Today's two must-read articles.Hooray! We're not alone! There are other people out there who regard today's celebrity obsession as sick, degrading, as well as a waste of time and energy (and dull as shit too, if we may).
In a piece titled Stop the sick, degrading culture of celebrity, Raymond Tallis in the Times argues:
The celebrity culture is a black hole sucking up light. It is not only a manifestation of the cretinisation or tabloidisation of our culture but further cretinises it. Celebrity culture spreads like a stain. It engulfs even those whose fame is rooted in real achievement or real responsibility. As the empty are valued, so the valuable are emptied.
All very true. Shame, however, that Tallis forgot to mention that the Sun - proudly owned by the same people who run the Times- is amongst the brashest perpetrators of said culture. That would have earned him a ten out of ten. Though chances are it'd have been discreetly edited out.
Another top article today is Mark Steel's in the Independent. When I watched BBC Question Time last week, I saw George Osborne pontificating that "we're all in this together" and that everybody should be expected to make sacrifices to beat the recession.
This is what Mark Steel is disputing. "We're all in this together, except when times are good", he writes, adding that "While the banks were making billions, very few politicians were screaming 'For God's sake you idiots, share all those bonuses out. Can't you see we're all in this together'".
No, we couldn't. Because we were all too busy dissecting Kerry Katona's 14th boob job and Amy Winehouse's armpits.
Which takes us back to the point about the tabloidisation or cretinisation of our culture: amongst the main reasons why the twisted rules of modern economics go unchecked.
All very true. Shame, however, that Tallis forgot to mention that the Sun - proudly owned by the same people who run the Times- is amongst the brashest perpetrators of said culture. That would have earned him a ten out of ten. Though chances are it'd have been discreetly edited out.
Another top article today is Mark Steel's in the Independent. When I watched BBC Question Time last week, I saw George Osborne pontificating that "we're all in this together" and that everybody should be expected to make sacrifices to beat the recession.
This is what Mark Steel is disputing. "We're all in this together, except when times are good", he writes, adding that "While the banks were making billions, very few politicians were screaming 'For God's sake you idiots, share all those bonuses out. Can't you see we're all in this together'".
No, we couldn't. Because we were all too busy dissecting Kerry Katona's 14th boob job and Amy Winehouse's armpits.
Which takes us back to the point about the tabloidisation or cretinisation of our culture: amongst the main reasons why the twisted rules of modern economics go unchecked.
6 comments:
Yes, cuz before BB or Strictly people were all discussing Plato and Socrates on the shopfloor weren't they?
Actually some of us were discussing Plato, Socrates and Marx on the shop floor...
It's worth recalling that the celebrity obsessed Sun newspaper is the descendent of the politicised and determinedly left-wing Daily Herald. The Daily Herald folded, not for the want of a readership (it's readership was bigger than many of the broadsheets combined) but for the want of advertisers who had no interest in the working class, left-wing readership of the paper.
Consumerism will always lead to stupidity as sure as night follows day.
Why is it that anyone who uses patriotism as a tag is always a dick?
Thats right, because in thepatriot's world people either talk about the most complex philosophy or they talk about TV programmes. There's no middle ground.
Another typical, predictable, hilarious comment.
knob off, patriot.
Patriot,
I don't know what people used to discuss in the past. One thing I know though: you talk absolute shite.
What? It's vitally important that the Sun explain how to ape Posh's jacket with the use of a clothes hanger and some tennis balls! THIS IS NEWS, DAMMIT!
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