In her column, Angela de Jong hands out a number of old-fashioned sneers to her favorite victim: Gordon. So now he’s probably walking through the desert again. “Stupid!”
It’s no secret that Down the Road is one of Angela de Jong’s favorite programs, but the Flemish version and not the Dutch version with Gordon on SBS 6. She thinks it’s terrible. And she shows that once again today very clearly in her influential AD column.
Terrible deduction
Angela is happy that the Flemish version is back on the tube at the public broadcaster. “Down the Road is back. And then I’m not talking about that terrible deduction that Gordon is allowed to make for SBS 6 under the same name,” she sneered.
For the first time, Angela started with doubts about the Flemish edition, because of the increasing criticism of so-called ‘down entertainment’. The discussion was started by Lars Duursma and received national attention when Arjen Lubach also got involved. They strongly criticize entertainment programs about down.
Stupid Gordon
The criticism is that programs like Gordon’s only film with young people who have the mildest forms of Down syndrome, which creates a very distorted image of this group of people.
Angela: “All provoked by stupid Gordon, who, as a self-proclaimed pundit, sat at talk show tables bleating that it was such a shame we weren’t ‘all a little down’.”
Peeled image
That criticism is justified when it comes to the version with Gordon, thinks Angela. “When I see his version of Down the road, which is not about the young people at all, but about Gordon who wants to polish his chipped image through them, then I completely agree with all the critics.”
But not when it comes to the Flemish original. According to her, that is a ‘fair program’. “No unrealistic expectations, no big promises, no ill-considered statements like: gosh, if only we were all down.”
AD column
You can read the column in which Angela sneers at Gordon on the AD site: