Sunday, January 15, 2006
Big Brother, again: Liberal snobbishness
I was going to write something on the subject of the media and their disdain for Big Brother today. I'd already written a brief comment on this subject on Aaronovitch's blog. Further comment is now unnecessary as Nick Cohen has written pretty much what I was going to, but with more verve and less grammatical errors. My annoyance was that Galloway could spout things such as the Iraqi people not hating Saddam, Praise Saddam, endorse other dictators etc. That is acceptable, but God Forbid he go on a television show as tawdry as Big Brother. Anyway, here is the link to Cohens article in today's Observer:
'Galloway can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society'
Finally
'Galloway can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society'
"George Galloway and his backers in the Socialist Workers Party are finished now. The alliance they organised between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right, which produced the most disgraceful protest movement since the Thirties, can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society.and
Was it Galloway's support for every anti-American tyrant on the planet that did for him? Not at all. He could salute the 'courage, strength and indefatigability' of Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz and Bashar al-Assad with impunity. How about his apologetics for the 'martyrs' of al-Qaeda and the Baath Party who represent everything the liberal-left has been against since the Enlightenment? No, not at all, that was fine, too. Or perhaps his sickening attacks on 'quisling' Iraqi trade unionists when they were being murdered by those same al-Qaeda and Baathist terrorists?
Once again, polite society found no reason to take offence. Indeed, it cheered itself hoarse when Galloway dodged pertinent questions from US senators about how many starving Iraqi children had seen the profits from the option to buy 23 million barrels of oil Saddam gave his charity.
The liberal media have turned on Galloway because of a far more heinous crime: his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother."
"There is obviously an element of bourgeois snobbery about prole-TV at work here."The snobbishness doesn't stop them analysing every aspect of it, and therefore watching it as much as everyone else though, does it?
Finally
"Still, aren't they weird? The liberals who think it is worse to appear on a TV show than in the court of a fascist tyrant"