This seems pretty unhinged.
Very fair point. I have sent a message to music tribe regarding my decision to return their product and refrain from future purchases as result of their video.
1 Like
I don’t get the anti-jewish/semitic thing in this video.
I can recognize some French accent, though, and the tone is the one of a wine French connaisseur, as far as I can tell.
FTR, when you open a bottle of wine, you first smell the cork to know if the wine has turned to vinegar due to exposition to air because of a bad quality cork. At least, that’s what we do casually in France.
1 Like
I haven´t seen the video, I don´t know if it was their intention or not, and if it was, I don´t agree of course.
Only pointing that people forget that the jewish are only one of the semitic people.
Anyway, very poor behaviour from Uli.
1 Like
It’s monumentally ill-judged because it can easily be misconstrued like that - it’s monumentally ill-judged even when you don’t consider that, plus subtracting off good behaviour points for trying to be funny still leaves this way over the line - it’s gonna hurt their pocket - it’s quite a gaff, inexcusable on so many levels and fwiw - Kirn does seem to be a name with some Jewish heritage - but even if teh gag was about comedy aesthetics for sniffing wine it’s just dumb to misread that - it’s blackface bad - and somebody went to a lot of bother there, just wow - that video will get pulled before tomorrow imho
8 Likes
Of course I don’t. Would be very keen to see exactly which comments you’re referring to, and suspect that it might be less clear-cut than you’re implying, but if Kirn has genuinely gone beyond the realm of legitimate journalistic criticism or debate in either of those cases, then that’s obviously not okay either.
I guess the extent to which you think any of that (or the debate over reverse-engineering or whatever) justifies Behringer’s response is a different question though, right? I guess the argument is that it’s totally fine for a multi-billion dollar company to publicly harass a journalist in an attempt to shut them up, just as long as they’ve also done some bad stuff at some point in the past. I’d have a think about whether that’s a position you’re comfortable holding.
Another action we could take is to go on the YT link and dislike the video.
Seems they’re being ratio’d already.
The face is a depiction of Peter Kirn, from CDM.
Same glasses, same beard, same smile.
Some think that this is B attacking Peter for writing about a lawsuit B brought against a DSI/Sequential employee.
That’s conjecture perhaps, perhaps not.
I chatted with Peter about this in January when B registered KIRN as a trademark and he was perturbed.
Either way, attacking journalists rarely ends well.
5 Likes
Attacking journalist’s work in not correct, nor to be minimized, especially when the “joke” (I’d say attack) is coming from a big corporation.
Without the name, this video would just be mocking people dissing Behringer. Which would be not very funny, but OK.
Here, it crosses a line.
3 Likes
surely anyone, even if naive enough to upload a video like that, would not be naive enough to come to that conclusion - i cannot foresee anyone imagining that it would or could silence anyone, i’d expect it to galvanise critics to be more persistent - this reeks more of a bad idea that is doomed to bite them even if it probably wasn’t intentionally anti-jewish etc - it’s more like bullying
then there’s the whole ‘free (even if bad) publicity’ irony of talking about Behringer 24/7
2 Likes
I think if a large corporation produced a product with your face on it, attacking you publicly, using your last name, using imagery to call you a liar… you would not feel the same.
If B thinks CDM/Peter has portrayed them in a less than factual manner, they should act like adults and make their argument on the merits, not resort to such childish behavior.
11 Likes
Thanks for explaining this so lucidly. I can totally see where you’re coming from, and I’m sorry for creating more work for the mods / causing a scene. If this was an argument over, I dunno, Behringer’s approach to patents, or something where there’s reasonable room for disagreement, then I’d be in 100% agreement with you about the importance of remaining civil.
But the reason I’m so angry is because I genuinely see this as an entirely different type of discussion. I think companies publicly humiliating / harassing journalists and indulging (consciously or not) in this type of racist imagery should be the source of incivility and impoliteness. It’s absolutely despicable, and I honestly don’t think there’s a way to be honest about that without putting noses out of joint.
I’m going to wind my neck in at this point either way, but I honestly think that prioritising civility isn’t necessarily always a good idea when responding to something this unequivocally toxic.
2 Likes
looks pretty antisemitic to me with strong overtones of other antisemitic caricatures from down the ages. even if that aspect was unintentional they should have removed it and apologised by now, it’s a grim spectacle indeed. not to mention that they also trademarked his name??? this isn’t a “bit of fun”, it’s very weird and abusive
6 Likes
I am very familiar, and frankly, this does not apply to Peter.
I have no comments about the anti-jewish angle here, but I will say that 14 years ago, I worked with Peter at the Ableton booth, doing demos all weekend long at NAMM.
While Behringer was still making only guitar pedals, rack gear, and $200-$600 analog mixers.
He’s been at this a while.
So to ATTACK him with this word is really just B projecting, the same way Trump does when he calls an enemy a childish name.
10 Likes
I think the intention is very, very clear - criticise us and we’ll make a laughing stock out of you.
There’s obviously no overt threat here, but the implicit one is crystal clear: Kirn’s a hater, a snob, an idiot, a joke, we should all just ignore what he says. The ultimate effect of which is absolutely about delegitimising him as a journalist.
It’s exactly the same thing Trump does when he goes on about the “fake news media” and should be met with exactly the same level of disdain.
15 Likes
@swanage_fan The caricature is Peter Kirn and the long nose is the caricature of Pinnochio.
I never knew the story of Pinnochio is Antisemitic.
The irony is that Behringer is giving a win to Kirn by doing this (free publicity). The worst thing for most magazines or journalists is obscurity.
And actually, it’s French accent, not Jewish.
Let’s strike this anti-jewish argument please. There is no foundation to this.
5 Likes