The world has gone mad #472

So, unless you’ve been getting a bit too interested in the old global financial meltdown, you’ll have noticed the whole Russell Brand & Jonathan Ross prank phone call affair. I decided to reserve judgement until I’d actually heard the prank call. Crazy, eh? What would the Daily Mail do for content if more people acted like that?

I thought it was funny. Not great comedy, as prank phone calls rarely are, but funny and not particularly offensive (unless you’re the sort of baby-adult who thinks all media content should be full of charming and unchallenging pap). And yes, given the nature of the humour and the fact that the call could be construed as harrassment, they probably did overstep the mark slightly. But hey look, they apologised. And Andrew Sachs graciously accepted their apology and suggested that we all get on with our lives.

His granddaughter hasn’t been quite so keen to forgive and forget, parading her obvious distress over numerous tabloid front pages, by… er, enlisting Max Clifford. The poor lamb. Let’s hope the inevitable career in reality game shows goes some way in repairing the psychological damage, eh?

Young Ms Baillie isn’t the only one who could learn a lesson from Grandpa Sachs. We’ve had comments from the Prime Minister, a steady stream of shadow Culture ministers burbling on Radio 4 and a gradual increase in the number of complaints from the public. To cap it all, a senior executive has resigned. Talk about overcompensating!

The media debate has gone back and forth over whether the call was actually offensive, whether Brand is actually funny, whether Ross is worth his massive wage, whether Lesley Douglas should have resigned… all of this is irrelevant, as the affair should have ended with Andrew Sachs’s statement (see above, several paragraphs ago). What I find most important, and most terrifying, about this scandal is how 37,000 people can wield so much power over our country’s cultural life. That’s mob rule, plain and simple.

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3 Responses to The world has gone mad #472

  1. [5x5] says:

    Word. I’ll be interested to see if this new “one strike and you’re out” rule will be applied to all future programming, but I won’t hold my breath. I seem to recall that Eastenders has often attracted similar levels of complaint with their more near the knuckle story lines, but oddly, that’s still on the air….

  2. Matt says:

    This ‘act based on rational thought and accurate information’ thing will never catch on, you know.

  3. Steve Dix says:

    It’s all a bit of a storm in a teacup, isn’t it? One that seems to be milked by a number of people.

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