Rant!

The ‘establishment’ – that is politicians of all stripes and at all levels; ‘authority’, the media; all intent on treating us as if we were in Primary Year 1.

 

Let’s take the media first.

 

I remember when TV commercials featured top stars such as Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Collins, and many others. They had sound production values. They were frequently more entertaining than the actual programmes.

 

Remember Pau Hogan as the coarse Ocker let loose in England? In one, he was at the Opera, Don Giovanni. In the opening scene, DG is climbing out of a lady’s boudoir window trouserless. ‘ Strewth’, bellows Hogan,  ‘ he’s forgotten his strides!’.

 

Some years later I was at a gala performance in the presence of Queen Margaretha or some such. As the scene opened, I couldn’t resist it. But I hadn’t appreciated that my voice carries. The entire Upper Circle gave me a dirty look. Nobody laughed, miserable gits.

 

One of my favourites in South Africa was one for Nandos, the fast food chain.

 

It featured an old lady – hat, long dress, parasol -  waiting for the lift. As the doors opened some of the local rugby team barged past her so that she was last to enter. The doors closed. Then there was the sound of an explosive fart. The doors reopened and the lads all rushed out again, leaving the old lady standing alone with a big smile. No dialogue!

 

That commercial must be at least 20 years old, but I still remember both it and the product. Good advertising!

 

Today we have ads that  feature hardly any humans, slebs or not, except of course for the intensely annoying fat Welsh tenor. Instead they feature cartoon characters aimed at 6-year olds, and rat-like creatures speaking in a Slavic accent for no obvious reason. The Wonga add features two old cartoon characters getting stitched up for a loan at 3000% per annum. And apparently you can play a horn concerto on the exhaust pipe of a Ford Focus.

 

TV News? I’ve given up apart from Jeff Randall, Quest and AJ. Even with Randall we are short changed. His programme was 30 minutes. Then it went to one hour. I put the timer on it last night. JR was on camera for 28 minutes.

 

News bulletins have become Red Tops with moving pictures, often leading with the latest deeds or misdeeds of a soccer player when all mayhem is breaking loose in the world.

 

And we have such nonsense as all news being blacked out in favour of continuous  coverage of the demise of one Michael Jackson.

 

Last night Sky News solemnly reported that the BBC had announced that it would not further employ a former presenter who had just pleaded guilty to monkey business with females 40-odd years ago. He is 83!

 

Programmes? We have Sky. It transmits about 150 channels, but considerably reduced when you discount the sport and film pay channels, the pop ‘music’ channels and the 38 ‘adult’ channels. In the remainder we are often reduced to watching a DVD because there is absolutely nothing to watch on TV. Of course, there is always ‘On the Buses’ which is just as dire as it was 40 years ago, or ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ which goes out on the Documentaries channel.

 

Much of the entertainment is clearly aimed at viewers with single-figure IQs.

 

The print media take us all to be fools. Old broadsheets have now become tabloids, dumbed down so much that they rival the Red Tops, and as a consequence they have tumbling circulations.

 

Perhaps we are not all fools after all.  

 

As for politicians, lying has always been part of their stock-in-trade but now it has become a profession in its own right, except its practitioners are dubbed ‘spin doctors’. Just about the only thing that politicians genuinely believe is that we will believe them.