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August 24, 2003

PC TV
: A great speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival attacks the creeping PCization of TV, popular culture, and the news -- the oversensitivity to sensitivities that ends up adding up to a big lie:

The television industry is so in thrall to political correctness that soap and drama writers now routinely consult pressure groups for advice on what they consider offensive, the Edinburgh Television Festival heard yesterday.
In the annual Alternative MacTaggart Lecture, Rod Liddle, the former editor of Radio 4's Today programme, called on producers to ignore attempts by organisations such as the Commission for Racial Equality, the mental health charity Mind and the anti-smoking group Ash to dictate what is broadcast.
"They hector and harry you into portraying society as they would like it to be, rather than as what it is," Mr Liddle told an audience of broadcasters.
In many cases, the interference was done "with the connivance" of the Government and statutory bodies such as the Independent Television Commission and the BBC's Editorial Policy Unit. The aim was to "bully programme makers into changing the nature of their news programmes, dramas and light entertainment in order to accord with the various agendas pursued by each group"....
He recounted how, before the Iraq war, BBC journalists were summoned to a meeting to discuss how they could cover the conflict without offending Muslims.
Later, he heard a BBC report about a British suicide bomber in Israel. The report concluded - "apropos of nothing at all" - that the vast majority of British Muslims were "utterly opposed" to suicide attacks against Israel.
"When we are forced into making these blithe and comfortable platitudinous asides we do everybody a disservice," he said. In a desire to avoid inflaming religious antagonism, "we massage the truth in order to kid ourselves, and the audience, that that's really the case".
He gave warning that such "small incremental changes" to dramas or news may be well-intentioned, but "before you know it, we're living in a sort of ghastly Sesame Street", bearing no relation to reality.

Of course, this happens here, too: Special-interest pressure groups try to get art created by quota and agenda: don't show smoking; have more of this kind of person or that; don't say that even if people do say it. What it really means is: Be dishonest.
Somebody, please put up the entire text of the speech.

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Flashmopes
: The world is getting fed up with self-indulgent flash mobs. Says the Scotsman:

Now, the backlash has begun in earnest.
E-mail lists like "antimob" and "slashmob" provide a forum for those who are not totally convinced that flash mobs are an important artistic phenomenon.
Sites like Flashmugging mock the "young, naive, wealthy, bored, fashionistas" who take part in mobs. This spoof site warns that flash muggers stalk these events, quoting one such villain: "It’s simple, just turn up at the arranged meeting point, and hand out a load of fake instructions [proceed to the dark street behind the glue factory, then at exactly 14:45 take out your wallet], these suckers are so hyped-up on their own coolness, that they’d believe anything."
This idea of hijacking mobs is the inspiration for flashhack.blogspot.com, which tells it's readers: "The act isn't altruistic or artistic, the participants are self-absorbed, onlookers are irritated, media suck it in ... Hack the flash. Don't be sheep. Don't follow orders … Mobs are highly suggestible. Given direction, sheep will follow. In fact, the success of the Flash Mob wholly depends on the participants mindlessly following orders … Hand out your own instructions." ...
1. At precisely 14:46, go home.
2. Get a life already.

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Bustamante and the N word
: Pacific News Service says Bustamante makes California blacks "nervous."

The moment California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante said he was tossing his hat in as a replacement candidate in the recall race, the buzz among blacks was that he was the guy who used the "N" word....
In a February 2001 speech to a group of black trade unionists, Bustamante purportedly slipped and uttered the dreaded "N" word. When a handful of blacks in the audience stormed out in protest, Bustamante backpedaled fast and swore it was a slip of the tongue. He did profuse mea culpas and furiously waved his credentials as a staunch defender of immigrant rights, affirmative action and multiculturalism....
But the anxiety among blacks about Bustamante is less about his careless slip than about the resurfacing of political tensions between many blacks and Latinos....
If Davis continues his downward plunge in the polls, Bustamante's stock will rise even higher among Democrats. That would include black Democrats too, if only it weren't for that "N" word.

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Gawlee, Guber, it's that Gawker girl
: AL.com (one of my day-job services) has a story about our own Elizabeth Spiers, known here as the editor of Gawker, known there as "that Wetumpka girl."

Some of her Gawker dialogue might be considered a little risque for a Wetumpka girl, but fortunately for Spiers, her parents don't spend much time surfing the Internet.
"They kind of vaguely know that I have a media job," she says. "But they don't really have any concept of what Gawker is or what its audience is or really even who 90 percent of the people we talk about are.
"It's really not racy for here, but I think it's very racy for there."

: Where the hell is Wetumpka? Well, halfway between Riddle and Brassel Bottom, and a mere spit away from Eclectic and just down the road from Liberty, Friendship, Seman, and Kid.

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Bye-bye Bush?
: Says a new Newsweek poll:

The survey released Saturday showed that 49 percent of registered voters would not back the president for a second term if the vote were held now. Forty-four percent would support Mr. Bush's re-election.
The poll marked the first time in a Newsweek survey that supporters of Mr. Bush were out-numbered by those who would not like to see him back remain in office....
The Newsweek report attributed the decline in the president's popularity to public disenchantment over the Iraq war. The poll found 69 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the United States will be bogged down for many years in Iraq without achieving its goals there. ...
However, 61 percent still believe the United States was right to take military action against Iraq in March.

The war was a success. But the peace is hell.

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BBC archives online
: The BBC announced that it will put its whole program archive online for free. [via Dave Winer]
I wonder whether this is a desperate effort to curry favor and increase value as a means of holding onto the license fee. [via Glenn Reynolds]

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Don't let the border bump you on the ass on the way out
: The Observer's U.S. correspondent, Ed Vulliamy, leaves the U.S. and it appears it's not a minute too soon. He pens a bitter, mean, angry, anti-American (and badly written) farewell piece that is filled with nothing but negativity: terrorist bombs, lynchings, poverty; he sees our world through dung-colored glasses:

America was always a dichotomous, Janus nation - born of a revolution by democratic visionaries such as Tom Paine but built on genocide and enslavement. Enriched by immigration but made greedy by power and wealth. It was always a question of which America was in the ascendancy at a given time. I think that during Clinton's presidency there were elements of that democratic America to the fore. Or at least there were by contrast to a country now redefining its role as an international citizen, a country where democratic rights, enshrined in the Constitution, are eroded largely by consent.

Jeesh.
Good riddance.

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Our boy on the bus
: David Weinberger is blogging from the Dean campaign bus.

On the plane now. It's a chartered 737 sitting on a back leg of the airport. No metal detectors here, but they do a thorough job going through everyone's luggage. The press sits in the back of the plane, the staff in the front. Plastic clumps of grass are taped to the seats because this is a "grassroots" campaign, which is somewhere between charming and hokey.
The Governor enters the plane last of all. (Yes, they wand him before he enters ... you never know, given his stand on gun control, he could be packing heat :)

David is an (unpaid) adviser to the Dean campaign.
Reading this, it would be very smart for a campaign to invite a few unaffiliated bloggers onto the campaign bus: The result would be more human, less jaded, more compelling coverage of a campaign from real people.
Call it grassroots coverage.

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Our man in Kabul
: Ben Hammersley, blogging correspondent, has made it into Afghanistan. He ended up flying in, rather than trekking over the Khyber Pass:

Two days in Dubai, then, instead of the Islamabad-Peshawar-Jalalabad-Kabul route of legend. In many ways I'm relieved. I've been to Peshawar before, two months before 9/11, and it was dodgy then. In a choice between dubious airline and a roadtrip where the Pakistani authorities insist that you take a gunman with you to the border, and I guess it's more calming to take the plane. Of course, the incessant worries about the wings dropping off and suchlike are still there - it's the *Afghan* national airline, after all...

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