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.
Well then, you had best not read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Boy will you be in for a shock...
It's not the kids fault for being idiots and talking ot people online that they never knew and then going out behind their parents backs and getting molested. And it's certainly not the parents fault for not watching their kids internet habits. IT's all the pedophiles and their evil toxic vapors. Just like Microsoft is really good but open source has been drugging the water and making us think GPL is good.
--End Sarcasm--
I am !amused.
The Independent Television Commission ... said that 411 calls had come in to support the program.
Okay, i'm not going to say people should be forbidden from expressing their opinions on such issues, but is this really the right avenue?
"Hello, Information."
"Hi, i've got a bone to pick with you. The recent witch hunt against pedophiles is going too far. If we don't get a grip on this hysteria, we're--"
"Sir, i really believe this goes beyond my training as a telephone operator."
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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.
- It is very much a taboo. Even a show about it raises moral objections from the masses. A murderer gets complimented in jail; a pedophile gets murdered. My simple reply (in which btw I said I though pedophilia was distasteful!) elicited a "you sick fuck child rapist" response. Need I say more?
- There is a LOT to discuss. Is it indeed harmful? To whom? Can we minimise its incidenmce? Can we minimise its harm? Why are some people pedophiles? HOw can we minimise any harm caused? How should released pedophiles return to society? What therapies work best? Is the Internet bad for allwoing free communication? Should the Internet be banned becuase it contains child sex pictures? Is the harm partly or wholly culturally caused? I could go on for a while - and all these questions are taboo, as they generally just receive reactions like that one response to my post I saw that just saud "you sick fuck child rapist". That was a typical reponse not to a pedophile but to someone merely responding to a post ABOUT the subject! And that is what we should fix, and that is what the show no doubt hopes to achieve.
Michael---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Sure, it is a horrible subject: grown people should nothave sex with children. But pedophilia is by no means worse than murder. Yet murder is a legitimate subject for satire, comedy, thrillers, whodunnits: a whole industry has sprung up around it. Ask P.D. James, or read about Kinsey Millhone.
Pedophilia on te other hand is a taboo; today's taboo. Taboo subjects are subjects "not legitimate for discussion". "Taboo" implies a certain amount of irrationality. This should worry free thinking people. Past taboos have included non-Catholic religion, madness, witchcraft, sexuality, nudity, homosexuality (male and female), the earth turning around the sun, women having the same number of teeth as men, and so on.
When a subject is taboo, it is legitimate to investigate it. I would say, it is crucial. It is how progress in society is made.
Yes, sometimes that means investigating distasteful subjects. But the alternative is worse: a society run on the basis of fear, superstition, and unstated interests. That's not where I want to live.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
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."
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
She read about it. How's that for detailed and useful knowledge of a topic you will be deciding on?
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.
Adequacy.org ran the article Open Letter to Channel 4: Brass Eye Was Unacceptable , denouncing Channel4 and BrassEye for these escapades.
If you want a good summary of the opposition, then I'd suggest reading it. It's a good read in any event.