Ross'n'Russ - The BBC and the Charity of Pornographers

The Russ'n'Ross affair is being fought on the grounds of 'offensiveness'. Like rabid muslim fundamentalists, the Immams have proclaimed that 'Middle England' is offended, and so heads must roll. Why is this both familiar and weird at the same time?
The gutter media have been careful to set an agenda which allows them to duck and dive among the indefinable ethical and moral undergrowth, while continually sniping at the BBC. In this case with the new weapon of internet mob rule.
At a time when most people do not get their news by buying a paper but through one of the electronic media, editors are forced to turn their publications into campaign sheets of one sort or another, feeding off a biased interpretation of the news, rather than supplying it. Every story becomes an opportunity for destroying a political enemy. And the British Broadcasting Corporation is one of the great enemies of the tabloid press and their international media barons. And so an internet-turbo-charged resurrection of Mary Whitehouse's 'Viewers and Listeners Association' was only to be expected. But this one with the epic final goal of destroying the BBC as a bastion of socialism - as Rupert Murdoch sees it.
Meanwhile, the fact that the tabloids regularly publish stories and images which are not only offensive, but positively damaging to individuals and groups is conveniently filed in that part of the trained journalistic brain labelled 'Auto-Process', to be ignored for all moral and ethical purposes.
So the surrender by the BBC to this campaign is very bad news indeed. The resignation of producer Lesley Douglas is one thing, but it's a completely different matter to give a craven assurance to obey the non-existent rules of taste, and to agree to be bound by the scrutiny and judgement of pornographers devoted to deciding the political future of this country, and making as much money from it while paying as little tax as possible. To hand the licence-fee over to the pornographers of Wapping and Canary Wharf.

"Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, announced an overhaul of taste and decency guidelines. All programmes will now be re-assessed to ensure they do not offend 'widespread public opinion'."

So the battle is also about who runs the BBC. But the real battle is one of freedom of thought, the flag which the tabloids have been waving in the War Against Terror since 2001. The tabloids today are crammed with demands for 'decency' and other indefinables. They say it's a reaction of the decent-minded to the orgy of smut sponsored by the BBC at the licence-payers expense. This puts them into direct confrontation with the mass of British people who appreciate spontaneity, not the Wapping-censored trash which the pornographers want to impose on them. Like Andrew Sachs when he says that

'These two performers - I'm a performer - sometimes it goes very wrong and it's up to them to do better.'

they appreciate that improvised performance requires spontaneity, and that spontaneity requires freedom. And the price of that freedom is that occasionally, people will get upset. As the handful of people who were upset by this broadcast were. Everyone else was upset by what the Daily Mail told them to be upset about. They were certainly less upset than Andrew Sachs or his dominatrix granddaughter and her manager Max Clifford. The fact that hardly anyone had even heard of Andrew Sach's grandaughter until a week after the infamous broadcast says it all.
This proposed purge of standards at the BBC takes it a step towards the Stalinist organisation which the gutter press have always accused it of being. And as they set the standards in pre-digested propaganda for the masses, they ought to know.
It also removes a source of competition for a whole range of shite, which is their traditional bread and butter. Perhaps the outraged silent moral majority would like to know about the semi-prostitution and sleaze which buys their cheerleaders their yachts, and the expensive accountants who prevent any of their earnings falling into the hands of the NHS or the education system.
After the Daily Mail's Ministry of Approved Entertainment has finished, broadcasting in Britain will be an eternity of 70's knock-knock jokes sprinkled on a bed of soft porn. And everything which breaches its code of political correctness will be banished to outer darkness. It seems that the Mail still can't decide whether it likes political correctness or not, it all seems to depend on which way it's pointing.
Meanwhile, there is definitely an emerging Russ'n'Ross Anti-backlash Backlash, mainly among the young. This campaign might try taking their grievances to the PCC, only to find that it does not cover 'matters of taste'. The Daily Mail is a bigger hypocrite than ever, without even considering its major stake in GCap, the UK's leading commercial radio group.
By causing and revealing an explosion of diversity which the massive, capital-intensive media corporations cannot hope to cater for, the internet has triggered a corresponding howl for a return to rigid conformity - to an arbitrary set of unwritten standards mostly set by the kind of companies which advertise in the Daily Mail.
If they ever win the battle to castrate the BBC, the next logical target for the monopolistic media barons will be the internet. Australia is already following in China's bound footsteps, and their richest son feels no shame at his pioneering assistance to the Chinese regime. With the BBC destroyed, the way would be clear for him and his like to make more money than even they ever dreamed of.
And series like 'Fawlty Towers' would be a fading memory of a service which briefly treated its audience as adults before being plunged into the gory nightmare of perpetual PinkyBlu TV, brought to you by the good folk at McDonnell Douglas.