But they are, at the root, just words. When they are written by a troll from whom you are divided by keyboards, screens and servers they can have a powerful effect but they can also be avoided.
Then there are words you cannot escape, because they come from the mouth of a person you share your life with. The person who knows your flaws, your secrets, and the inside of your heart.
When a partner uses the same words as a faceless no-mark on the internet, they have a more devastating impact for the simple reason that you see the anger in their eyes, the spittle flying from their mouth, and know these things are coming from a person you love and trust more than anyone else.
Excellent article by Fleet Street Fox.
See also a legal analysis of this lenient sentence
Also, offensive words on a t-shirt? 8 months in prison. Update: this is the shirt.
“Sophie Ellis Bextor found dead in Paris. Police suspect it was murder on Zidane's floor” seriously, I hope Zidane never kills me for real.
— Sophie Ellis-Bextor (@SophieEB) October 8, 2012
This was, lest we forget, a young man from Liverpool who had been cloistered in an all-male English public school, done his National Service, and then been sent by his father to a USA in the throes of Beatlemania. This was not a cigar-chomping predatory rapist.
No man has had an influence on my life more than John Peel.
This doesn't make him a god. As desperately sad as I would be if it became clear he was guilty of something hideous I'd accept it.
However, his marriage seems to be the only 'evidence' to 'wrongdoing'. As Colin B Morton writes today, the only noise on this has come from Julie Burchill - who has spent decades writing anti-Peel articles - she has always 'loathed' him, and has never missed an opportunity to infer something that no-one else has.
UPDATE OCT 12
Someone else has now. Not good, but consensual rather than predatory. Don't want to give him a pass just because of who he was, but this isn't comparable to Savile at all.
The centrepiece of the album's story. Now with video.