Gaza
Charismatic conflict
How to suceed at moral outrage without trying for the easily confused
A rise in anti-semitism
Richard North, the one man power house behind the blog, EUReferendum, had a moan the other day,
Despite the legacy media maintaining its policy of reporting only one foreign crisis at a time, with Iraq being the fashionable crisis for the moment, serious events are unfolding in Ukraine.
He is so right about that. It is the speed and fickleness of the media and the 'popular opinion' they feed and feed on that stands out. No so long ago all attention was on Gaza. Opinions were formed with astonishing rapidity and without time for analysis or reflection. So that one had to conclude not much more than pure fashion was the motive. All that mattered, or so it seemed, was the arithmetic, the number of dead. This was ridiculous as the counting had not been given the same prominence throughout the conflict in Syria.
Then along came the crisis in Iraq. So it was goodbye Gaza and all the other trouble spots. And yet the arithmetic in Ukraine, the number killed, now equals Gaza. It is thanks to the environmentalists , who may well be the same people who tramped through London shouting anti-semitism that we get charismatic species, 'save the whale' for example. And now we have charismatic conflict. Where's 'Stop the War' when you need them?
in
The BBC at work
Oh how we laughed
Jonathan Ross
It's three months since the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand affair; at the time we wrote this post. For those of you who have forgotten, (well you never know!) this was when Brand, usually described as a comedian, and Ross, who is a TV show presenter, phoned semi-retired actor Andrew Sachs so Brand could taunt him about his affair with his grand-daughter Georgina Bailey. Oh, you may say, not that again! Yes indeed, did you ever think it would go away? At the time the Mainstream Media divided into differing camps, one was very anti- Brand and Ross, the other more supportive. The anti B&R media was led by the Daily Mail who, much to the chagrin of many bright young things, showed an ability to push a campaign in the direction that suited them as cleverly as any global warming activist. The supporters of B&R were to be found mainly within the pages of the Guardian and the Independent. That newspapers normally given the liberal/left tag were doing this was to be expected, particularly the Guardian, as they employ Brand as a football correspondent (how very laddish!).
Russell Brand
These two characters are in many ways very different.
