Not exactly about bias – in fact not at all, but it’s Christmas … the Sage of Peebles on Kirsty Young and the departure of Michael Grade.
“Another Two Daisies On The Grave Of Lord Reith”
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S.Weasel: I do get the joke. I’m afraid it is you who do not. South Park is a pimply adolescent’s version of humour. It is nasty, smelly and small. The fact that it can occasionally be funny does not detract from its essential destructiveness and irresponsibility. And to quote as a positive feature the fact that it attacks everyone shows that you yourself do not understand basic facts: if everyone deserves to be attacked, if everyone is guilty, then nobody is guilty. If the whole world stinks, then nothing stinks. If you are against everything, you are against nothing. South Park is the most crudely conservative piece of work ever conceived. By attacking everything in sight, it makes it impossible to criticize anything that deserves criticism. It is, at the most profound level, mindless; and once its shock value is exhausted, it has nothing to say.
Bryan | 02.01.07 – 6:33 am
I heard that too. It was Politics UK and the speaker was Professor Peter Hennessy – a well-known historian.
He was quoting his old history professor at Cambridge in the early sixties who’d said that the true measure of British influence at the height of Empire was that in 1904 – pretty much wherever you were in the world, your lavatory was manufactured at Greenock in Scotland.
I agree with many of JBHs and Jons comments at the start of this thread.
swearing is not allowed on U.S. television.
This clearly isn’t the case for HBO and Larry David’s series Curb Your Enthusaism, where swearing is rife. Indeed, it would appear to be the template for a lot of the later BBC comedy. Ricky Gervais idolises Larry David.
I’ll stick my neck out,and suggest that the rise in swearing in British comedy is an imitation of current styles in American comedy! It would not be the first imported trend, in saying this, HBO’s audiences in America may be quite small, and clearly doesn’t reflect the entire nation in a way that the BBC or ITV manages to do in their popular soap audiences. In fact the TV hold on the nation is immense.
Did anybody catch an act in “The Secret Policemans Ball,” by a punk comedian- forgotten his name- it was a deconstruction of a Sun article.
It was actually rather good, and clearly titilated the Amnesty International fraternity. He swore a lot. Reading JBHs comment above, it struck me that we had here THE SUN newspaper, so often chided by the left-liberal establishment as gutter press, deconstructed in a rather vulgar manner. In a way they both cancelled each other out. It struck me as symbolic.
dave t
Do the so called intelligentsia who write these plays and things on TV etc actually know what people talk like in places outside Islington or the posher parts of Manchester ? How much more patronising can they get?
Some of the most astonishing swearing I have ever heard in a radio play, was broadcast on New Year’s Eve. By Alan Bennett. ‘The History Boys’.
It was adapted for radio by Richard Wortley from Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production. More than three decades on from Forty Years On, Alan Bennett turns his attention once more to education, encompassing both the tussles of staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence
I tend to think that Alan Bennett would be very conservative in his use of C**t, broadcast maybe 30 times? This could have been added for the BBC production. Still, if you are a teacher a fascinating play!
Sorry, it was on BBC radio 3, and lasted for 2 hours 30 minutes.
Fabio — picture this: me pointing at you and laughing.
No, you don’t get South Park. In fact, I’m not convinced you’ve ever seen it.
John, does manchester have posh parts? I’ve lived here for years and I’ve never really seen them.
I know it has lots of wannabe parts, where the media students and their pretentious lecturers live (it’s all around the BBC campus darling. Oxford, don’t you know. Yes, the road…) but they aren’t really posh as such.
Archonix:
Fancy a pint sometime?
archonix,
It’s like all the “new medja” types living in “Hoxton Square” (Really Shoreditch).
JBH, I might take you up on that if I can convince my wife to let me go outside for more than a few moments. 🙂
Archonix:
Ask Natalie very nicely to pass on your contact details and she might.
Blimey, class warfare hits B-BBC. Solidarity brothers! Down with the bourgeoise swearing – come the Revolution they’ll be first up against the wall with their uncouth ways.
Personally I think swearing is appropriate in certain situations – football matches, conversations in the pub with friends, meetings with close colleagues. It has a valuable role in the English language in accentuating points and can be flat out amusing. It’s obviously inappropriate in quiet public spaces or with people one doesn’t know or knows to disapprove.
The problem with swearing on the BBC is that too often there seems to be no ‘realistic’ effect of improving whatever dramatic or grittily realistic or comic scene thy’re attempting to portay, it’s just bolted as though necessary to add some sort of ‘trendy’ edge to the programming. In doing so the Beeb looks pathetic and in my view contributes to the embarrassing way that so much of the population (including pretty much everyone under 25 it would seem) has no idea how to restrict their swearing to appropriate scenaria.
And I remember some really nice places in Manchester. It’s not all a sh*thole.
As an ex Army chap I remain amazed at just how much bad language etc there is on TV compared to what I used to hear during my recent service! I know Kipling said we would never get saints if you had single men living in barracks but I’ve never heard half the stuff I hear in Torchwood etc when in my battalion. And we weren’t even a posh Guards unit either! Of course the Sgt would swear when he was really fed up with a recruit or private soldier but invariably it would be over in ten seconds, use one or two expletives and that would be it. I never heard my fellow SNCOs swear just for the sake of swearing – ie using the F word every other word – they swore when they needed to. In Gulf War 1 and NI, I always remember the low level of swearing – things were too busy and when the rounds are coming on on your location you don’t waste time using the F word when all you want is ‘get that ammo over here’!
I think that much of the so called realism re swearing or behaviour in many TV series is based on how the writers THINK the plebs behave or talk like – they have no actual EXPERIENCE of it and thus they think that some parts of Manchester/London etc are rougher and therefore everyone swears… I’ll be honest and say that the only time I hear lots of swearing is from drunken young yobs and lassies who can’t handle their beer in the pub on a Saturday night. And the looks they get from the rest of the customers makes me think that swearing is still pretty much not tolerated within society as a whole outwith the dreams of TV writers!
PS Battlestar Galactica – excellent writing, good characters and again they rarely swear!
dave t | Homepage | 02.01.07 – 4:00 pm
The chap who looks after my garden swears like a trooper (sorry), using the f-word every other word. In the end you just tune it out.
However, it was quite amusing when we were discussing the amount of swearing on tv. He delivered an expletive rich tirade against bad language in the media without a trace of self-awareness.
Wow. Here in the States we are inclined to think of New York City as the epitome of crass materialism and vulgarity. To learn that the subway riders there are more civil than you Brits seems like the overturning of a natural law! 😀
It’s almost as strange as seeing the New York Times citing for ‘balance’ – though compared to the Beeb I must admit it is!
My grandpa said people swear when they have limited vocabularies.
Then again think of the richness of our beloved Anglo Saxon language (ahem)…..
Roxana – your grandpa was right. I am not saying that I am a prude – I have done my fair share of swearing – but It used to be understood that you did not swear in front of ladies or children (or the vicar). It wasn’t a law – it was never taught in schools – it was just common decency. But it seems that the so called Middle Class elitists did not and do not find anthing wrong with it. They probably thought that this was what working class people were like and therefore a way to show their “working class” roots.
I cringe even now when I hear swearing on TV – and it seems to make it worse when coming from a female. Almost any so-called comedy that is on TV these days has to be full of sexual inuendo (sometimes its not that subtle) or four letter words for no apparent reason at all – well perhaps it makes them cool and have street cred, but to me its just a real turn off. No doubt I’ll be labeled a prude and a male chauvinist pig, but thats the way I was brought up.
Weasel: I’ve seen quite enough of it. Life is too short – by about sixty million years at least – to waste time on South Park. As a lover of the art of cartooning, I regard it as the muse’s excrement, and I do not see why I should play toilet. (Is that vulgar enough for you?)
My dad says the same thing. I suppose these days you could call us all middle class (if you could really put us in a class – the BBC’s idea of middle class and the real meaning are somewhat different I reckon) but he – and I, on and off – works in the building trade, repairing roofs and converting lofts, amongst other things. He once had a lad working with him who swore every second word. He challenged the kid to go for an hour without swearing in return for extra pay. He couldn’t manage more than three words. For some people swearing is punctuation, a rougher version of the “yeah, like, y’know” favoured by my generation.
Ah. Just as I thought. You haven’t watched it, Fabio.
Well, you share this in common with much of the American right. They hate South Park, too. For its crudity. Which they somehow divine by osmosis, apparently, since they refuse to watch it. Because of the crudity.
Thomas Crapper | 02.01.07 – 11:49 am,
Appropriate pseudonym! Thanks for the info.
The BBC had another classic multi-culti apology for Islam article on their site earlier today – sadly it had disappeared without trace by the time I got home from work.
Anyway, it contained one of the greatest instances of straw clutching I think I have ever seen. The article said something like this, as a defence of Islam in the UK:
“There has been no successful terrorist attack in Britain since the attacks of 7th July 2005”.
Fantastic – on most accounts a mere 18 months since the last instance of mass murder by fanatics of a certain religion would hardly be a cause for celebration and forgiveness – our memories aren’t that short. No, what really takes the biscuit is the utter refusal to acknlowledge in ANY way the FAILED attacks which took place two weeks later. These attacks failed because of the incompetence of the terrorists, nothing else. If their ability had matched their intent the BBC quote would have had to be changed to “21st July”, not “7th July”. So why no mention?
No wonder it was pulled. Even the BBC realised it was ridiculous.
I think Cockney’s got at least part of it. Look at Torhcwood. Here we have a blindingly incompetent attempt to rip off about a hundred better series, so what they do ? Ah yes, fill the script with swearing and references to you-know-what. It’s like they hope that if they put in enough references to anal sex, we won’t notice that we’ve seen it all before.
The movie Idiocracy is tangentially relevant to this thread, in that it depicts a dystopian un-peecee future in which the chavs have out-bred everyone else, and swearing and vulgarity have become mainstream.
As a right-winger who enjoys South Park, I found the combination of un-peecee-ness and toilet humour to be highly amusing 🙂
The first 10 minutes shows the side-by-side development of the family trees of a middle-class couple and a pair of (the US equivalent of) chavs. It’s light-hearted, but chilling nevertheless.
20th Century Fox apparently sat on the movie for 2 years and did not publicise it in any way because of its un-peecee message and its depiction of corporate interference in US politics.
I’m betting that the British Broadcasting Party have never mentioned this film in any of their programmes, not even their £6 million-a-year Minister of Film Reviews.
Of course, even this movie is peecee in some ways…
Fabio –
By attacking everything in sight, it makes it impossible to criticize anything that deserves criticism
or to put it another way, South Park criticises things Fabio doesn’t think should be criticized. Perhaps it’s not PC enough…
Fabio,
If you don’t lie South Park simply “personally censor” it with your remote control.
If you don’t like the BBC stop paying and risk jail.
Which of the above is moral, and which is immoral?
I don’t know if this post is dead but I thought you might like to know that we are not alone in our aversion to bad language. Here is a poll conducted by YouGov / Sunday Times in December.
“Which four of these daily gripes irritate you most about everyday life in
Britain? [Please tick up to four]
Rudeness/ bad language 60
Young yobs 57
Poor service 50
Telephone call centres 49
Red tape 30
People using mobile phones inconsiderately 26
Drug-dealing in my area 18
Traffic wardens and wheel clampers 15
Beggars 12
The weather 11
The daily journey to work 10
Ugly buildings 8
Background music in lifts/ hotels/ restaurants/ shopping centres 7
CCTV 5
Tattoos 3
None of these 2”
Click to access STI060101007_1.pdf
S.Weasel: considering your fondness for weasel words and weaseling out of things, your nom de internet is very apt. Let us get this straight: I have seen enough of the filth not to want to see any more. Does this get through your miserable skull, or do I have to say it in German or Greek or Sanskrit?
Incidentally, will the fan club agree among themselves? The weasel thinks himself able to conclude that I have never had the dismal experience of watching the abomination; while his fellow addicts David S and AntiCitizenOne seem convinced that someone is forcing me to swallow large doses of it – one of them even pointing out that there is such a thing as a remote control. Get your story straight, why don’t you?
concerning bad language on bbc tv, maybe this can be explained by their having “admitted” to having “claimed” for themselves the “mission”, as a self-styled, so-called “force for good”, to challenge the denizens (well, they might as well be) of middle england until they are shaken out of their comfort zones?
of course, virtually no one is entitled to challenge the bbc. The bbc simply, with a flourish of the pen or the keyboard, “reject unreservedly” 99.999% of middle england’s challenges. and the summary rejection itself becomes final proof of their rightness. case closed.
and there i was thinking they were a news-GATHERING and REPORTING organization, striving to be a cut above the rest and SET, rather than merely follw, trends…
For the record, I like to watch South Park occasionally. We all need themental equivalent of chewing-gum now and then.
South Park is genius – the best political satire around at the moment.
I am a card carrying member of the American Right. I have watched South Park. It is indeed quite funny – in spots – but too crude to make desirable regular viewing. I think I’m a little too old for potty humor.
Appropos of the bad language discussion I believe my Grandpa would have counted as ‘working class’ as he had only a high school diploma and worked as a farmer or breeder and racer of horses.
PS: As I recall Grandpa made his remark about swearing and a limited vocabulary while apologizing for cutting loose in front of me and my brother. Clearly he was trying to discourage us from imitating him.
Wildly off topic as we now are, I can’t resist issuing a warning for those who regard South Park’s satire as too coarse. Best not to wade into the 18th Century heartland of the genre, where they will find that our ancestors weren’t quite as prissy.
I have wetted my toes – and I quite agree. ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ for example is quite astonishingly raunchy – for those who assume it’s a children’s book.
Our pre-Victorian ancesters were a crude and profane lot.
Roxana writes:
“I have wetted my toes – and I quite agree. ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ for example is quite astonishingly raunchy – for those who assume it’s a children’s book.”
Bingo! That was the very book that spurred my comment. I do hope some of the delicate souls here never get their hands on an unexpurgated copy!
And to think… it was written by a man of the cloth! Tut tut!
GCooper – don’t forget we don’t have to buy Gullivers Travels!!
Jon writes;
“GCooper – don’t forget we don’t have to buy Gullivers Travels!!”
Neither do you have either to watch or pay for South Park. It’s on Channel 4.
In my opinion, Jerry Springer the Opera is one of the best arguments for maintaining the existence of the BBC! At the time there was an attack on freedom of speech in the UK and the BBC, because of its power and independence was able to stand up to the militants, unlike the Birmingham theatre forced to stop the Hindu play because of the threat to its staff and customers.
The complaints were part of a very organised campaign so it wasnt like a spontaneous reaction from viewers. The vast majority of the complaints (50,000 was an underestimate, more like 80-100,000) came before any of them had seen it. Certainly not a programme to everyone’s taste but if the BBC cant show a ground-breaking, award winning opera what should they be showing?
How do those who think the BBC is so biased reconcile that with Mark Thompson being a Christian himself?
Of course no Christian can complain about anything these days without uttering the immortal words ‘you wouldnt do it to the Muslims would you?’
The answer is ‘yes’, all the time.
Besides Jesus et al are part of Islam too, there were Muslim protestors outside TVC too.
I dont think the BBC honestly expected the complaints about blasphemy because the opera was not about religion. It had nought to do with an anti-Christian attitude. Film makers have been using those characters and the setting of heaven and hell since time began. I remember ‘Oh God,You Devil’.
What people don’t get is that it doesnt matter if there is 50,000 complaints or 1 complaint, it is about the merit of the complaint. Its easy for any vested interest to lobby the BBC and bombard them with identical emails. Do the posters here want a BBC that caves in to every lobby group that dont want something shown? What if 50,000 Labour Party supporters want a news report dropped?
A couple of other points,the BBC remains the most trusted media outlet in the world: http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbcreut.html
(admittledly people may select parts of the poll to support their own views and draw attention to the source but the point stands. Viewing figures also show it is the broadcaster viewers turn to during major news events.)
As to the issue of bad language: who gives a f**** ?!?!
JimBob asks: “Do the posters here want a BBC that caves in to every lobby group that dont want something shown?”
No.
You have completely missed the point. The most common conmplaint on B-BBC is that the Corporation displays a clear and demonstrable bias in favour of Left-liberal ideas.
No one is asking for these not to be broadcast, only that differing opinions receive equal treatment – which they do not.
As for Jerry Springer, I enjoyed it too. But the craven toadying of the BBC to Islam means the chances of any programme even remotely unappealing to Moslems being broadcast is nil.
In other words, there is little or no balance or fairness.
Do you understand now?
‘The most common conmplaint on B-BBC is that the Corporation displays a clear and demonstrable bias in favour of Left-liberal ideas’:Dont you think that might have something to do with the vast majority of posters being right-conservative? ie the BBC is pro-Muslim, the posters are anti-Muslim. The BBC is anti-Israel, the posters are pro-Israel. Coincidence?
I dont accept that the examples here are either ‘clear’ or ‘demonstratable’. They are not. They are a mix of opinion and ignorance.
I have never understood how an organistaion of 20,000 can all be biased and all part of some huge conspiracy. I’ve heard the ‘group think’ theory and its pretty desperate stuff. The same theory could be applied to this website.
If the BBC is under the heel of the Gov, how do people explain reports like this one?: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6230173.stm
A story which came about cause the Beeb aired photos and testimonies sent to it by members of the armed forces and picked up by other broadcasters and newspapers.
Or this:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5372768.stm
No hard feelings, but I have decided not to visit or post on the website again. I’m never going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine. I am in a position to know, and I am sure you are as equally convinced as I of your arguments. I realised as well that there are many more productive things I could be doing, not as some may be tempted to gloat because they have proved me wrong!
Farewell.
(That post above was mine, I got cut off mid sentence)
Bob writes:
“Farewell.”
Ah – the flounce out of the door. Always an inelegant gesture, surely?
As for Bob’s arugument (such as it is) it is easily dispensed with. Count how often the complaint is heard that the BBC favours a Rightist/libertarian stance as opposed to a Leftist/collectivist one.
The Left tends to be deafening in its quietude because it gets the treatment it enjoys.
Now go and enjoy all those productive things you could be doing. You little Stakhanovite, you.
Anonymous (can these people not just make up a name for themselves; it doesn’t have to be real, I’m not really called Heron you know…), I presume that Andrew Marr, former advisor to the Labour party, is one of these “right-conservatives” that think the corporation is biased. Please inform me if you’ve ever heard:
– the BBC attack any government from the right.
– the BBC ever suggest lower taxes
– the BBC ever argue the virtues of privatisation and a free-market economy
– ever argue against more government interference (except in wars, of course)
Were the BBC impartial, they would need at some point to do all of these things, even if it is simply to counter someone’s point of view. To my knowledge, they never have.
Re: Jerry the Opera. Why did the BBC show Jerry the Opera and not show the (far less offensive) Danish cartoons? It is clear that both caused great offence.
Re: South Park. Crude, rude, but very funny and well worth watching, with a curiously decent moral undertone. And definitely for adults and people who aren’t offended by swearing.
I think Mr Reith or one of his lapdogs is impersonating me again.
The post JimBob | 04.01.07 – 11:34 pm
is not from me!!!!
Can the sitemaster check the IP address of this post and check if the same as any other posters?
GCooper, I agree with you completely.
Heron is absolutely correct to point out that no BBC reporting ever criticizes any government policy “from the right”, or advocates lower taxes, or suggests a free-market solution. Nor would the BBC ever do so.
The BBC is an unnecessary public-sector body, parasitic on the real economy. Its primary instinct is for self-preservation through taxation. As long the TV licence fee continues, we will go on feeding the tapeworm.
“Neither do you have either to watch or pay for South Park. It’s on Channel 4.”
GCooper | 04.01.07 – 11:19 pm | #
My apologies – I’m afraid I cannot comment on South Park because as you have probably guesed I have never seen it. The thing is I thought this debate was about bad language on the BBC (but sometimes the 2 seem interchandgeable – see Micheal Grade).
Talking about Gullivers Travels though isn’t it a bit much to compare the morals of the earley 18th Century with those of the 21st. No doubt we could say that the BBC (and Channel 4) is not really that bad on immoral behaviour compared to Rome under Nero.
Jon asks:
“Talking about Gullivers Travels though isn’t it a bit much to compare the morals of the earley 18th Century with those of the 21st.”
No, I don’t think it is – particularly not as the great 18th Century satirists are (rightly) still taught, studied and admired.
I think it’s quite important to realise that, as a genre, satire has very frequently been scatological, so if one were to reject a modern example (in this case, South Park, though it could as easily have been the BBC satirists of the early ’60s) simply on the grounds that it contained bad language and coarse humour, while simultaneously pretending some sort of respect for ‘culture’, it would be, at best, illogical and, at worst, simply ignorant.
Attack South Park on the grounds of its coarseness alone and what price Boccaccio, Chaucer or Swift?