Originally published @ 3:28 pm, Sun 31st Oct 2010
Jon Stewart, the US television satirist, held a rally in Washington DC yesterday under the slogan “Restore Sanity”; http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/31/rally-restore-sanity-jon-stewart-washington
His targets were overheated debate and laziness in the media.
Hallelujah!
And there was some great wit there, puncturing some sloppy thinking and pejorative campaigning.
Like “somewhat irritated by extreme outrage”.
Like “Jon Stewart wants you to take it down a notch”.
Like ridiculing the right-wing practice drawing a Hitler moustache on Barack Obama.
Now some of this seems to be portraying a situation that hasn’t quite reached us.
Like the Tea Party Republican (who now starts her broadcasts with “I am not a witch”) getting into a muddle on gene research and claiming scientists in America were already crossing man & monkey and getting mice with human brains. (See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_4if1x1pH8 )
But Britain does suffer from an alarmist media (e.g. a Bolivian man got to stay in the UK cos he owned a cat) and a lazy media (e.g. only this morning, Andrew Marr accepting as granted that there was a deficit crisis cos of the mess of a Labour Gov’t, whilst trying to challenge Teresa May).
The downside with the rally has to be the celebrity lead and the failure of the campaign to come from political activism.
Now I really value the celebrities who supported us in this General Election. They stuck with us in a way that the celebrities who were at Conservative rally in 1983 didn’t when their popularity was not so high. Delivering a key message on TV and radio is a skill and I was grateful for the way they put the message over.
One of the supporters interviewed by a Guardian reporter said – “Call us Generation I. I for irony, i-Phones and the internet…”
The country needs a better debate, and certainly better than “Have I got News for you” and Private Eye can generate – often very funny until you find it’s describing something you actually know about – then it’s – “crikey, I hope people don’t actually believe this”.
And I guess it follows that the country needs better political activism.
Of course, politicians have got to watch out on the matter of comedy too.
Harriet Harman was quick to apologise for the “ginger rodent” remark yesterday, but how did the notion of cracking a ginger remark ever get so far? Ginger remarks are one of the current vogues that needs to be dropped, along with the stories about people from Norfolk.
Not that I want to give too many lectures on comedy. I’m way too dry. I blame Alexei Sayle.
Tony Blair wrote early in his book how he thought politicians needed good project management skills. Chance! If only I’d known. Then halfway through the book, Tony said he liked to be surrounded by people who had a certain “joie de vivre”. Chance gone. I blame Alexei Sayle.
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