The Weekly Hat – Number Twenty
It’s still just about the morning, so it must be about time I published the Weekly Hat for the week. Luckily, since I spend a lot of time on Twitter, it’s been fairly easy to find stories this week, as a frankly alarming proportion of the news seems to be happening… on Twitter. Weird!
So, yeah, those of you who also use Twitter a lot may be able to tell what I’ll be on about today. Here’s the contents anyway…
- Twitter – The Left Wing Daily Mail?: Reactionary, furious, determined to slander opposing views… am I describing the Daily Mail or Twitter here?
- Falcon The Balloon Boy Doesn’t Fly Away: The most worthless news story of the week, given yet more undeserved air time!
- Media and stuff: TV TV TV
- Behatted Photo Of The Week: Worthless news story reappears for more worthlessness.
Twitter – The Left Wing Daily Mail?
This week, at least for those of us who sit around on the internet a lot, has been marked by two “big controversies” which were turned into news stories partly by the scale of their Twitter reaction. Or, at least, the volume of twittering on the subject made them much bigger stories than they may have otherwise been.
NUMBER ONE hit early in the week, when the Guardian declared that they had been gagged from reporting on an upcoming parliamentary question due to legal manoeuvring that they couldn’t really talk about. However, this didn’t stop intrepid internet users quickly working out the likely culprit, namely regarding oil company Trafigura and a question regarding their dumping of toxic waste.
So, that information spread like the proverbial wildfire, and within an hour or two, the word “Trafigura” was clambering up the ‘trending topics’ list, which keeps track of which phrases are most mentioned on Twitter. Yet the media were still unable to report the topic due to the gagging order. Which, of course, raises some fascinating questions about the role of journalism, and the effectiveness of ‘gagging orders’, in this world of instant, omnipresent information.
But far more of interest to most of the folk on Twitter was the ‘affront to free speech’ presented by the order itself. It wasn’t much disputed that this was a bad thing, especially since the wronged party was, um, an oil company that was (allegedly) dumping hazardous waste in the Ivory Coast. As hate figures go, that’s about as textbook as you can get without adding in some genocide.
They eventually gave in, the precedent was rescinded and everyone lived happily ever after.
For about forty-eight hours. Then, there was NUMBER TWO.
Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir unleashed this masterpiece about the recent death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. Not all of her points are completely invalid, but where she lost most people (and opened herself up to accusations of massive insensitivity and outright homophobia) was the section where she brings in the recent suicide of Kevin McGee, ex-husband of Little Britain’s Matt Lucas, and tries to link the event with the death of Gately because, of course, they had both been married to another man. At one stage or another.
This is much like saying that the deaths of Michael Jackson and Patrick Swayze are connected because they have both appeared in films, and more importantly, could be read as saying he died of gayness. People were unimpressed. Anyway, if you want to read a point-by-point beatdown of Moir’s piece, good old Charlie Brooker does it here much better than I ever could.
Back in the land of tweets, it was mostly bedlam. The sense of social crusading may have been greater than the Trafigura affair, and the level of rage being lobbed around most definitely was. Because, like much of the internet, Twitter is a tad dominated by the left-liberal side of the spectrum, and there is nothing they hate more than the more extreme instances of the opposite viewpoint. So, the abuse flowed like wine.
A vague, stuttering statement was issued, which tried to clarify some of her more badly made points. Apparently she was trying to say that civil partnerships can be just as troubled as marriages, and… well, valid point, but I’m not sure it came across. And she describes the Twitter outrage as an “orchestrated internet campaign”, which either demonstrates an attempt to play down the outrage of the masses as a conspiracy by a few, or just a misunderstanding of the fact that many, many people actually did read her piece and find it objectionable.
Regardless, another good deed by Twitter. Still, two of these in a week is a bit much. Let’s not turn Twitter into a medium with which to lynch those who breech the sacred codes of tolerance and free speech. After all, don’t we just become a liberal version of the Daily Mail after a while?
Plus, all that do-gooding kinda distracts from the importance of banal messages about what I had for dinner.
Falcon The Balloon Boy Doesn’t Fly Away
This one also trended on Twitter, but didn’t involve do-gooding or take place in Britain, so I think it’s safe to split it off into a second piece. In a turn of events that could almost have been orchestrated to promote the new Pixar movie ‘Up’ (which I haven’t seen, sadly), a small child called Falcon was seen climbing into his Dad’s silvery space balloon and drifting off into the ether.
Then the drifting blob landed, only for the child to not be inside. “He must have fallen out!”, cryeth the people. The story dominated several news channels, the footage of the balloon landing repeated ad nauseam. Until they found him, in his parents’ attic, alive and well.
Some have leapt on the whole Falcon saga as a sign of growing emphasis pointless news, when we should be focusing on the starving children and so forth. Although they aren’t without point, I tend to take this view: The children were starving yesterday. They’ll still be starving tomorrow. The purpose of the news is to tell us about things of interest that are going on. It’s not too realistic to expect them to shove new developments down the agenda and lead off with “Starving Children Situation: Same As It Has Been For Years”.
Having said that, the sheer level of reportage on this balloon boy thing was ridiculous. I think the producers of the news shows got a wee bit overexcited because they actually had some footage to show for once.
More interestingly than the above, the parents of young Falcon had appeared previously on Wife Swap. And, when questioned about why he hadn’t come out of hiding when called, Falcon’s reasoning was that his father “said that we did this for a show”. And then he threw up a couple of times for good measure.
With that, the media is now convinced the whole thing was a stunt. Of course, I could lay into him for child endangerment, but this would be to idiotically overlook the fact that the kid was in the attic the whole time. (Or possibly in a secret room, watching DVDs whilst knocking back Doritos.)
So, instead I’ll lay into him for buying into the myth that the kind of fleeting, rubbish fame that stuff like Wife Swap or being in the news gets you. What does he want, exactly? His own “reality” TV show, “The Wild & Crazy Heene Family”, about how awesome it is to live in the sort of family where Dad keeps a weather balloon in the back garden and teaches his children that it’s okay to lie to the police, as long as it helps extend your fifteen minutes of fame to sixteen?
Oh, and if the one about him calling the local media before calling the police when his son “disappeared” is true, then add that onto the list. I despair of the planet sometimes.
Media and stuff
- Have I Got News For You, the fine news-based comedy panel quiz, returned for another series on Friday. Although I can’t pretend I’ve ever watched it with any regularity, I’m always glad it’s still going. There are too many rubbish panel quizzes in the world, although at least They Think It’s All Over hasn’t come back. But HIGNFY (pronounced “hig-nuffy”, apparently) is reliable to a fault. I really wanted to resent them like hell when they removed Angus Deayton and decided to keep using guest hosts, as I felt the constant rotation would annoy me, but… no, somehow they’ve made that work too. The bastards. Anyway, yes, the first new episode had Charlie Brooker in it, Martin Clunes hosted, some woman from Strictly Come Dancing was there as well, it was rather funny and can be viewed on iPlayer here.
- Yet another new series, and yes, the new TV season does make writing this section pleasingly easy: The Sarah Jane Adventures comes back for a third run. I only caught up on this show a couple of months ago, but it’s always enjoyable and fun, which is probably all the target audience cares about. They can take or leave those lengthy ponderous interludes you get in the main show. The first new two-parter brought the cast back to run around, and featured a Judoon actually doing some policing, which I enjoyed greatly. Yes, it’s a children’s show, but it’s a great, classic kids-have-adventures example of the genre. Plus the Doctor is appearing some time this series, which should be great. Fanboy excitement!
- Peep Show is still going. This is, in fact, nearly over, but I feel almost beholden to mention that it has been consistently brilliant. One of the best things on TV, although the imminent return of The Thick Of It may almost give it some competition. (Although not really, as Peep Show is sneakily finishing the day before Thick Of It starts.) Excitingly, you can watch not just Friday’s episode, but the entirity of Peep Show on the Channel 4 website.
Behatted Photo Of The Week
Because you probably haven’t had enough balloon boy this week, here’s that balloon (um, balloon) again, accompanied by Len (hat).
Small Printage: Pre-edited photo taken by morner on Flickr. Both original and above covered under following Creative Commons Licence. Le fun.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:52 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nick Bryan, Nick Bryan. Nick Bryan said: Weekly Hat #20 now up, looking at all the crazy social justice on Twitter this week + Other http://www.behatted.com/?p=539 [...]