Paris Brown is a 17 year-old girl. She’s no angel but name me a 17 year-old girl (or boy) who is. She had written some tweets in her time that possibly looking back on she regrets. However I wonder how I’d have been at that age with the ability to leave my thoughts on a website for everyone to easily see. Luckily in a way Twitter, Facebook and social media didn’t really take off until I was well into my 20s and I was old enough (and wise enough) to always think twice before posting anything. I think to myself ‘what would I think if my Mum read this?’ and if I feel as though she’d be disappointed in me then I know it isn’t something I should be writing about publicly. Same goes for this blog.
So this girl wrote something about hash brownies. Big whoop. She says it was a line from Scooby Doo which is actually rather plausible as we all know Shaggy was a stoner. However even if it wasn’t who really gives a rat’s? She wrote about coming home from a party alone and not having anyone to sleep with/shag. Big whoop. A significant number of young people are very sexually active. This wouldn’t mean she wasn’t equipped to do the job she was hired for just because she wishes she had gotten lucky one night. Do the Daily Mail really think their readership believe young people shouldn’t be out enjoying themselves sexually? What horse expletive.
She tweeted about getting drunk. Wow! Stop the freakin’ Presses folks. Young person likes getting ratted and on occasion when they get drunk acts like a twat. Big fucking whoop. Not all young people are as dull and boring as me. I didn’t drink until I was 18 and haven’t drunk since I was 26. In my whole life I can only recall being drunk on three occasions. I am not the norm. However I certainly don’t think a young person drinking is exactly a big issue when it comes to whether she is a good person to do the job for which she was hired. In fact I think the fact she is just like a regular teenager means she is far more of an ideal candidate for this role than I would have been at the same age because she deals with a lot of the issues that I would have had no idea about. Therefore being into alcohol is certainly (in my eyes) an advantage in this instance and most certainly not a negative in any way shape or form.
Now we move on to the tweets she probably regrets. Saying she was glad someone got ‘thumped’ for giving someone else a black eye. However who amongst us having deep down smiled wen someone got their comeuppance? Yeah I thought so. Calling homosexuals fags is probably her worst ‘crime’ but calling immigrants ‘illegals’ and travellers ‘pikeys’ may not be right but it isn’t unusual for young people to talk like that. Do the Daily Mail want to name and shame every young person who uses that language on twitter or does the fact she was appointed into a relatively unknown role give them good cause to tear her down?
The biggest issue for me was the fact the job was set up in the first place. Not really the job per se but the salary and the title. It opened up this poor girl to a political environment and media scrutiny which she didn’t need nor warrant. How about calling it a ‘Youth Liaison Officer’ or something of that ilk? I would bet a fair few quid that if she was appointed as that then this fuss wouldn’t have happened. This should have been some PR and was actually not a terrible idea. Have someone the Police & Crime Commissioner can liaise with about issues facing young people. The youth of today (and my youth, and your youth and everybody’s youth) always complain that the police don’t understand them or listen to them so this should have been a good idea.
Instead the fact she was called the Youth PCC and they made it so public opened up this 17 year-old to unjust and unfair criticism. The Daily Mail should be ashamed of its behavior but we all know that they won’t be. They essentially hounded a girl from her job (before she’d even taken it up) because they decided she wasn’t the right person based solely on her tweets. They didn’t interview the young lady. They didn’t get to know her and see what she could bring to the position. They just saw one part of her and decided that was enough. Depressingly that sums up the media – and certainly sums up the Daily Mail.
I sure hope she bounces back from this and it will just be a footnote in her life/career. Her tweets were not unlike many others and just because she had a low paying job that was partly funded by the tax payer shouldn’t give the Daily Mail the right to tear her apart. If it does then there are a lot of council workers and civil servants across the country who should be closing down their twitter accounts or making sure they know who can read them and the same goes for Facebook. A role at the tax payers expense does not equate to the right to just crush someone for acting just like anyone else her age.