliament.
Here is an interesting picture that says, in my opinion, a lot about anti-immigration groups in Finland and Europe.
Juouko
Who is misquoating who, Jouko? I put a ‘Yeah, really really funny!’ to highlight it’s supposed to be a joke. But that’s the point, it’s not really a joke is it, except at the expense of immigrants who get the piss taken out of them. I mean, why doesn’t she go the whole hog with this joke and say, ‘hey, we’ll build you some nice showers so you can clean that foreigness of your skin’, haha, ONLY JOKING, – funny isn’t it!? Nope……not really.
That’s the level, as far as I’m concerned.
You could certainly see your expertise in the article you write.
The world hopes for more passionate writers such as you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. All the time go after your heart.
Hi SP.
Who’s articles do you mean?? MT’s or the opponents’? All writers are passionate. Clarity solves the problem 🙂