Ross and Brand: Don't Join the Hysteria

I had intended not to blog about the Jonathan Ross / Russell Brand / Andrew Sachs / Georgina Baillie saga, but since it has taken up residence on the front pages of most newspapers and featured widely in blogland, I suppose I had better join in.

First off, I think that if Ross and Brand should be sacked, then they should have been sacked long before this particular stunt. For being crap. And for demanding huge sums of money for being crap. Looked at in employment terms, this was surely a performance issue long before it was a disciplinary one. It is an absolute scandal that anyone should be paid £6m a year for doing anything at all - let alone that a public employee should be paid £6m per year for being crap when the vast majority of public employees are very good at their jobs but are being told to accept below-inflation pay rises.

Ok, so my personal view that they are crap is just that: a personal view. Sure, there should be a place in public broadcasting for people who Janine does not personally like. But I'm sure we could all think of a hundred better uses to which the BBC could have put both the millions of quid and the hours of airtime.

The Sachs incident itself? It was pathetic and out of order. Public humiliation is not a form of entertainment in my book. Picking on someone who has done nothing to deserve your broadcast bullying is barrel-scraping of an unacceptable kind.

And just because a woman dances in a group called the Satanic Sluts does not mean that her sex life is fair game for public broadcast. Those who argue that it does remind me of the detestable practice of defence lawyers introducing a woman's sexual history as some kind of mitigation to excuse her rapist.

So, would I shed a tear if Ross and Brand were sacked? Never to darken our airwaves again? No, I wouldn't. But will I join in the wave of demands for their heads on a platter? No, I won't do that either. Why?

The media coverage of this really is way, way over the top. No doubt that's partly a result of the cult of the celebrity; it's partly a result of genuine and correct objection to their behaviour. But there is a third factor too: a conservative, censorious outburst by those who think sex, swearing and irreverence are very, very naughty and think that the BBC is a haven of lefty, liberal, disrespectful progressives who must be pulled into line.

One sign of this is that there were only a handful of complaints after the broadcast itself, but tens of thousands after the front page denunciations appeared. I would always be alarmed at the prospect of being on the same side of an argument as the Daily Mail, and I will not join their side on this one. The Mail has no genuine objection to Ross' and Brand's fat-cat salaries, nor to bullying or sexism. It objects to its perception of the BBC's non-adherence to traditional values, and probably to the very existence of the BBC as a state-run broadcaster.

An outright victory for right-wing critics of Ross and Brand would mean that all sorts of broadcasters and comics would come under increasing scrutiny, not just to ensure that they stay within acceptable bounds of non-persecution of elderly actors and their granddaughters, but to ensure that they stay within bounds of behaviour acceptable to the Daily Mail. The Mail has already begun to cast its net wider using the momentum of the Ross/Brand scandal to demand censorship of broadcast material that offends its sense of 'tastefulness' and 'decency'.

We can and should condemn Ross' and Brand's broadcast, but we also have to defend comedy and broadcasting from would-be censors. The charge-sheet against Ross and Brand includes that they were 'offensive'. Indeed they were, but that is the same charge levelled by Bible-bashers against 'Jerry Springer: the Opera', and it was a cause of celebration that their attempts to suppress it failed.

Blessed Are the Cheesemakers. Torquay Finally Gets A Life

Torbay Council has finally seen sense and lifted the God-squad-inspired ban on the 'Life Of Brian'.

Yes, for years the Bible-bashers prevented the residents of Torbay and surrounding areas from watching one of the world's greatest comedy films, with their minority tut-tutting obstructing everyone else's right to sinful pleasure.

Whoever made that decision was not the Messiah. He was a very naughty boy.

So popular as the decision been that an extra screening has been organised.

But lest you think that Torbay was the last bastion of God-bothering narrow-mindedness, spare a thought for the residents of Abersytwyth, still barred from appreciating the antics of Brian and his chums in the People's Front of Judea. Never mind, at least Torbay has taken the secular step: always look on the bright side of life.

Censoring Darwin

Just how sensitive are our public authorities becoming to the whinges of religious fundamentalists?

A Northampton museum covered up part of a display on evolution because one single Christian objected.

I'm sure I needn't go into one here about the importance of defending free speech and scientific progress against superstitious throwbacks - it's one of our favourite subjects here on Stroppyblog, after all. But I can't help but suspect that, say, a decade ago, this simply wouldn't have happened. Maybe the Christian would not even have complained, but if s/he had done, I feel confident that the administrators of a public service would have politely explained that a museum's role is to provide interesting, educational, factual displays, not to pander to religious sensibilities, and certainly not to allow one person's 'offence' to deny everyone else the right to view an uncensored exhibit.

Hat tip: Pat

Russian CP Wants Indy Banned

Something about this tickles me. It seems that the Russian Communist Party has taken great exception to the new Indiana Jones film on the grounds that it is not an accurate portrayal of history.

My my, anyone who pursues self-education in history by going to see Indiana Jones films is, erm, probably going to the wrong place. Try your local college.

If the Russian CP has been learning history from Indiana's previous outings, I am going to have to gently break it to them that there is not actually a 700-year-old knight guarding the Holy Grail, and neither does the Ark of the Covenant contain magic dust with the power to shoot out beams of fire and slay Nazis.

It's a fictional movie! A story! And I rather enjoyed it. It's exactly the same as its predecessors, though thankfully of the standard of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and The Last Crusade rather than the weak and sexist Temple Of Doom. It has the same delectable contrast between polite university corridors and wild truck chases, the same silly but fun action sequences in which every enemy bullet mysteriously misses its target, the same storyline in which the baddies make Indy find the desired relic for them only to fall for its destructive powers because their motives are less academic than his, the same just-about-plausible first two hours culminating in the fantastical climax.

Actually, at the start I had a tweak of worry that it was a mite cold-war red-bashing. But it goes on to knock the FBI's anti-communist witch-hunting as much as it mocks the Soviets.

But the most amusing thing about this news story is, I think, the Russian CP getting all upset about inaccurate portrayals of history. You'd never catch them doing that kind of thing now, would you?