Silly Season

Should ITBB have a celebrity sidebar to attract more readers?

When you’re looking at the Daily Mail online to read Peter Hitchens or a bold expose of something disturbing to do with Islam, your eyes slide sideways all by themselves and you absent-mindedly click on something just to see what some scantily dressed celeb has gone and done now. 

Trivia about reality TV personalities you’ve never heard of is of zero interest but stuff about Victoria Beckham or Mariah Carey, 47, who is allegedly starting to look like a whale has a certain pull. 

ITBB’s sidebar would consist of pictures of Theresa May in some of her more ghastly clothes, and instead of saying “Theresa flaunts her eye-popping assets as she sets off on holiday with entourage” we’d say something rude about her knees, not for the first time. 

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If you’re still interested in Kevin Myers, here’s that clip of his Radio 5 interview with the ubiquitous Emma Barnett.

(I note that Alan on Biased-BBC has taken a view on this affair. I hope Alan will forgive me for pointing out that in his quest to denounce the BBC he has lost sight of the fact that Kevin Myers himself, in a somewhat Naz Shah moment,  has admitted that his unwise, thoughtless  innuendo amounted to casual racism. Myers certainly may not be your common or garden antisemite, or any kind of antisemite at all, but he made an offensive remark and apologised. 

That is not to say that the BBC and the Guardian have anything to crow about in that regard.

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Is the BBC’s gay jamboree is beginning to get too “in-yer-face?

Footage with social history content, such as film about the Peter Wildeblood / Lord Montagu of Beaulieu legal case is fascinating, but when blanket coverage of gay issues starts making heterosexuality look uncool it’s a bit  elgy beety queue & I too far.

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This is the silly season, but the subject itself is far from silly. What is silly is the fact that the BBC, as a broadcaster with a massive number of employees who are supposed to be on the lookout for material, missed the story completely. Especially as it concerns a ‘broadcasting’ controversy for once not related to the BBC itself.

This piece by Stefan Frank for Gatestone Institute reminded me again of the story.  (The film about antisemitism that was too sensitive for the Franco-German culture channel, ARTE. )

Frank’s article was originally written in German, and I hope it reminds Germany’s good people what a devious lot broadcasters can be. 

Well, they were eventually pressurised into a one-off showing of the film, but with “health warnings”:

“The way WDR broadcast it, however, was unique: at the beginning of the film and in brief intervals throughout, warning signs were inserted again and again, indirectly urging viewers not to believe what they saw in the film.”

The film is to be shown in US United States for one night only, on August 9. 

“The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles announced that it would screen the film after the German and French networks tried "to bury the documentary, before it could contaminate the viewing public with the truth," according to the Center's Associate Dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, in an interview with Gatestone Institute. "It is a film that needs to be viewed by anyone concerned about anti-Semitism and anyone concerned about the democratic future of Europe. It is a truth-telling, and 'PC'-busting documentary", he said. 

The truth is that in today's Europe, it is becoming more and more difficult to tell the truth.”

Douglas Murray’s lecture about ‘freedom of speech’ is apposite here, and I commend Biased-BBC for bringing it to out attention.

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I binge watched Top of the Lake: China Girl. I have no idea why you can catch all 12 episodes on iPlayer, but you can. It was gripping till the last episode, which in the usual tradition of TV drama was not the best one. I thought it was a good series. The Telegraph’s critic didn’t think much of the first episode but he probably would have changed his mind had he stuck with it.  I’m not one of Elizabeth Moss’s biggest fans, but her performances in this, Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale were fine and dandy.  However, in my opinion the best performances were by the minor characters. The ‘madam’ in the brothel and all the ‘girls’ were terrific. As for all those complaints that it was pretentious, I must like pretentious.