Sunday 29 August 2021

You couldn't make it up

 

I suppose if you were wanting to write a satirical piece depicting the BBC as relentless purveyors of  ''metropolitan liberal elite'' groupthink and ''woke ideology'' you might imagine a fictional BBC Director, Factual, Arts and Classical Music Television ticking his boxes and announcing the following televisual treats:

His Arts remit might lead him to commission a profile of the personal and political life of an artist with trendy attributes, eg. someone who's a gender-bending, feminist icon, and a far-left political activist too. My satirical antennae tell me that the fictional Director would be best ticking the name 'Frida Kahlo'.  

Also on the Arts side of things, our satirist might imagine the BBC Director then commissioning a Black Lives Matter-inspired major arts series, provisionally titled 'Black Art Matters'. Even funnier, the satirist would joke that it's bound to be presented by one of the BBC's two go-to race-baiting activist presenters, Afua Hirsch, because it wouldn't be the BBC these days without a ''woke''-filtered documentary series starring Afua Hirsch.

And there'd have to be something for the other one too, as what BBC season would be complete without David Olusoga? Maybe our satirist would imagine the BBC commissioning a series from him about Britain and British identity and get him to talk again about race, given that that's what he always does. 

Hm, a major new series about Planet Earth is needed. Brian Cox is a bit passe, Sir David's done a lot in recent years, so which ubiquitous flavour-of-the-month would the BBC chose to present it? The satirist wouldn't hesitate, even for a second. It has to be Chris Packham.

As for Classical Music, our satirical BBC high-up would have to commission a documentary about a composer with certain attributes. It it isn't a composer of color, it must be a left-wing, homosexual, pacifist activist, or something of that kind for the programme makers to peg their politics. What about Sir Michael Tippett? He'd tick a few boxes. 

And so on.

As you've probably guessed by now, this isn't satire. It's exactly what the BBC announced for its new season. And the white, privileged BBC boss who did all this commissioning is called Patrick Holland.

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