Post by Teddy Bear on Jun 5, 2013 19:54:58 GMT
On holiday at the moment, but I saw this humorous offering in the Telegraph illustrating the BBC mindset, that I had to post it.
Thou shalt not blaspheme against St Clare of the Leafy Suburb, the People's best-loved lesbian!
By Brendan O'Neill
Just how weak-kneed is the BBC? This weak-kneed: after 19 people complained about a close-to-the-bone gag about the lesbian sports presenter Clare Balding on Radio 5's Fighting Talk, Beeb officials, behaving like real-life Winston Smiths, deleted the gag from iPlayer. You will never hear the joke again. It is an unjoke. It has been wiped from the public record. All because 19 super-sensitive people moaned about it. I reckon I can get together 19 people to complain that Miranda is offensively unfunny – will the Beeb permanently delete that series, too?
The joke wasn’t particularly funny. It appeared in a segment of Fighting Talk called “Defend the Indefensible”, where one of the comedic guests is charged with putting forward a ridiculously controversial argument. The comedian Bob Mills was asked to argue for the motion, “Give me 20 minutes with her and I’m pretty sure I could turn Clare Balding”. He said Balding, being a “horsewoman”, clearly appreciates “power between her thighs”, and therefore he reckoned he could turn her straight. “We all know there is no woman that can’t be cured”, he said. It’s that “cured” bit that really wound up some listeners. After receiving complaints from fewer people than were on my bus this morning, the Beeb apologised to “anyone who was offended” by this “inappropriate” broadcast.
The BBC is becoming a dab hand at censoring itself, removing from its public record any joke or comment that upset infinitesimally small numbers of people. In 2009, it deleted from iPlayer an episode of This Week in which Andrew Neil referred to Diane Abbot as a chocolate hob-nob (and to Michael Portillo as a custard cream). It has deleted from its viewable archives a 2001 episode of The Tweenies that features a character resembling Jimmy Savile.
Earlier this year it deleted from iPlayer a Comic Relief sketch featuring Rowan Atkinson as a trendy Archbishop of Canterbury who compares One Direction to Jesus’s disciples. Around 2,000 people, many Christians, complained about that skit. I’m sorry they were offended. But what about the millions who weren’t offended? We, the non-offended, no longer count, it seems.
Our right to watch old sketches or listen to crude gags can be overridden by the “right” of tiny minorities never to hear anything that makes them grimace. It’s the tyranny of sensitivity, where screaming “I’M OFFENDED” trumps every other consideration, including artistic liberty.
Partly, this latest BBC scandal confirms the canonisation of Clare Balding. She’s not just a national treasure – she’s the nation’s favourite lesbian, a gay, fuller-bodied version of Princess Diana whom the media fawns over and the rest of us are expected to doff our caps to. Criticising St Clare of the Leafy Suburb just ain’t on. It’s fine for St Clare to cast aspersions on others, of course, as she did when she implicitly and wrongly suggested that 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen was a cheat or when she branded football fans racist and homophobic; but say anything untoward about this most worshipped of TV personalities and you’ll get a severe slap on the wrist.
But more fundamentally, the squishing of a joke that offended a few people speaks to the cautiousness bordering on cowardice of the modern BBC, and to the continued transformation of causing offence into the worst crime a broadcaster could ever commit; it confirms the tragic victory of the sappy sensitive soul over the more grown-up, discerning public.
By Brendan O'Neill
Just how weak-kneed is the BBC? This weak-kneed: after 19 people complained about a close-to-the-bone gag about the lesbian sports presenter Clare Balding on Radio 5's Fighting Talk, Beeb officials, behaving like real-life Winston Smiths, deleted the gag from iPlayer. You will never hear the joke again. It is an unjoke. It has been wiped from the public record. All because 19 super-sensitive people moaned about it. I reckon I can get together 19 people to complain that Miranda is offensively unfunny – will the Beeb permanently delete that series, too?
The joke wasn’t particularly funny. It appeared in a segment of Fighting Talk called “Defend the Indefensible”, where one of the comedic guests is charged with putting forward a ridiculously controversial argument. The comedian Bob Mills was asked to argue for the motion, “Give me 20 minutes with her and I’m pretty sure I could turn Clare Balding”. He said Balding, being a “horsewoman”, clearly appreciates “power between her thighs”, and therefore he reckoned he could turn her straight. “We all know there is no woman that can’t be cured”, he said. It’s that “cured” bit that really wound up some listeners. After receiving complaints from fewer people than were on my bus this morning, the Beeb apologised to “anyone who was offended” by this “inappropriate” broadcast.
The BBC is becoming a dab hand at censoring itself, removing from its public record any joke or comment that upset infinitesimally small numbers of people. In 2009, it deleted from iPlayer an episode of This Week in which Andrew Neil referred to Diane Abbot as a chocolate hob-nob (and to Michael Portillo as a custard cream). It has deleted from its viewable archives a 2001 episode of The Tweenies that features a character resembling Jimmy Savile.
Earlier this year it deleted from iPlayer a Comic Relief sketch featuring Rowan Atkinson as a trendy Archbishop of Canterbury who compares One Direction to Jesus’s disciples. Around 2,000 people, many Christians, complained about that skit. I’m sorry they were offended. But what about the millions who weren’t offended? We, the non-offended, no longer count, it seems.
Our right to watch old sketches or listen to crude gags can be overridden by the “right” of tiny minorities never to hear anything that makes them grimace. It’s the tyranny of sensitivity, where screaming “I’M OFFENDED” trumps every other consideration, including artistic liberty.
Partly, this latest BBC scandal confirms the canonisation of Clare Balding. She’s not just a national treasure – she’s the nation’s favourite lesbian, a gay, fuller-bodied version of Princess Diana whom the media fawns over and the rest of us are expected to doff our caps to. Criticising St Clare of the Leafy Suburb just ain’t on. It’s fine for St Clare to cast aspersions on others, of course, as she did when she implicitly and wrongly suggested that 16-year-old Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen was a cheat or when she branded football fans racist and homophobic; but say anything untoward about this most worshipped of TV personalities and you’ll get a severe slap on the wrist.
But more fundamentally, the squishing of a joke that offended a few people speaks to the cautiousness bordering on cowardice of the modern BBC, and to the continued transformation of causing offence into the worst crime a broadcaster could ever commit; it confirms the tragic victory of the sappy sensitive soul over the more grown-up, discerning public.
