The Weekly Hat- Number Twenty-One
HI there. A reasonably easy news week has just passed us by, accompanied by a few nice, blatant media moments. As you may note, it’s 10:30PM, about 12 hours later than I usually do this (I was at a party), so let’s get into it. I still need to get the week’s Behatted strips set up.
- Media And Fascism – An Extension: Nick Griffin of the BNP was on the BBC, you know.
- And The Band Plays On: Meanwhile, the recession chugs onwards.
- Media And Stuff: Up! Thick Of It! Unusual diversion into pop music!
- Behatted Photo Of The Week: Unusual diversion continues…
Media and Fascism – An Extension
This week, the BBC managed to commit the cardinal media sin and make themselves the story. I refer, obviously, to the appearance of the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin on Question Time on Thursday night, where he was subject to an audience of the British people and given a chance to explain his views in more detail, perhaps winning over a whole new audience by appearing reasonable and pleasant.
Obviously, as you’ve probably heard by the time I post this, that didn’t happen. At all. However, some were worried it might, so we had to endure several days of tedious protestesque whinging from The League Of Dull People Against Fascist (or something like that) about the BBC promoting fascism just by having the fascists appear.
This, to my tiny mind, seems akin to trying to stop global warming by tearing up all those posters telling people to recycle. Clearly word is getting around about the BNP regardless. And, unfortunately, it isn’t illegal to hold unpleasant right wing views, so they’ll be appearing on the ballot for the next election. And if people are expected to handle the decision of whether to vote for them, I think we have to hope they can cope with the trauma of seeing them on television.
The above pair of grumpy paragraphs, however, are rendered a shade obsolete by the fact that no-one seems to mind him going on television quite as much once the show had aired and he had been reassuringly yelled at, disapproved of and generally sulked towards for one glorious, pointless hour. Because, they decided, it’s actually fine for the BNP to be on television as long as they get thoroughly spanked.
The problems with this are twofold. Firstly, it will lead to some rather unsympathetic “But… it’s not fair!” moaning when a BNP member goes on TV and actually does acquit themselves well. There will be BNP members out there who can pull of an appearance slightly more gracefully than their leader can apparently manage.
Although, in fairness to him, it was phenomenally hostile, which brings me on to my second point. There were rumours on Twitter (the home of left-wing moaning, as I discussed last week) that Griffin might not be able to get into television centre, due to the protestors mewling outside. This, of course, would be a great example of protestors hoisted on their own retard, as if the BNP had been unable to make it to the studio, they’d have put out a nice victimised press release blaming the evil forces that oppress them for this failure.
Whereas, in reality, they did get on and… to be honest, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they tried to play themselves as victims anyway. The BBC claimed somewhere that they tried to screen the audience in order to provide a neutral backdrop who wouldn’t just boo and jeer at the nasty fascist. Frankly, if that was the best their vetting procedure could manage, then it’s time to start worrying about the number of terrorists who must be hiding there.
Because, to be honest, what they seemed to have actually done is gathered up a nice audience of moaning students, dis-satisfied minorities, an irritating Tory boy and… some hobo, all of whom basically hurled abuse at the BNP. One guy stopped saying mean things about the BNP directly, but instead used his question to ask Jack Straw (representing the government) if he was to blame for the rise of the BNP.
Not that Griffin was virginal and marvellous in this environment. He muttered, complained, tried to avoid denying the Holocaust, slagged off Islam and finally tried to appear sympathetic by saying he only pretended to be racist to win the friendship of the Ku Klux Klan. (Because, y’know, we’ve all been there.)
But I would have liked him to come across as completely reprehensible, and to be honest, the TV rather ruined that for me by putting him in front of forty or fifty people who I wanted to slap just as much, or, at times, even more. However, his horrible sleazy attempts to smile, clap along and join in did push him into the horrific bracket quite satisfactorily. He seemed to think he was on Have I Got News For You or something.
(Oh, and these big national outrage sessions are always a good time to be on Twitter so you can exchange witty exasperation with your fellow aspiring commentators. Just saying.)
And The Band Plays On
Today, jut for the public record, is Friday. Last night, when I went to bed, there was a story on the BBC site proclaiming, with hope, that an announcement would happen today. An announcement completely unrelated to Nick Griffin or the BNP, but rather declaring that we were no longer in a big nasty recession.
Apparently, all we need to get back into the land of happy prosperity is a single quarter without economic shrinkage, and the Beeb seemed hopeful that we might manage to at least hit 0.0% this time
And then, as you may already be aware, the figures came out and revealed that there had been no such luck. The contraction continued, with another 0.4% reduction. Better luck next time, try again in January. (This next quarter includes Christmas, which appears to be the big hope for getting people spending again.)
To mind, this is just the most conspicuous example of a phenomena that has hit a few times over the past few months: The “Don’t worry, it’s nearly over!” disease. Because, after all, we’ve been in recession for what feels like decades. So long that it has started to feel boring to use it as an excuse for unemployment or the failure of your business.
So it must end soon. Mustn’t it? I mean, the banks have started reporting huge bonuses again, and if they get to drag their horrible arseholes into a positive world, why can’t we wretched civilians?
Personally, I suspect the problems we’ve seen are unlikely to turn around simply because a statistic got into positive figures. I think that bankers have done well simply because they’ve had a while now to work out how to make a profit out a global recession, and the rest of us are going to have to wait it out for at least a few months.
Sounds crushingly depressing, I know, but at least I’m right. This time, at least. See you at Christmas for another hopeful punt!
Media And Stuff
- This week, the little-visited world of pop music. (Well, it doesn’t get much coverage from me, anyway.) This is happening solely because I heard the new Robbie Williams single as part of his Electric Proms performance, and it actually sounded… okay? I mean, I’ve always found Robbie to be a tolerable pop artist, who has decent tunes with a few atoms of depth to them. (Well, his better work does anyway.) So I’ve never wanted to see him fail, even if I’ve also never spent any money on his music.
But since his old band, Take That, made a comeback without him and, somehow, actually succeeded, Robbie seems to have started waning accordingly. And with all the real pop stars gone, we’re left with… X-Factor muppets? Certainly, that Cheryl Cole song (“Fight For This Love”) doesn’t do much for me. Say what you will about Robbie, but at least his tunes have a bit of spine to them. This couldn’t be more basic dance-pop if it tried, and the level of cliché in the lyrics is saddening. It’s competently executed, but it makes me feel nothing.
Oh, and last time’s X-Factor winner, Alexandra Burke, has treated us to this thing, which beat Robbie to number one last week. It feels a bit like a really blatant attempt to repackage her as a US R&B artist, much like Leona Lewis seems to have been designed as a British Whitney Houston. In order to distinguish them, the Mighty God Cowell seems to have marked out Burke as a British Rihanna. And to be honest, one was enough. It’s this kind of thing which makes me glad that the new Robbie Williams single was decent. - I also saw ‘Up’, a new movie from the Pixar folks who brought us the critically adored Wall-E. And it was also pretty excellent, I’m happy to say. They appear to be on a good run at the moment. There were times, such as the first fifteen minutes, when it didn’t really feel like a children’s movie. But then the talking animals turned up and everything was fine. The human characters in this really are the best-looking that Pixar have yet managed, in particular the chief old man looks pleasingly non-rubbery. So, yeah, good fun, very funny, classic sense of adventure. Probably worth seeing.
(Token complaint: Starting to grow a little tired of the 3D cinema gimmick. Not sure it adds a huge amount, except for another three or four quid onto the already huge ticket prices. I wouldn’t mind being offered a choice, but 2D showings of Up were practically non-existent.) - The new series of The Thick Of It bowed on BBC2 last night, and was predictably brilliant. Malcom Tucker swears up a storm, and so many quotable lines that I may have to re-watch the episode just so I can quote them. And I must admit it’s good to have the minister role filled, as the last two ‘specials’ felt a bit off-balance at times. (Plus they used so much Malcolm as a result that he risked losing his impact.) But this is a great start, looking forward to the rest of it. You too could enjoy it on iPlayer if you clicked here, and for at least a while you can also see the two specials linked from that page.
- Predictably, I greatly enjoyed the last episode of Peep Show. But I’ve probably given that enough love in these pages of late. Still, between these last two bullet points, it’s definitely a good weekend for comedy.
Behatted Photo Of The Week
Finally, this week’s famous recipient of a hat is Robbie Williams (human), with Jo (hat), since I mentioned him above. (And couldn’t find a decent photo of Peter Capaldi/Malcolm Tucker).
The Small Print: This photo provided by the BBC’s radio1interactive photostream, and both it and the above are covered by the Creative Commons licence here linked.
October 25th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
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