What the last week has told me about the UK
For those of you who live outside this sceptered isle, and those of you that live here but prefer to live lives unencumbered by the ‘news’, this last week has seemed to me like a fairground mirror held up to the nation.
First we had a the second week of the Leveson inquiry into press intrusion. This has provided some interesting opportunities: to sympathise with Hugh Grant and JK Rowling; to marvel at the irony of Sienna Miller complaining about the paparazzi then leaving the court only to be besieged by paparazzi, and to consider the phrase ‘privacy is for paedos’ and its myriad implications.
From where I was sitting, it made those of us who buy tabloids look pretty darn shabby. I no longer buy them but I’ve definitely been complicit in the process that led to everything heard in that court. I realise that the tabloids went too far in their acquisition of stories, and if we’d had the choice none of us would have asked for Milly Dowler’s phone to be hacked, but the supply is created by the demand. You put a story about EU law amendments out there and no one gives a shit, but give the British public a nice juicy story about a pretty girl (it has to be a pretty girl) abducted by a paedophile and we’ll keep buying the papers till we’re broke. And pictures of celebs walking down streets, and scoops about professional sportsmen drinking alcohol, and stories about what consenting adults do in their bedrooms…
I know it’s not the whole nation, but there are millions of Brits (and people in other countries) who lap this shit up and they are as culpable as anyone else. The grotesque thing is that most of them are watching all this unfold with an accusatory finger pointed firmly in the direction of the press. It’s always someone else’s fault so string ’em all up.
Then we had the furore over a man saying a not particularly funny joke on TV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKVUIeAsbA
This caused 5000 people to complain to the BBC and the Prime Minister to feel the need to pass comment gently condemning this misguided attempt at humour.
I thought the best quote to invoke here would be Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s, ‘I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it’, but then I realised the problem started way before that.
The man was being humorous (I’m going to stop using inverted commas for words like that; let’s just accept that someone somewhere found it funny), so he didn’t even mean what he was saying. Any vaguely intelligent human being must know that Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t really think the strikers should be shot in front of their families. He’s a well-known humourist whose schtick is chucking out incendiary right-wing opinions that many people in this country actually agree with. He just did it again, so why the big deal?
Well, for a start, we as a nation love to cut people down to size. Jeremy had been getting too big for his boots for years, so any chance to stick the boot in was going to be welcomed by many. Second, this was an opportunity to magnify a dispute between left-wing liberalism and right-wing conservatism: look at the great big, nasty bastard; he epitomises all that is wrong with this country and its unelected coalition government (Cameron is also a friend of Clarkson). Third, it happened on THE BBC. Now, for those of you unaware, the BBC is sacred (this is an attempt at humour) and therefore it must not be sullied by mean spirited jokes or naughty comedians ringing up grandparents to tell them they’ve had sex with their granddaughters. You can tell naughty jokes on the other channels (hang on… isn’t Lee Nelson’s Well Good Show on BBC3?) but heaven forbid you do it on the Beeb, because it is funded by our license fee, which is basically tax. This means that people can say that they haven’t paid their license fee to hear Jeremy Clarkson say people should be shot and feel very self-righteous when they do it.
Dave Prentis of Unison said the unions were consulting on taking Clarkson to court and called on the BBC to sack him. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said the jibe was “more than silly”. He added: “If it was intended as a joke it was in pretty awful taste.”
“If it was intended as a joke”? Mr. Barber, I’ll just have to confirm this fact to anyone who hasn’t noticed, but you are evidently a fucking idiot. Call for Clarkson’s sacking and take him to court if you wish, but why make publicly clear that you are utterly fucking stupid?
Anyway, the upshot of it all is that if you want to look at the above stories from a different angle you can find a whole new set of arseholes leaping about in the background, and it doesn’t look pretty.
Rule Britannia.
I concur.
Nice. You didn’t wrongly attribute that quote to Voltaire.
Update. The number of complaints received by the BBC has risen to more than 21,000.
In other news…Jeremy Clarkson has a new dvd that he’d like you to buy someone for Christmas.
You don’t think the two things are related do you? Surely not.
And also – this from Dave Gorman:
http://gormano.blogspot.com/2011/12/jeremy-clarkson-should-be-lined-up-and.html
Personally I think Clarkson is a bit of an arse but would the joke be acceptable after 9 p.m.
I guess iplayer capability renders the watershed ruling redundant.
Re the complaints, I wonder whether nothing much has changed except our awareness of this stuff. Twitter is a bit like having the old-time letters page of the newspaper shoved in your face a few times a day. Perhaps the novelty of this will wear off soon and the majority of us can go back to entirely ignoring serial complainers.
Talking of ‘speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil’ tv, do you reckon there is any chance that THE BBC do a post watershed dance type show, ‘Strickly Cum Dancing’, for those of us with stronger dispositions?
I wouldn’t get too down about it. There aren’t a lot of these idiots. They just happen to be quite loud.
It’s ridiculous.
Twitter is changing everything.
People are getting hung out to dry left, right and centre for saying anything. You cannot make a mistake now.
The baying public are now organised. It is not a good time to be famous.
One thing that made me laugh was all the fucking bellends who stand up for comedians when they are a bit edgy were some of the first to hang Clarkson out to dry.
The UK is uncool.
And thus blandness ensues. As soon as people fear being offensive or indeed being censored the choice will have to be the safe road.
People who are surprised and/or offended and/or emotionally scarred by Clarkson’s comments are easily surprised and/or offended and/or emotionally scarred.
People are too stupid to know what stupid really is. By stating that he wasn’t sure Clarkson was joking, the union chief spokesnozzle (with apologies to George) is essentially saying he thinks Clarkson is endorsing mass murder on national telly.
To call him a fucking idiot (the union guy) is rather an understatement. Clarkson is a shock jock. If the BBC don’t want him saying shit like that, they should keep him on Top Gear.
And to sack him would probably ruin one of its biggest revenue streams worldwide. Ask any one of these whiny politically-correct nancies if they’d rather 1) ignore Clarkson (free) or 2) pay a higher license fee.
Meh. Some would pay the higher fee just to be British about it. But what do I know? I’m an idiot ‘merican.
how many of those people that made the complaints actually watched the programme, i have a feeling it’s very few.
I genuinely can’t understand how people get offended by someone they’ve never met making an obviously facetious comment, I have never met one of these people in real life. On twitter there seems to be a cadre of comedians and TV types who all leap around telling their followers what to be offended about, and their followers duly obey. I believe the new term for it is a ‘twitch hunt’. Seems very orwellian to me. Putting me right off twitter that’s for sure
Perhaps all this is a symptom of a much larger problem. I wonder if, as a species, that we were not prepared for such a rapid onslaught of technology. It took us eons to evolve enough to be able to craft rudimentary tools. The Industrial revolution didn’t happen overnight. Television made the world smaller. And in a relatively minute speck of time, we have become a species that cannot function without some sort of electronic device in our hands. I really question whether we are able to handle the massive amount of data pumped at us day in and day out. Now, anyone and everyone has a voice, whether it should be heard or not. In the past, to be heard, you generally had to be exceptional, brilliant, witty or controversial. These days, a well reasoned, rational argument has no more weight than the ravings of an uneducated lunatic. Twitter seems to incite a mob-like response to everything. We have become followers, not leaders. Even those we follow are not leaders. They’re celebrities. Add to all that is the fact that media have figured out that the public doesn’t want to think, they want to watch. So they crank out the equivalent of automobile accidents as content that for some reason we can’t bring ourselves to look away from (reality TV and tabloids). They can build ratings and audiences and sell papers without all the cost and effort of producing something worthwhile or providing real news reporting.And the public becomes duller and duller because of it. And all these people with their noses stuck in their smart phones all day, following one another on Twitter and Facebook, are becoming more and more addicted to it. They need the latest bit of news or gossip or trend this instant! It’s almost if smart phones are the new heroin. To paraphrase Spencer Tracy in “Inherit the Wind,”: “Yes madam, you can have the vote, but you give up the right to hide behind your powder puff and petticoat. You can have the telephone, but you give up privacy and the charm of distance. You can conquer the skies, but birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.” I wonder if we are giving up our ability to think as individuals these days?
clarkson appears to be a pretentious clown. he obviously has done quite well doing what he does. being controversial for the sake of it. thats not a new thing, is it. throw a tantrum and you can be sure youll get attention. quite an infantile thing to do, but it gets you in the spotlight. and as you said in your post… supply and demand. the public love a good tantrum. so they get it served up, even if nothing really happened. a little cut here, a slight misquotation there… its much easier to take sides on sidetracked shit than actually staying focused and consider a broader context and the object of debate. fear, hate and tits. the recipe for a tabloids success i guess. more serious publications abstain from tits.
Nicely put, Rob. Can you cut it down to 140 characters so I can tweet it?
Absolutely, ben!
Today I was telling to my AD: “Look even the British are turning into Americans” – we were talking about the Clarkson thing.
The reason why I respect you, like you, adore you is your “Britishness” – the irony, the sarcasm, the self-deprecation, the satire, the absurd, the nonsense, the black humoUr. Jokes are told about everything and no subject is taboo. The freedom of speech at its best.
The nation that created Monty Python is turning into the nation of Oprah – I’m offended; Don’t joke about this; Let’s ask the lawyers first; Could I say this; Put a blip on it; Don’t use this word; the f-word, the m-word, the s-word…
Will you start to sue each other for everything now?
Rob Hatfield.
Ah. I wrote *applauds* in chevrons. It didn’t appear.
(some nerd God somewhere is laughing loudly at me.)
People get offended about things like this because we don’t make them read Swift’s “Modest Proposal” early enough in school. Grade three should be early enough. It’s hard to let a whole lot of satire truly offend you after reading that.
agree and disagree, jeff. there is a difference between being a dick and satire. intention – becomes clearer in context. or doesnt. i swear to fuck swift had honorable intentions. so doubt that when it comes to clarkson. or that stupid bitch raving about aryan britain on a train, btw.
and why not feel offended. isnt that a logicial counter-part to free speech. but thats that then. how to go about the offence is the problem. accept it or call for a witch hunt.
p.s. according to the guardian hes done it again. now its selfish suicides. i especially liked: “trains should resume their journey as soon as possible following a suicide and leave the body parts for scavenging animals”. timely thing to wirte about after speed. i wonder whether the sun sold more this weekend.