UK kids presenter gets online support Supporters of one-armed CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell are flocking to her defence following press stories claiming her appearance was upsetting children. The BBC is believed to have received nine complaints since Burnell took over last month. Burnell was born without the lower half of her right arm. Disability campaigner …
I think it's quite dreadful, people have disabilities and children should be brought up to accept it. I fear for the children of those parents who complained. I wonder if the parents surnames were Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, Hitler et al and had VIEWS on what should be done about people with disabilities. I certainly have views on what should be done with people like that, the same view they reached at the Nuremberg trials.
This could have been quite a worth while mention - to bad about the (lack of) references? What press stories is the author referring to.... what is the point of referring to some anonymous press reference??? Yes I can use google ofcourse - but that still will not help me to know which references the author of the article is talking about...
"Kids get scared" - what a load of bollocks - kids don't get scared of anything until they are taught to fear it by their parents and/or teachers and/'or peers - try putting a fluffy spider or snake in front of infant - they won't be bothered, there is nothing "instinctive" about such phobias. This is a bunch of parents scared by anything not normal. Thanks for pointing to the facebook group, I'll put my mouldering facebook account to good use for once by joining it. Best of luck to Cerrie Burnell
My 3 year old daughter was more concerned over the sudden and unannounced departure of Chris and Pui, the previous presenters, but she soon got over the fact that Cerrie only had one arm, I just explained to her that either Cerrie was born that way or she lost it in a tragic accident when trying to lift the BBC diversity handbook.
Let's name and shame those who complained as being too stupid to raise children. Then confiscate their children for their own safety. Then admit we made a mistake but refuse to give them back. Then laugh about it. Mob rule!
No, I'm not serious. Instead, 22,000 versus 9 give me a nice warm glow to see the overwhelming majority of the great British public showing some common sense and decency.
Lazy Daily Fail Hack read this ONE thread on Digital Spy... http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=980250
and a "news story" is born... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1152466/One-armed-presenter-scaring-children-parents-tell-BBC.html
Just compare the quotes.
I went to school with a girl who was born with pretty much the same condition as Cerrie Burnell, except maybe her right arm had an inch or two more below the elbow. She used to have a couple of prosthetic arms (a poseable one and one with a motorised grip, which the rest of us thought was fantastic!), and none of us really thought twice about it. As far as we were concerned it was just the way she was born. She didn't let it stop her, either - she even used to play the double bass in the school orchestra!
"Controversial I know - but I believe small children should be presented with a utopian version of the world."
An odd viewpoint, since it would require you to segregate your own child from any contact with other children until they were old enough to avoid spoiling the other childrens 'utopia' - no childcare, nursary, junior school etc. depending on where you draw the line. Or would it be different if it were your child who was missing a limb...
At first I thought this new pair just needed a bit of "bedding in" time but, after nearly three weeks, they just seem to be crap. My little-uns don't even seem to have noticed the lack of arm. They just don't seem to pay as much attention as they do when Sid and Andy are on.
CBeebies world does seem to be rather over-populated with the disabled though. Ballamorey, Me Too!, Something Special, Mr Maker etc. I'm all for diversity but if Cbeebies were representative of the real world one in four of us would have a major disability!
Totally agree. It's adults who bestow their fears onto kids.
How many kids are scared of the dentist, even before their first vist?
Or get scared of the bogey man lurking under their beds?
My nephew and niece lived in a leafy, all white populated village. They then visited Wolvehampton and met their first "black" person. They stared, wide eyed, but were they scared? No. Thier mom explained that lot of people have different clolour skin. They listened and then were full of questions. The woman concered was more than willing to answer any questions they had.
That was it, end of story. They now understood, no racial hatred, nothing.
No if their mom had gone, Shhh be quiet and sit down. it may of been a totally different outcome.
It's the bigoted adults that should be locked away never to be seen, not the presenter!
I was once refused a job at a McDonalds by some ignorant, troll faced, oil soaked witch because I have third degree burns to my neck. She said I might put people off the food!!!!
THANK GOD WHOEVER YOU ARE FOR SAVING ME FROM A LIFE OF MEDIOCRITY!!!!
Hopefully she fell into the deep fat fryer and now works as a stand in for the phantom of the opera or a live exhibit at the London Dungeon.
Bitch.
Flames for obvious reasons.
These complaining dipsticks should be forced to go round in a wheelchair for six months and see if their attitude changes.
Being a wheelchair user myself (I have Cerebral Palsy that mainly affects my lower limbs I cannot walk very far) and these kind of people make me sick.
She was born without part of her arm, she isn't stupid and nor am I but these dipsticks must be!
Why hasn't the Daily crap been banned as that is all it spreads.
I know someone who similarly was born with the same condition ... I gather when being interviewed for jobs the conversation would eventually be steered around to the "... and do you think you'll be able to cope with your disability?" question. Her reply was "Actually I was born like this so I'm not disabled, I'm deformed" ... which normally stopped the questioning in its tracks.
I rather doubt that. it will, however, upset parents who will have to actually engage their children in a sensible conversation, rather than plonking them in front of the gogglebox. Why are they letting their children watch TV anyway?
Children don't give two shits and will (horror of horrors) be quite up-front about the whole thing.
Parents of Britain - you are responsibility abdicating morons!
I love that..The Daily Hate.
In terms of the parents who voiced their "concerns" I await their next comments on Andy Peters and Sidney Sloane etc and how they frighten their kids.
I thought this gem they dug up spoke volumes about the rag
'This new presenter is c*** - face facts - but because she has a disability then she was given a job. [It is] positive discrimination in my books.'
Personally, I think the journo and the poster of the comment are c****, and as far as the presenter is concerned...lets just say...I would.
"...I believe small children should be presented with a utopian version of the world."
You're a muppet, then. At what exact point are you going to enlighten them? Isn't it going to be a damn sight harder for them to have to deal with the life-long disappointment that you created than just growing up to understand things as they really are? The answer is "yes." Children are far more adaptable than adults in that regard.
Quoth Mrs. First Lady Obama: "small kids . . . don't need their lives to be easy. They're kids"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/americas/7911543.stm
On reading her comment this morning, my opinion of Mrs. Obama, thitherto indifferent, changed very much for the better. It doesn't sound like the Obama girls are "precious snowflakes". Instead, they are being prepared for adult life, as, indeed, they should be.
My interest has vastly increased in the ultimate fate of the precious snowflakes of the world. You know — the kids whose helicopter parents shield them from everything not part of some debilitating fantasy of childhood. I imagine many of them will end up social cripples given their inability as adults to cope with the harsh realities of life.
Doing chores in the White House is one reality; so is accepting that, yes, some people have only one arm.
Scary my eye! Teaching a child to fear ordinary things that don't fit some mythical vision of childhood comes very close to being a form of child abuse.
ObMoanAboutNuLabour: Just like Health and Safety under the nannyship of NuLabour: trying to protect the citizens from the least little potentially difficult or tricky aspect of life. "Strength through adversity, comrades!" is definitely not a NuLabour motto.
...with my nephew, and learned sign language from a very very camp man called mr timbles, or something like that. And who said learning stopped in adulthood.
It wasn't the most useful sign language though, unless I intend to have a conversation about horses, saddles and reins.
"Disability campaigner Clair Lewis said: “As far as we are aware, just nine complaints were received – and these have been turned into a national news story. What about the thousands of parents who have spontaneously put their hands up to state their support for Cerrie?"
You mean they are offering to donate their own body parts to her so she can keep the job?
Well, seeing as my son's favourite CBeebies shows are in the night garden and something special, I'd have to say that Cerrie having one arm hasn't phased him.
However, I do agree with the previous poster that her co-presenter sounds like he hasn't quite got the lines memorised...
Paris Hilton 'cause she might have more of a clue than the daily hate
...but replace the word 'disabled' with 'colored' and 'missing arm' with 'dark skin'. Here is the mentality of the 9 complainers.
'Scary' my missing left buttock. Barbie is more disabled/deformed (waistline that, if translated to a real woman, would result in death).
----
Back when I was a primary teacher I there was a lad in my school with a foreleg missing. I more than once had to tell him off for trying to kick people in the head - from a distance (he would loosen the straps and 'kick' his prosthetic off into the air at people). All the other kids thought it was a really cool thing to be able to do.
As a parent I am more concerned about the crack fuelled ramblings of the lunatics behind "in the night garden" than I am about a presenter who is "limb challenged" or whatever the PC term is.
Kids are curious, its why they get into trouble, its the parents who cant deal with stuff like this who are the problem.
As for the 9 complainers, sterilise them and take there kids into care, problem solved.
That both her and Alex (And Andy for that matter) aren't anywhere near as good at presenting compared to Chris and Pui.
Though this nonesense about Cerrie scaring children?!?! Are these parents going to bubble wrap their kids from the posibilities of real life until they leave for bording school? All it will do is breed a generation of xenephobes - if it's different, cower in fear until it leaves...
Apparently they are working on new material which will be making an appearance later in the year:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/11_november/25/childrens.shtml
My disabled son loves Something Special (which teaches a disabled form of sign language, not BSL) and several of the other programs, he's gone off the night garden though.
I agree that her singing is not exactly the best, but then the two presenters are both rather err dull compared to Chris and Pui (sorry if you're reading this) which is a shame, but maybe it's early days.
Anyway as far as stupid parents go there are lots of them about, the BNP membership has to come from somewhere.
Off to the daily hate to see what I can add in terms of bored support, since this shouldn't be an issue in the first place.
ttfn
The BBC is clearly pandering to the millions of scroungers who enter this country every year who lounge around using the services that we provide for years while refusing to get jobs or pay taxes like any decent citizen.
These bastards don't even pay for a TV licence and yet for some reason the BBC sees fit to provide them with their own channel.
Couldn't agree more - my kids can't see the big deal. Explained the fuss to them and their response was 'O, that's just so stupid'.
And defo agree that she's a hottie.
Re: "My three year old boy loves her. he does however, wear a kitchen roll tube on his arm when she comes on as if to hide his hand, so he is aware of her disability...". I can't quite get my head around whether this kid is empathising or not - hope a career in social work isn't beckoning.
@"I watched cbeebies a while back... " - definitely agree Mr Tumbles was a great segment. Think it should have been in the mainstream to teach sign language - it's so darned useful in a noisy machine hall (IT angle!). Plus my local primary taught some of the common signs to my two kids - and they really enjoyed it.
IT angle for the story - that it's nice to see the net used to refute the excrement thrown by one tabloid toilet-paper substitute.
Come off it, kids never made fun or were shocked by Joey Deacon back in the 70s so why on earth would anyone expect today's politically aware young people to react like that to this woman? Just look at the way they reacted to Wendy Richards' "they all look the same to me" comments or Jade Goody's harsh words to Shilpa Shetty.
They're politically correct to perfection so they're never going to have a problem with a one armed news reader. It's the old fuddy duddies who grew up exposed to statements such as "The Germans do not like the cold steel up them" or Al Jolson's Minstrels who are making a fuss over what they *imagine* young people to say and think. And that's because *their* minds are poluted.
And I guarantee you that Noel Edmonds wouldn't hesitate to do a Deal or No Deal one-armed special to prove to people how irrelevant the matter is.
Paris, because she'd be perfectly happy to have Joey Deacon as her British best friend.
What's this crap about the "Daily Hate"? I've now looked up the relevant articles in the Daily Mail, and it seems to me that the newspaper is totally against those parents who have complained. As indeed it should be.
Moving on from that, the strange thing is that some idiots are so sensitive about disability now. I was a little kid in the 50's and I was well acquainted with these things: it was quite common to see people who had suffered disability or disfigurement, and my parents explained to me from a very young age that these people had been "hurt in the war" (and that included some people who, looking back, clearly had mental problems) and I wasn't to think that they were odd or frightening. OK I only had a hazy idea of what a war was, but I knew about disability even before I went to school.
Parents shouldn't hide their children away from things that aren't cutesy. They will have to handle life, and part of that is understanding that people do have differences.
P.S. If you're going to label any paper the Daily Hate, can I nominate the Scottish Daily Record (sister paper of the Daily Mirror)? Even in their article about the death of David Cameron's son, they still got in the sneer "Wealthy, Eton-educated Cameron..."
I lost my right eye several years ago to a tumor. I absolutely love it when a little kid sees me in a public place and asks "what happened to your eye?" The look on the parents' faces are priceless!! It's like they think I don't know I'm different-looking. I usually just smile and tell the kid something they'll understand, depending on how old they are. I've never once seen a kid act afraid without being prompted by a parent, and I'm much scarier-looking than somebody who's just short an arm.
In the picture they ran in the Independent, the lighting in the shot was far scarier than any missing appendages - a bottom-lit frankenstein effect that was decidedly not flattering. I'm sure there was a more flattering publicity shot around, but they were doing a bit of a Winston Silcott on her.
The real problem is parents - they just keep having kids. No breeding > no kids > no need for Cbeebies > no complaints > licence fee gets cheaper > fewer ASBO toting yoof and pregnant 12 year olds. Win win all round. Very NuLab
@DAN*tastik @Child Erosion
"Am I the only one who considered the possibility of that one being a sarcastic comment?"
No, twigged it right away... unless someone's let in a Daily Mail reader!
@LaeMi Qian
"there was a lad in my school with a foreleg missing"
are you sure he wasn't a kid? Human's forelimbs are called arms...
Cool trick he had, though.
At what point did it become sensible to listen to people who's only qualification is that they have spawned?
In my experience parents can be the most irrational, reactionary, illogical grouping within society. In fact its not until their spawn become adults do they appear to have developed sage wisdom tendencies and thats only as much sage as a normal person.
When I joined ny junior school, aged 7, one of the teachers had a similar arm to Cerrie's. We were interested, sure, but upset, no. He was a nice guy and a good teacher, and we liked him. We soon ignored his 'disability', except when it caused him inconvenience; we then watched how he worked around it, or we helped him. We learned to accept another's disability.
This had another benefit; when a new boy with a similar arm joined the school, he had no more problems than any other 'New Kid on the Block'. In other schools he could have been bullied, but not in our school.
This was an ordinary primary school in Birmingham (UK) 1955-56. Nothing special.
Bottom line is that we should let children know about disabilities as soon as they can understand the concept. Any of us could acquire a disability; after all, how good a driver are you? Not just your car, your body.
Keep going, Cerrie, and ignore the tabloids.
Actually, research has shown that human actually are genetically conditioned to be (somewhat) afraid of spiders. As a parent you can make your children overcome the instinct though.
More info at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1004_snakefears.html
That said, I don't think there's an evolutionary reason to be afraid of people short a forearm. Rather the opposite, really.
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