A Diversity of Opinion
So I’m sitting there with my Horlicks, and a couple of digestive biscuits, watching Newsnight. The lovely Emily Maitis has convened a panel of three witty, cutting edge humorists to discuss the complex issues surrounding BrandRossSachsGate. First up, Jan Raven:
“They were out of order, but they are very funny and the BBC must not give in to the Daily Mail tendency”.
( I’m paraphrasing btw ).
Second, John O’Farrell:
“They were out of order, but they are very funny and the BBC must not give in to the Daily Mail tendency”.
( I’m still paraphrasing btw ).
I start to yawn. Where are those matchsticks that Tom used to use in the Tom and Jerry cartoons?
Third, and finally. We have Stephen K Amos. Great, someone to break the consensus. What do you think, Stephen?
“They were out of order, but they are very funny and the BBC must not give in to the Daily Mail tendency”.
( Yes, I’m still paraphrasing btw, but I was almost catatonic by then, and I don’t sit there with a notepad anyway ).
Gee. Thanks for that. Thankfully Virgin One were just about to start Sexcetera so at least I had something intellectually stimulating to go to sleep on.
theres no comparision to the danish cartoons.
nobody is threatening to cut the heads off Woss or Brand…
what Woss and Brand did is precisely the OPPOSITE of the danish cartoon fiasco – they went after someone who was least likely to threaten to cut their heads off.
i look forward to brand doing a prank phonecall to Omar Bakri , to disprove my theory that the both of them of cowardly wankers sucking at the teat of the taxpayer…
they are scum. end of story.
Wossy’s Saturday morning radio show is good for the first hour due to Andy’s choice of music, the stories he reads out nicked from Private Eye, Muir or passed to him from dead tree press. As soon as the guests come on he starts showing off. All his anecdotes refer to how cool he is and he takes shed loads of holidays.
About 10 mins max – 35 ish weeks a year! I think i’ll lobby for a pay rise, the man is clearly under-valued.Still, better than MP’s I guess.
“what Woss and Brand did is precisely the OPPOSITE of the danish cartoon fiasco – they went after someone who was least likely to threaten to cut their heads off.”
Spot-on, Mr.Ed. Let’s see them leave a similar message on Omar Bakri Mohammed’s voicemail, then we’ll make comparisons with the ‘toons.
They were about standing up to censorship. This was about picking on the least dangerous (and there’s a word for that). Sachs isn’t even pressing charges, despite having every right to.
Martin:
Sue: The Danish cartoons had nothing to do with the BBC.
Martin | 30.10.08 – 4:07 pm |
More’s the pity. But I don’t see why you’re telling me so.
Maybe I should have said
The only similarity between the “prank” and the Danish cartoon is that neither of them were funny.
There’s no evidence that the complaints were mostly from Daily Mail readers. The news has been covered prominently in most newspapers and on the TV.
So how the commentators could reach that conclusion is beyond any rational explanation. It seems to be good old fashioned prejudice creeping out.
The double standards of Al Beeb are breathtaking regarding freedom of speech…..
Last night the three morons on Newsnight were defending “freedom of speech” and equating Bland and Woss to some kind of modern Tolpuddle Martyrs.
But where was Al Beebs courage in actually publishing the Danish photo’s? Did they leap to the defence of Theo van Gogh when he was stabbed/ shot because he went on Ned 1 in Holland and said “Muslim men were goatf*ckers” because of the way women are treated?
Of course not-instead they enlist their Pallywood pals like Clooney to preach to us about not offending “minority cultures”….
Nope…..this is strait out of the Michael Moore playbook of low blows and spiteful jibes a la Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. It’s so easy to be “edgy” when the targets of your “satire” are Americans, Israelis, Jews, Christians, Conservatives, Republicans, the middle class, white working class, fat people, smokers etc.
But when it comes to their “vested interest groups” then it’s a whole different matter- say anything offensive about any of their pet concerns then its strait to “diversity training ” to be “corrected” in your thinking- or if you are Kilroy banished to the media equivalent of Siberia for life.
If Al Beeb REALLY believed in Freedom of Speech we would of had somebody like Melenie Phillips providing a counter-argument on Newsnight rather than the four f*ckwits that we were treated too…………
The Cattle Prod of Destiny | 30.10.08 – 1:21 pm |
“The only question is should the public broadcaster, funded by tax payers be paying for what they say is ‘edgy comedy’ ?”
Yes they should, otherwise we wouldn’t have had Monty Python.
Where they go wrong is confusing edgy with offensive. It’s a lack of imagination more than anything else …
Well, because of that same cavalier BBC attitude we almost didn’t have Monty Python for posterity. The total lack of respect for their Charter – which requires the maintaining of programme archives – was endemic even in the mid-70s.
The BBC recorded over countless old shows to reuse the tapes for new crap. If Michael Palin hadn’t had an editor friend who just got one of those fancy new (in 1975 or so) video recorders, Python would be remembered only through a few grainy episodes kept in the basement of a PBS employee, their records and the memories of a few middle-aged males. Without the repeats, they probably wouldn’t have gotten the backing from people like the guys from Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin to fund The Holy Grail.
The BBC’s contempt for their audience led them to wipe out quite few things, including Radio 3 concerts. The people who created the BBC Legends had to go to people’s homes to find concert broadcasts by such greats as Barbirolli and Beecham, which private citizens had taped off the wireless. The same cavalier mismanagement (space and cost savings, yeah) led to the wiping of Dr. Who episodes, almost everything the Pythons did before they formed the group, and other shows many people here probably wish they had.
That cavalier, lack-of-accountability atmosphere allowed Terry Jones to walk the halls and sit in on production meetings and create childrens’s shows with his friends, all on your shilling, sure. But it eventually rots from within.
The Pythons knew the difference between edgy and offensive. The current crop of cackling heads lacks, as you say, the imagination, but these days so do their bosses and News division colleagues.
David Preiser | 30.10.08 – 10:36 pm |
The BBC has, in the past, created and shown some great programs. Some of them have been innovative, some edgy, some confusing – but they were rarely offensive.
They could do it, so why can’t they now? Well mainly because they hire people for their political views, sexual orientation and race and not their ability. So, of course, the programmming has suffered.
Take Dr Who for example. In the past it was never a victim of top rate production values or sparkling acting but it served its purpose. As science fiction it was well enough written to be imaginative and unusual, for its time. After all the sign of good sci fi is the amount of imagination in fires in the reader and not the technical aspects of the writing.
But todays Dr Who is just a series of special effects tied together with unimagianative aliens. These creatures appear time and time again not just because the audience like the familiar but because the writers are not capable of thinking of anything new.
It’s sad really, a once great broadcaster, perhaps the best in the World has dissolved into a third rate peddlar of shallow, unimaginative dross.
David Preiser – you can add early Dad’s Army episodes to the list of the fallen.