WORLD CUP CRAZY

As we approach the final for the World Cup this evening, the BBC is boasting what a terrific success it has been and one in the eye “for those” who said South Africa couldn’t produce such a high quality tournament. (Meme, ANC = good) Throughout the tournament the BBC coverage of the games has had a fair smattering of cultural awareness reporting spliced amongst it aimed at making us feel good about the new South Africa. The BBC are drooling at the prospect that Saint Nelson Mandela may actually be at the Final tonight – cementing the multicultural fairytale the BBC seek to construct. Frankly, had we got rid of the BBC panel and had an Octopus and a Parakeet, the coverage would have been less cloying.

SAINT NELSON…

Today is the day when the World Cup in South Africa kicks off. The BBC has gone into hype overdrive – and in that regard is no different from any other TV broadcaster. But I am already sick of the worship of Mandela and Tutu that has gone on before a ball has been kicked. I appreciate that these two figures are totemic for the political left and the opportunity was not going to be missed to praise them even more but not everyone holds them in high esteem. I think the BBC is deliberately embroiling politics into the sporting event (If you can call football “sport”) and advancing it’s own Nelson-worship. I also caught a BBC item yesterday with Hugh Maskela in which he claimed that blacks in South Africa was still being denied. By whom? By the ANC? No. Maskela was hinting at the race card and the BBC let him away with it.