LIAM NEESON WITH A STORY

LIAM NEESON TELLS A STORY
I have been thinking of freedom for several weeks. It cropped up when I heard the two same comments from someone that I know. The first line of an intended verse popped straight into my mind as ‘the bigot speaks out’. That's judgmental even if not downright condemnatory. And as I wrote more lines my perspective started to change. It is not that I adapted my view of the orator or about the comments, but about the right to speak out; to be able to speak one’s mind.

This is where it gets tricky because there will always be someone who will say ‘you can't say that’. Well, legally and criminally they maybe correct, but the important point is that where does social exclusion and revulsion kick in. Where’s the tipping point when the ability to speak out is tempered by fear?

Words, such as these, lay out the framework, but can mean very little without a reference to an incident and so, it is helpful to have facts. The evidence is seldom laid out before us. Often it is the news that gives a smattering of detail. Sound bites to moisten the mind; hard headlines to sell the reader into buying the product advertised. And there it is the story of death and abuse wrapped up in misleading words.

Yesterday Liam Neeson was interviewed in connection with a film Cold Pursuit. The subject of the film is revenge or the pathway for it. It is reported, and the article by Mathew Moore, media correspondent for The Times Newspaper, can be read in full. I will make no reference to any comments or observations made by journalists, but give the bare facts as I see them.

Following on from the theme of the film Neeson says “I will tell you a story. This is true”.
He explains that a person that he knew had been raped and his feelings afterwards were strong enough for him to go out with a cosh, (presumably hidden) and to go out with it intending to find a subject upon who he could take revenge. That's simple enough, isn't it? We can have feelings of anger, revulsion and even the need to act upon them.

Now the one question he did ask was about the colour of the perpetrator. You can guess what's coming. Yes, black is the colour. There is no explanation why that question was asked and what, if any, prejudices were revealed. So, now we have the race element brought into it. Mention skin colour and fingers leap to the keyboards and journalists ramp up the sound bites. We get their slant as they want to portray the world.

If we could turn this event around and let a black person being raped by a white person then the question of colour would be to establish a fact, not necessarily to bring the racial element into it. Well, maybe. It’s as though we are groomed to see things certain ways.

Neeson told it as he remembered it. The indications are that he won't be remembered for telling it, but for that one question. Now I come back to freedom and his right to say certain things in the context of the occasion of interviews about the film and his own experiences. If there is a racial element in this then that's for him to declare and for others to accuse. Foolish or otherwise, this story as it stands, in my opinion is better out there. I will expand in that in few more lines later.

I hate prejudice, but I temper that statement with the knowledge that I have my likes and dislikes. My opening line in a poem was simply this - Prejudice: I hate you. - with the last line stating - Prejudice fuels hate. That's simple enough to, but put that into the cauldron of confrontation then it gets messy. I have witnessed prejudice. Black brother on black brother, black on white, white on black and of course homophobia and sexual slur. It's all out there and even though the football authorities want to stamp out racism in sport they will never stop people feeling their own bias.

I would rather have it out there. Downright prejudice leading to violence I abhor, but we have to reflect upon that one vital part of our life and that is freedom. Just be careful what you say and where!

Finally, it has been said, that ‘freedom is the right to say what people don't want to hear’.