ARE WE ALL MAD?

The Guardian today (May 29th) seems packed with straws in the wind, small examples of how disordered the world has become. A woman appointed by the Polish government to guard the rights of children has accused a British television import, The Teletubbies, of “homosexual propaganda”. Evidently one of these fabric creatures that entertain toddlers carries “a lady’s purse” even though he’s “a boy”. I imagined they were sexless fantasies but there you go.

Quite how insisting on gender stereotypes helps to protect children escapes me. And how exactly is the term “propaganda” being used here? If a “boy” carries a “purse” without it exciting comment among his peers, what is that propagandising for? Tolerance? I do wonder what this busybody is doing to protect the rights of Poland’s children who are themselves homosexual.

Skipping west to Holland, we find the latest gruesome entry in the base world known jocularly as “reality television”. A terminally ill woman is to choose which of three patients who are waiting for transplants should receive her kidneys when she dies – which she presumably will do during the programme. Needless to say, viewers will be invited to offer their own opinions, medically qualified as they all so clearly are. What a sweet idea! I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when they pitched that to the programme commissioner. And what’s next? A mother choosing which of ten homeless drug addicts should get to fuck her six year-old daughter? Why not? Admit it, you’d watch that.

In Brighton, police have backed off from their stated intention to apprehend all those taking part in a mass bicycle ride on June 8th and 9th to publicise climate change and other similarly important causes. “Why pick on cyclists?” I hear you cry. Ah, but all these are going to cycle naked. I don’t understand this spreading desire to fling your clothes off and join a crowd. The great majority of people look even worse unclothed than they do clothed. And the very least a mass of naked cyclists is likely to do is to cause a snarl-up. So I do think the police should move them on. And is there an offence of riding a bicycle naked while in possession of an erection, I wonder?

Back in the wacky world of the goggle box, our own dear Channel 4 has been fending off justly outraged attacks on its plan to screen footage shot at the Diana, Princess of Wales death-crash site in Paris. C4’s spokespeople are downplaying the explicit nature of the images but there is no justification for revisiting this story in any form, however mindful of public and private sensibilities the channel claims to be. Guardian columnist Michele Hanson quotes Channel 4 – presumably from a written press release – as referring to “a genuine public interest”. I guess this is as opposed to the mendacious claims for public interest that are usually cited as justification for an otherwise morally bankrupt programme idea. What the channel really means is that it expects to catch viewing figures comparable with those for Ugly Betty. I commend to them my reality television notion alluded to above. There’d be genuine public interest in that, as there would be in relays of dog-fighting, public executions and hard core porn. Its genuineness could be measured in the ratings figures.

Channel 4 is in a bad place just now. It is a bit like a football team that is sliding towards the relegation zone with everybody saying that the manager is a wally. C4’s chief executive is one “Andy” Duncan. Yes, he does sound like a presenter of children’s programmes, doesn’t he? If only he dressed like one. Mr Duncan wears “informal” attire rather than the suit and tie traditionally favoured by television executives. This really is a grave mistake, a palpably misapplied attempt to present himself as a free spirit. A certain amount of sport was had at the expense of President Bush recently when he appeared as shifty as a bird-dog in full evening dress to entertain HM the Queen, unimaginably the very first formal dinner of his presidency. Your impression that Bush is just playing at being a public figure was once again confirmed in spades. Mr Duncan ought to pay attention and notice how important dress codes are when you’re in a position of power (as he surely is).

If he presented himself like Hamlet, as “the glass of fashion and the mould of form”, that would be just dandy. Tragically, Mr Duncan appears to amass his wardrobe at Asda. He is not just casually dressed, he is cheaply, shoddily, crappily dressed. Not surprisingly, he gives the impression that he looks unimpressive because he is unimpressive. He must get mistaken for a second assistant director twenty times a day. C4’s founding father was Sir Jeremy Isaacs, an elegant, forceful, charismatic character who always had a ready answer delivered with wit and punch. He looked the part. It is as though the job has finally passed down to the boy in the post room.

Andrew Duncan – I refuse to pander to his meretricious demotic – used to be head of marketing at the BBC. Well, there’s a surprise. No, I mean it. How could someone who looks as though he just popped out to check the barbecue before the arrival of the guests he met in an internet chat-room land so influential a position in the present market-led broadcasting ecosystem (to revive a notion Peter Fiddick coined back in the 1970s)? Now, what with the ham-fisted handling of the Big Brother crisis – and make no mistake, this was a crisis – and the easily dropped ball of the Princess of Wales programme, Duncan is increasingly exposed for what he is, an over-promoted lightweight.

Oh yes, gentle reader, we live in disordered times. And what shall we do about it?