Slashdot Mirror
Roasting Sacred Cows
Hans Gilde writes: "Pedophilia has been a big topic in the UK lately, there have been riots, beatings and vandalism resulting from [pedophile witchhunts]. In an attempt "to ask hard questions about the way society and the media deal with its most difficult problems" and point out "that famous people have a habit of denouncing things without knowing much about them", a comedian in the UK produced a TV show, described in an article in the NY Times, in which he actually got a member of Parliament to say the following, on the air, in all seriousness: "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible."" This show is frankly hilarious, and the reaction to it is even better. You probably want to see the show, eh? It's available in .avi or Real and DivX.
The tabloid press in the UK has, for the past few years, been using paedophiles as the new bogey men, and at one point there seemed to be almost a revulsion race to see which paper could revile them the most. One of them ("The News of the World") came up with the most disturbing: they would print photographs and addresses of known paedophiles. This seems reasonable, and it was defended by the NoW as such, but it lead directly the the aforementioned riots and, as the article says, witchhunts. This was entirely predictable.
The problem with the violence and the witchhunts is that things got out of hand, as they do when a mob tries to think. In one town they forced out a paediatrician by daubing "Paedo out" slogans on her house (see this). In other locations the naming of people a "Paedos" was enough to get them beaten up - there was a fair bit of score settling going on at the time - here is the BBC about Paulsgrove, the main estate where such things were happening.
There was also a bit of feedback going between the sections of press, hand wringing about the violence whilst implicitly condoning it - after all no one could be for paedophilia. So all was good in the world of the press - circulations were up, they were protecting children from evil, and they were secure in the knowledge that nobody could successfully attack them because that would mean that they were for paedophilia, and could instantly be slurred.
Enter Brass Eye. The press were livid, and instantly attacked. In fact, they attacked before the program went out, and the program was delayed for two weeks whilst the legalities were sorted out - Mr Collins was upset for some reason. The reaction to the show was amazing: every news bulletin, every newspaper, every channel reported it. And reported it negatively at first.
Then the press belated realised that a large section of the public were just not buying the story - see this for a fairly typical cross-section.
Certainly no one I know who has seen it thought it in anyway glorified paedophila. No one was particularly offended by it either. It wasn't about paedophilia - it was about media manipulation. It is vastly amusing to see the very same things that were so effectively satirised in the show wheeled out to attack it. This includes government ministers saying "I haven't seen the show but..." (I will except David Blunkett, the Home Secretary from this as he is blind).
None of the celebrities, politicians, and newsreaders shown were in on the joke. They were told they would be appearing in a video warning kids of the dangers of paedophiles, and convinced that the charity proposing this was genuine by collateral material including CDs and a web site. Interestingly most of them when interviewed about the hoaxing afterwards said they believed the charity was real because it had a web site.
This is overlooked by almost everyone.
The point of the show, and of many of Morris' other shows, is that is an attack on self serving publicity hungry semi-celebritys. For example - Phil Collins in a "Nonce Sense" T-shirt (Nonce being an English slang word for paedophile) going to schools, and blindly repeating absolute gibberish fed to him by Morris.
Most people will say that Phil was doing a good thing, by trying to educate children. I side with Morris, that it was a self-publicising act on his behalf, and that if he had any real interest in protecting children he would have easily spotted it as a spoof. As Eammon Holmes (UK daytime TV presenter) did.
Other sections included a news report on how children were being crammed into football stadiums to "Keep them safe". How far is this from the truth? Media hysteria makes parents (Like myself) believe that it is impossible to allow children safely out at night, whereas attacks on children are at a relatively constant rate (Can't link to a newspaper - sorry).
Chris Morris has attacked not children with this show, but he has attacked the misleading media, and attention craving celebrities. For this he has been denounced, his actions upset the status quo - by showing celebrities as fools, by lambasting the newspapers who terrify us with exaggerations of how unsafe we are.
He is even described in the UK media as "Elitist" , a bludgeoning attempt to ensure people will not try to understand his comedy, for fear that they will be associated with such a negative connotation.
The UK viewing figures for this programme were 2 million at the start, 1 million at the end. Yet everyone cannot wait to tell each-other "How disgusting it was", in a ferocious attempt to prove that they too are not paedophiles. As though the very act of laughing at, or even watching the show inspires one to go out and attack children.
Mainstream media hates this man for exposing them as liars and fools.
That just makes me like him more ;-]
I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams.
here
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
-1 for me-too post. I totally agree. I also think it's great to see a show like this, however 'tasteless' it may be described as being. Regardless of how many people were offended or amused by this, it did bring more attention to a troubling subject that NEEDS to be explored. Taboos are not healthy for an informed, free, intelligent, rational society, and this kind of jokesterism is one more step toward open public discussion. Regardless of the *content* of the show (I haven't seen it, don't plan to), thumbs up to the guys who put it on the air. Whether they realized it or not, they've pointed out the foolishness of the general public by way of exposure of 'unmentionable' social issues.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
The climate in the UK is very hostile towards men. In fact, British Airways has an official policy of not seating young children next to men when children fly alone. This is discrimination and stereotyping of men - could you imagine if blacks were treated this way?
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I know this is offtopic, but Slashdot has a brother web site (based on Slash) that covers news on men's rights issues:
http://www.mensactivism.org
They deal with the decline of men's civil liberties with regard to sex crimes, and many other topics.
An Anony Mouse
PS - the BritAir source can be found at:
http://www.mensactivism.org/articles/01/03/17/0
From there he did a radio show which became the BBC show The Day Today, which offered surreal news stories combined with the best parody of news reportage as stands in the Western world I've ever seen. His vaguely threatening goodnight, the use of insane graphics and pounding music... But then he got Brass Eye.
In the UK, humor and sex aren't as big a deal as violence, and you'd be amazed at what's shown on television here compared to the US. Before Brass Eye was even aired it became a news story, as several celebrities and politicians complained to the commisioning network, Channel 4, that he had gone too far.
During the height of Ecstacy hysteria in the UK, he had gotten politicans and celebrities to denounce the evils of a dangerous new drug ruining our children, called CAKE. As in, "We must ban cake." He did it so brilliantly that one of the Members of Parliament who he recorded denouncing cake ("which affects the part of the brain known as Shatner's Bassoon, which affects perception of time - cake is a made up drug, made up of chemicals") asked questions about it in Parliament. The then head of Channel 4 tried to get Morris to tone down the show's vitriol and abuse of celebrities. In the Science on Trial episode he had several UK celebrities talking about the dangers of "heavy electricity" which was killing people in the Far East. So Morris put a subliminal message in the final episode, calling his boss a cunt, which led to statements that he would never work for Channel 4 again. He returned to radio.
Until this year, when changes at Channel 4 led to a rebroadcast of the series and the commisioning of the new one off special on pedophilia. He had a famous London radio DJ stating that pedophiles had more genes in common with crabs than you or I, and there's no evidence for it, but it's a scientific fact! It went on. The result was instant, knee jerk tabloid hysteria, I think best represented in this picture. What you should know is that earlier this year, thanks to a name and shame campaign a major UK tabloid did on paedophiles, a paedatrician was attacked by an angry mob and had her car firebombed. A few days after airing of the programme, several politicans got in on the act, admitting they hadn't seen the show. One of them is even blind!
But thankfully the British public have shown their sense of good humor and more calls of support were received on Channel 4's complaints line then actual complaints, so the entire issue is now being hushed up.
I think what really grates about Morris is that he deigned to show that you cannot trust any of the mainstream media you partake of, that celebrity endorsements count for nothing. My favorite moment on the paedophilia special was a presenter for the BBC's technology show stating that internet padeophiles can use penis shaped sound waves to molest children. I think it's far more frightening to the public to know that those people that put a comforting, sickly gloss on the world as it is today are patently full of shit. The result of Morris' work may be greater than any piece of culture I've had all year, because it's made me question everything. I can no longer watch the news without laughing and being shocked by the idiocy and dramatics of it all. For that he deserves to be knighted.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Well, if you were british, you would know that it should be, "I wish I were british." It's subjunctive. As in abutebaris modo subjunctivo.
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Crudely Drawn Games
The people that run the site have emphatically said that the videos and the site being down has NOTHING to do with "The Slashdot Effect". It is for legal reasons which they have hinted that they cannot explain without getting into deeper trouble. So far, 90% of the assumptions are that Channel 4 is probably pretty pissed that everyone is seeing the show on the web instead of watching their reruns, which is understandable, except for the fact that msot of the people watching it on the web are Americans that have no chance of seeing it in a non-pirated/copied manner.
That's because it was a warez site, which the Slashdot editors would have realized if they weren't so dim. Warez sites which get exposure on Slashdot tend to get closed down pretty damned quickly.
Actually yes, this is exactly what happens.
For rapists, there are programs to deal with the desires, and use masterbation etc.
And they have shown some degree of success, as opposed to simply not dealing with them.
Remember, PLEASE share them back out once you get them! I've had 73 ppl download these from me already and there's only like 3 ppl on this section of gnet sharing this. Thanks.
-Jade E.
One of the sketches in Brass Eye *was* a scene that pretended to be from an American beauty pageant, where a couple had had false breasts grafted onto their 7/8/9 (can't remember) year-old daughter so as to improve her chances in the pageant.
They had one parent holding up the child, with another adoring parent going "Wow, aren't they realistic?" and the proud father going "Yes, and look <shakes child> they even jiggle!"
(I should add at this point that the breasts were apparently computer generated - and in any case they were then pixellated over, so you couldn't see them anyway.)