Big Brother/Donor

Two from Sp!ked: Ofcom: Mary Whitehouse in liberal attire

Commentators and politicians have given their nodding approval to Ofcom’s insidious brand of ‘liberal censorship’. Censure by Ofcom is justified on the grounds that it is protecting the viewing public (which includes children, don’t forget!) from material that is ‘offensive’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘unacceptable’. Why don’t we be done with it and employ Ofcom representatives in actual TV studios and behind the cameras, so that they can make sure that everyone in TV-land behaves according to its strict guidelines? I loathe Big Brother and the public school nihilists who produce it as much as the next journalist. But having Ofcom dictate the terms of British broadcasting is a far worse prospect, and a disaster for TV on a par with bringing back soap-in-the-sun Eldorado.

Big Donor: dismember me when I'm gone

The fact that Jade Goody mouthing off can earn a TV show a watching brief from the police, while a death lottery is treated as standard controversy fodder, demonstrates a widespread incapacity to see moral issues through anything other than a politics of fear and a discourse of therapy and vulnerability.Shows like Big Brother and The Big Donor Show rely on an easy formula for what constitutes free thinking – that any taboo or social sanction is, by definition, something to be bulldozed, rather than reflected upon in order to sort our deep and necessary moral structures from contingent ones. The result is a conformism of thought – and one that fits with the nihilist grain that runs through much of contemporary culture.

UPDATE: Whoops! It's a hoax.