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October 29, 2006
Don't think of a white bear
Don't think of a white bear: Off-topic, but I still don't quite get this angle of the media biz. This link goes to UK newspaper Daily Mail, about cartoon series South Park's poor taste in using the recently-deceased star of "Crocodile Hunter" as a character -- the family is grieving, experts provide concerned quotes, and so on. And then the newspaper shows a big JPG of Steve Irwin with a stingray stuck in his bleeding chest. I mean, if the story's basis is that Parker&Stone had Bad Thoughts, isn't the newspaper spreading them further? If the goal is to be sensitive to others and not inflame their sensibilities, then why would the newspaper itself try to push such an image into people's heads? The Mail's readers comment that South Park should be cancelled, but none of them question the newspaper drawing ad revenue and sustained readership from its programming of offensive content. Can you explain to me how the audience doesn't see what's being done to them...?
Posted by JohnDowdell at October 29, 2006 07:39 AM
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The Daily Star generally draws a low common denominator in its readership. Other readers generally read it for a bit of a laugh at how stupid some people (the writers and editors of rags like this included) can be.
Its pretty typical UK trash journalism and didn't surprise me in the least to see news articles complaining about this the other morning yet emblazoned with a photograph of the offending frame.
I did hear something else that I thought was pretty ridiculous... Apparently, people wouldn't have been offended (I think this may have been attributed to an environmentalist) if the stingray hadn't been still sticking out of "Steve Irwin's" chest. So in otherwords - they were happy to see Steve Irwin wandering around in the cartoon with a bloody hole in his chest, just so long as there was no stingray....
Posted by: Stephen Moretti at October 29, 2006 08:46 AM
John - you really don't understand English newspapers huh? Especially rags like the Mail (not so fondly known over here as the Daily Fascist)
The whole intention is to display some moral outrage whilst gleefully rubbing their hands and printing what it is that has touched their precious sensibilities.
Don't worry about it - it's so thinly concealed that everyone knows what they are up to and just ignore them. Apart from the fools that think they share the moral high ground and post dumb comments - 99% of which will be "ban it" no matter what the subject matter is.
As I said, the Daily Fascist.
Posted by: Mike at October 29, 2006 08:47 AM
Yep. I'm not surprised at all about the Daily Mail's typical self-righteous indignation.
Steve Irwin would doubtless have p***d his pants with mirth about that South Park episode, and it's worth mentioning that the Irwin character appeared in an earlier episode made and broadcast while he was still alive. (I don't much care for South Park, but I enjoyed that one).
The Daily Mail encompasses everything Wilhelm Reich wrote about Fascism: Extremes of both sentimentality and intolerance, with a clean-cut respectable front. e.g. "My grandson looks ever so smart in his uniform, not like those layabouts scrounging off the state" etc.
Or as Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie put it
Psychiatrist:"You write letters to the Daily Mail?"
Patient: "Yes"
Psychiatrist: "Wait right there, I'll fetch your strait-jacket"
Posted by: Brennan Young at October 30, 2006 12:46 PM