Burning issues

Here is the response of Mediawatch-UK director John Beyer to the general election announcement:

We urge you to question the candidates in your constituency who seek your vote on the matter of violence, bad language and pornography on television.

An insight to the Mediawatch-UK obsession can be found in an image on their site which urges you to join them. It is a picture of a television set with the words
Have you got a TV like me?
Do you have to keep switching me off?
Do something positive…
on its screen.

The implications of this are disturbing. Mediawatch-UK supporters not only regard their TV as a living, speaking person, but they never want to have to switch it off. Can it be that these are people who simply watch too much telly? Is turning it off such an unthinkable option?

The impression of helplessness is underlined by other smut-campaigning sources. Remember Colin Hart of the Christian Institute complaining about the JS:TO broadcast?

There may be many shows running in West End theatres that I find offensive, but I am not paying for them to be pumped into my living room.

Why didn’t he just call the emergency plumber?

And then there is Media March’s bizarre but revealing campaign slogan:

STOP POLLUTING OUR MINDS

There is that helpless passivity again. The option of switching off or turning over is never mentioned.

They should get out more.


32 Responses to “Burning issues”

  1. Andy says:

    It may interest Mediawatchwatch readers (of whom I am an avid one) to know that John (‘Mammy, how I love ya’) Beyer wrote an article in Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine three years ago (http://www.galha.org/glh/214/beyer.html) on the occasion of its marking the 25th anniversary of the Gay News trial. What he had to say was predictable, but, as editor, I particularly wanted him to make a contribution since his organisation, when still under Whitehouse, was the prosecutor.

  2. Monitor says:

    Thanks for this link, Andy. It’s nice to see Massah John’s sparkling prose and incisive intellect haven’t faded in these past three years.

  3. Dan says:

    STOP POLLOUTING OUR MINDS… COS WE ARE TO THICK TO THINK FOR OURSELVES should be the Media March slogan.

  4. Christopher Shell says:

    It’s precisely because they can think for themselves that they are bucking the prevailing trend in the media.
    It is precisely those who cannot think for themselves that consider that whatever is going on in their own nation in AD 2005 is normative for all nations at all times, and meekly go along with whatever happens to be currently fashionable.
    The broader one’s horizons, the wider the range of options one sees.

    I have no idea how large or small JB’s intellect is. But it is only bullies that pick on others for the size of their intellects.

  5. The broader one’s horizons, the wider the range of options one sees.

    Wow. A lecture on broadmindedness from a fundamentalist Christian. No. Stop. I’m laughing so much it hurts.

  6. Christopher Shell says:

    How many fundamentalist PhDs have you met? 😮
    Some people stereotype, others see people as unique individuals. No prizes for guessing which group are closer to the truth. No prizes for guessing which group we all prefer.

  7. Dan says:

    Christopher, obviously Media March and Mediawatch don’t think others can think for themselves. That is why they peddle the myth that the media is making people commit illegal and immoral acts.
    I wonder what prevailing trend in the media you speak of, perpaps one that presents a view that you dissaprove of.

  8. Christopher Shell says:

    Dan-
    If it is a myth, where is your statistical evidence. The media doenst make people do these things. What they do is normalise them, by presenting a view of reality where certain things are normla – more normal than they had been hitherto. These things have then become more normal in society.

    Where is your evidence that the media merely reflects society rather than contributing to social change? I should have thought it was obvious that the media is one of the main things that contributes to changing social norms. How else can social norms be changed as quickly?

  9. Monitor says:

    Christopher Shell writes,
    I have no idea how large or small JB’s intellect is. But it is only bullies that pick on others for the size of their intellects.
    Is this the same person as Dr Christopher Shell, who commented on 8 March
    Proof positive that swearing is a good thing after all lies in the staggeringly high IQ of the above comments
    And who on 14 March sarcastically replied to a commenter that
    Mensa awaits
    ?
    Are there two Christopher Shells commenting on this blog? Is one of them a bully? Or are they both hypocrites?

  10. Dan says:

    Christopher-
    If the media contributes to social change as you say then how come there was crime before the media started showing scenes of violence on screen?
    I do not know what the media normalises, if you are refering to immoral behaviour then I have yet to see the media normalise any such behaviour.

  11. Christopher Shell says:

    Hi Monitor-

    You’re right that such comments would be bullying to genuinely mentally subnormal people.
    If the commenters in question are genuinely mentally subnormal I apologise.
    But I dont think they are – they are probably well capable of better.
    They themselves don’t lack the IQ – they were just choosing for whatever reason not to use it, e.g. to revert to swearing and rhetoric rather than argument.

    Hi Dan-
    There arent just two possible situations – (1) crime and (2) no crime. Why not? Because crime rates vary so much. No-one is claiming that there was a time when there were no crimes. But everyone agrees that the rise in the crime rate since the 1960s has been stratospheric. Any figures will confirm this. This precisely coincides with the period when the legislature and the media have abandoned Christian moral norms.
    Coincidence?

  12. Monitor says:

    You’re right that such comments would be bullying to genuinely mentally subnormal people.

    LOL. Massah John must be so happy to have such a capable defender as Christopher Shell PhD on his side.

  13. Christopher Shell says:

    There are 2 possibilities:
    (1) He is not mentally subnormal, in which case you are employing dishonest argument to press the case that he is, when really you believed all along that he isnt.
    (2) He is mentally subnormal, in which case you are indeed being bullying.
    I think option (1) may be the true one, and you are not bullies at all.

  14. Dan says:

    Christopher-
    The rise in crime has nothing to do with us abandoning “Christian moral norms”. Why do you believe Christians have a monopoly on morality? We can all be good moral people without having to adopt a relegious belief.
    The rise in crime has been all about a break down of discipline from parents, teachers and the police and a lack of willingness of people to take responsibility for their own actions.
    The sooner we return to the notion of personal responsibility for onesself and ones offspring (instead of blaming everyone and everything else) the better things will be.

  15. Christopher Shell says:

    I agree. But which prevailing worldview was it that the ‘child-centred’ and ‘me-first’ worldviews replaced?

  16. Shaun Hollingworth says:

    Mediawatch/march should learn to use the on off switch, or throw away their televisions. What makes them so arrogant as to believe that the media should exist only to please them, and be censored to their so called (repressive) standards ?

    If material is so genuinely harmful as to justify censorship (which bizzarely mediawatch say they don’t believe in) the evidence will be all too obvious. In the absence of that, it is plain WRONG to impose censorship on a free people simply to try and impose largely untenable so called “values” on others. Such a thing is nothing but co-ercion, to be condemned and laughed at, by future generations.

    I deeply resent their quest to unfairly and unjustly limit what I am free to view in the privacy of my own house. If they don’t want their minds polluting, they should simply learn not to look down the sewer.

    Perhaps they’d feel differently, if things they want to be aired in the media was censored wouldn’t they ? So beware, because I can show more justificatin to censor religion than to censor material curently allowed which they want to be banned. Religion too, is like a drug… and often just as dangerous, if used unchecked….

  17. Christopher Shell says:

    There are various factors you have not considered:

    (1) The off-button argument will never work, because practically everybody believes there are some things that no-one should see at any time. We just disagree about what those things are, and how many of them there are.
    I take a commonsense approach: If something cannot possibly help, but can harm, then one has to question the motives of those who are airing it: it is therefore suspect, and there’s no good reason to show it till it ceases to be suspect.
    For this reason, it is indeed bizarre for mediawatch or anyone else to say they do not believe in censorship. Everyone believes in it really. For example, programmes calling black or Asian people names should be censored. Who’d disagree with that? But then, if you agree, you do beleive in censorship. Likewise, if anyone offered to play a video of your life uncut, you’d pretty soon believe in censorship.

    Christians would certainly take a different view of ‘privacy’ from Shaun’s view. Is there any good reason why the cover of privacy or the cover of darkness should be an excuse to do whatever one wants. As a man is in private, so is that man. No-one can seriously believe that one’s ‘private’ behaviour (a category generally used by people who want to get up to all sorts of things in private) does not impact on their more [public behaviour. We don’t live our lives in two separate compartments, unless we are schizophrenic; If, however, we are schizophrenic, that’s something that needs to be corrected. What wife would take kindly the husband’s plea ‘Darling, it’s all ok, because I did it all in private’? What parent would listen to such a plea from their children? The point about being a person of integrity is taht you can trust the person to be the same person in private as they are in public.
    You by contrast are recommending that people be two-faced: one way in public and another way in private. Can that be a better way? Everyone knows it is a worse way, and one less conducive to integrity.
    ‘Repressive’: Is it repressive to impose curfews on children? Or to have jails at all? There are always proper limits, and the limits are decided by how good their effects are.
    ‘Wrong’: To use the word ‘WRONG’ shows you do believe in absolute right and wrong. But in that case why advocate the relativism that you are advocating re what should be on tv?

  18. tom p says:

    As a man is in private, so is that man. No-one can seriously believe that one’s ‘private’ behaviour (a category generally used by people who want to get up to all sorts of things in private) does not impact on their more [public behaviour. We don’t live our lives in two separate compartments, unless we are schizophrenic; If, however, we are schizophrenic, that’s something that needs to be corrected. What wife would take kindly the husband’s plea ‘Darling, it’s all ok, because I did it all in private’? What parent would listen to such a plea from their children?

    You’re conflating private in the sense that one is doing what one is doing to oneself without harming anyone (else) and secret, in the sense that while what one is doing may be hidden from public view, it will cause someone or something genuine harm.

    If I want to sit around in my pants scratching and playing playstation with the curtains drawn, that is clearly in private and not harming anyone.
    If I want to watch JSTO in my house then that, too, is not harimng anyone.
    Those are ations undertaken in the privacy of my own home and should not be regulated by others.

    If I murder someone in my spare bedroom, that would be in secret, but it would be harming someone.

    If I want to spank the monkey, then that is not harming anyone (although my wife might be a tad upset if she walked in and caught me at it, but if I was single then that wouldn’t be a concern). That is an example of relative harm, wherer there is only potential harm in a certain situation (namely being married). Life is not black and white “Dr”.

    The point about being a person of integrity is taht you can trust the person to be the same person in private as they are in public.

    No, no it isn’t. If an undertaker working on a loved one’s funeral was a naturally jolly chap amongst his friends, would you want him crakcing jokes and glad-handing everyone at the funeral?
    If an ambulance driver liked to have a few pints in front of the telly, would you want him to be the same driving through the streets at high speed ferrying the injured to and from hospital?
    If your colleague enjoyed a spot of onanism at home, would you want him doing the same at the next desk to you? (and yes, I’m aware it’s the second reference to masturbation, but it’s rather pertinent to the question of secret vs private vs public)

    Here’s a question Plato asked a few millennia ago (although, naturally, paraphrased): If all morality stems from God, why does god decree certain things as good and others as bad?

    If the things are inherently good or bad, then one does not need a god to tell us so.

    If they are only good or bad because god says so, then that means that whenever god changes its mind, something can switch from one to the other. That surely is the opposite of moral absolutism, namely the ultimate relativism.
    Julian Baggini wrote on this subject in today’s G2 section of the Guardian, I heartily commend it to you

  19. Christopher Shell says:

    Hard to know where to start.
    (1) What you do when single is of concern to your future wife. Unless you intend to be less than open with her. In which case, your lack of openness of character will also be of concern to your future wife.

    (2) Things can be inherently good and bad and it can simultaneously be God that made them good and bad. I agree with your rejection of the ‘because God says so’ thing. If a thing is really bad. God’s say-so wont make it good.

    (3) The undertaker point I dont accept, since no subterfuge would be involved in this case. It’s two-facedness Im objecting to.

    (4) Every time you say ‘X is not harming anyone’, you are not considering whether it might be harming yourself – & obviously you are someone. The Christian ‘Do to others as you’d want them to do to you’ applies here.

  20. tom p says:

    (1) What you do when single is of concern to your future wife. Unless you intend to be less than open with her. In which case, your lack of openness of character will also be of concern to your future wife.

    Who said anything about not being open? Yet again you’ve completely missed the point.
    Read again the totality of what i wrote. then read it once more. see if you can see what i was getting at.

    (2) – so you accept that goodness or badness does not stem from ‘god’. Therefore things must be inherently good or bad (or vice versa, depending on the situation). Therefore, gullibles can have no claim to moral authority, because your rules aren’t necessarily good or bad because good or bad is a concept independent of religion. Indeed, because, as you recognise, it is a concept that applies differently to actions in different situations, then there can be no absolute good or bad, therefore you are accepting a degree of moral relativism.

    As for point 3, you previously typed, and I quote, “The point about being a person of integrity is taht (sic) you can trust the person to be the same person in private as they are in public.”.
    How on earth can you fail to see that my point about the undertaker precisely contradicts exactly what you said? eh? Jeebus, no wonder you’re a gullible if you can’t even grasp that tiny bit of logic.

    (4) Every time you say ‘X is not harming anyone’, you are not considering whether it might be harming yourself – & obviously you are someone. The Christian ‘Do to others as you’d want them to do to you’ applies here.

    How on earth does ‘do unto others…’ apply to what one is doing to oneself? That’s a total non sequitir.
    Your entire last comment was nonsensical

  21. Christopher Shell says:

    OK lets start again (patient sigh!! :o)

    (1) Isnt there often some overlap between insisting on privacy and being secretive? Why else would ppl insist so strongly on privacy? Which makes one ask what it is that they have to be secretive about.
    I agree that many private actions (eg conceiving a baby) are nothing whatever to be ashamed or secretive about. However, it is always in contexts of (eg) watching iffy tv programmes that people seem to insist on their right to do whatever they want in private. This is what makes me think that in practice there can often be a link between ppl insisting that they can do what they like in private and those things that they do in private being iffy.

    (2) My point was that goodness and badness may well stem from God; but things are not good or bad because God ‘says’ so (in some arbitrary way) but because God made them so (in some intrinsic way).

    (3) My point about trusting the person to be the same person in private as they are in public: as I said, my focus is on two-faced people not being trustworthy. The undertaker would not in this instance be two-faced. If anyone else is not two-faced, then they are not the ppl I had in mind.

    (4) If we should do unto others as we want them to do to us (love our neighbour as ourselves) it follows that we should love (and treat) ourselves as we love (and treat) our neighbour: i.e. the whole saying is reversible.

  22. tom p says:

    righty ho.
    (1) – NO! People who want to watch TV programmes, tend to emphasisee that they are doing so in private because it highlights that what they are doing is to and for themselves. Ifthere were any harm to be derived, then it would be unto them and them alone.
    The principle that people are invoking is the old common law principle that a man in private should be free to do as he wishes as long as he is not harming anyone else.
    If I wish to read a book, then neither you, nor John Beyer, nor Stephen Green should have the right to tell me which book it is that I should read or not read.
    (2) but it is ‘god’ that decreed this. What if your ‘god’ had decreed otherwise. Fair enough, you state that ‘god’ can’t change it’s mind (which seems pretty pathetic for an omnipotent being), but what if ‘god’ had decreed differently at the start? then baby eating would be the norm. And if right and wrong are only so because ‘god’ says so, then how come capital punishment is advocated in the bible, despite ‘thou shalt not kill’ or ‘do unto others…’? Surely therefore ‘god’ has changed its mind.
    The moral absolutism of the church is not only ridiculous (standards change – look at slavery for a good example), but fallacious. There are not even moral absolutes in christianity, just whatever the latest pope / archbishop / whoever you follow says.
    (3) People behave differently in public and in provate. I do thinds at home that I would not wish to do with my friends or colleagues. That does not make me ashamed of these things, nor does that make me two-faced. I behave, dress and even speak differently with my friends in a pub than i would in a meeting. That too does not mean that I lack integrity in either situation. There is a degree of overlap between public and private, in that we carry our brains around with us at all times, but your initial suggestion a few comments ago, that people don’t compartmentalise their lives unless they are schizophrenic was nonsensical, and my examples illustrated this.
    (4) why does it follow? If my neighbour is a sexy lay-dee who I’d like to get jiggy with, does that mean that jeebus is commanding me to have a wank? A person may hate the way they look, and change theirappearance with plastic surgery or tons of make-up. should they only do that if they also do that to their naighbour.
    do unto others as we would have them do unto us is a sound principle and one which, if honestly applied by the whole world would instantly mean that the world became the nicest place possible.
    Of course, it’s never been applied by everyone, which is why we have laws and police and so on. Of course, it’s a commendment that you and your censorious ilk would do well to follow. After all, I have a feeling that you would be less than happy if rationalists started getting the bible censored, now wouldn’t you.

  23. tom p says:

    reading my above comment, I’d like to apologise to anyone reading it for the huge number of typoes

  24. Christopher Shell says:

    (1) But how about the point that harming yourself is equally bad to harming any other person? To that extent, the common law principle does not appear to make sense. You can probably think of plenty of things you could do in private that would actually harm you. The fact that they are in private obviously does not make them any less harmful.

    (2) Youre moving away from the ‘intrinsic’ point. Things are intrinsically good or bad or neutral (or, depending on context, a mixture of the three) because they are part of one vast interconnection. No-one (not even God) can simply pronounce a good thing to be bad (or vice-versa) without upsetting this whole interconnected network. And (as I said) ‘pronouncing’ it will not make it true.
    Slavery: for the first Christians’ positive attitude to slaves and negative attitude to the institution of slavery, see the New Testament: Eph. 6.9, Philemon, Rev. 18.13. The trouble is that the NT repeatedly emphasises that we are ALL called to be servants (& Paul often calls himself a ‘slave’) – so I guess even slaves are called to be servants.
    The chances of my following any Christian leader if I did not agree with them are zero. & so (hopefully) say all of us.
    (3) These points are good & true, but I need to reiterate that my charge is against the two-faced. None of the things you mentioned would make you two-faced.
    (4) We agree that it’s a good principle. One can always think of crazy counter-examples, and yours are good ones.
    It puzzles me that you are still treating me as a fundamentalist. Is this a stereotype you had from the start? Surely my answers on Adam and Noah etc should convince you otherwise?? Or maybe your spleen against me is really what you want to direct against actual fundamentalists. By all means censor the Bible from an ethical point of view. Dont censor it as an historical document.

  25. tom p says:

    (1) but it’s not. It’s about not imposing your will on others, while being free to do as you wish without imposing your will on or harming others.
    I am free to kill myself. It may be a very selfish act to do so, leaving my family sad that I’m gone, and I would take that into consideration, however it’s my body and I’m free to do with it as i wish. In fact, doing so in private would probably be less harmful to others than doing it in public because I could accidentally harm someone else if it were in public.
    I’m not free to kill someone else. that would be imposing upon them my will that they should be dead. This is absolutely right.
    (2) if context can change the moral value of an action, then it’s not intrinsically good/bad/neutral, surely.
    (3) we’re clearly typing at cross-purposes here.
    (4) do as you would be done by is a good principle, but extending it to govern how one treats oneself is a logical leap too far.
    .
    I didn’t think I was treating you as a fundamentalist and certainly didn’t intend to. the bible/censorship comments were related to (a) your stated profound interst in the bible, (b) in a different comments section the other day, you did link to an article you’d written for the Elim Temple website, which states that they believe the Bible to be literally true. And, of course, you are rather censorious. This isn’t an insult, merely an observation – you’d rather like to see a number of plays/tv programmes/films banned (or, at least, that’s how it comes across here), and the other commentators here would rather they weren’t

  26. Christopher Shell says:

    Yes, I think Im better employed among ppl I dont totally agree with (eg Elim – or for that matter this website) than among ppl I agree with. Who wants yes-men, or an echo-chamber?

    You must admit that it doesnt make a lot of sense to be allowed to treat yourself more cruelly than you are allowed to treat others. One can assert that one should be allowed to do so – but this is nothing more than voicing the presuppositions of your own culture, where the individual (and his/her ‘rights’, harmful or otherwise) is held to be king. Thus far, it’s mere assertion, whuch may or may not actually ‘add up’ or make sense.

  27. tom p says:

    I totally agree that it doesn’t make sense to treat oneself cruelly.
    However, you also must admit that it doesn’t make a lot of sense for someone else to be able to tell me what I can or cannot do to my body.
    I definitely believe that human rights are fundamental and the inherent basis of a fair and equitable society

  28. Christopher Shell says:

    So why are the individual’s rights sovereign over those of wider groups (family, community, society)? Are you just buying into the prevailing modern western worldview without first justifying it? There are all sorts of things that an individual could do which would greatly harm family, community or society. Why would anyone support their right to do such things? Smacks of a society where Self is king. What is the difference between that and a selfish society which discourages ppl from thinking of others?

  29. tom p says:

    Hooray! at last a genuine reductio ad absurdem. Heavens be praised!
    This might be considered a straw man (I did not, never have and almost certainly never will, say or type that “the individual’s rights [are] sovereign over those of wider groups”), but since it is an absurd extrapolation from my stated position, I reckon that it’s more reductio than anything.
    .
    now that’s out of the way, on to the meat of your argument…
    .
    Human rights includes the right to be free from certain actions/thoughts/beliefs as much as it includes the right to commit certain acts/hold certain beliefs etc.
    The obvious and clearest exmple of this is murder. One is not free to murder (no matter how tempting it may sometimes be), and nor should one be. This is because the fundamental human right involved there is the right to life (or, if you will, the right to freedom from being murdered). Other fundamental human rights include yours to believe that a magic space pixie created the entire universe in just 6 days before taking a nap on the sabbath, waking only to spy on people masturbating and take umbrage at musicals (I paraphrase), and mine to be free from your belief.
    Hence my precise phrase that

    I definitely believe that human rights are fundamental and the inherent basis of a fair and equitable society

  30. Christopher Shell says:

    No comprendo! Your belief that an individual has the right to do whatever he wants with his own life/body, even to the great detriment of family and/or society clearly elevates the individual above family and society. Such beliefs are ‘caught’ from living in an individualist system.

    This is what puzzles me: the right to life (or to be free from being murdered) is just one example of having to put others’ interests and wishes before one’s own. Why stop there? There are plenty of other situations where one might need to do so in order to prevent oneself acting selfishly. No-one could defend a ‘right’ to act selfishly, since the results from selfish actions almost always bring more overall deficit than credit.

    I disagree on whether ppl should have ‘rights’ to ‘believe’ nonsense about pixies. Not because I think they should be put in prison for believing such things, but because there’s a danger of confusing two quite different senses of the word ‘believe’: (1) provisionally conclude, after examining the evidence; (2) hold a dogmatic stance. Which of the two did you mean? (1) is good, (2) is bad, because dogma is the enemy of debate and open investigation.

  31. tom p says:

    No, you don’t bloody comprendo, do you. For fuck’s sake, it’s really bloody simple. CAN YOU READ? CAN YOU COMPREHEND WHAT YOU READ? read the second paragraph of my last comment.
    .
    This argument started from your claim that people should always have to treat themselves as they would treat others. This is a palpable nonsense and is utterly unanswered in any of your points.
    How do actions that affect only oneself affect society too? I’m quite explicitly not saying that we should have a society where only individuals needs are valued, above those of society, merely demonstrating how societal good can come from individual human rights. duh!

    Oh, and position (2) perfectly describes religious followers. Of course, you’ve set up a false dichotomy again, but that’s irrelevant since I was talking in the sense of (2).

  32. Christopher Shell says:

    I guess that ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’ is understood as a principle by those who hear it. ‘Do to yourself as you would do to others’ wasnt actually said by Jesus, though it is similar to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, the precise meaning of which is debated. The latter formation is clearly better, since (as you say) there are plenty of things we do to ourselves (cleaning our own teeth etc) that we dont and shouldnet to do others. But, these trivial examples aside, I cant think of any coherent reason to treat ourselves with less huamn dignity than we treat any other person with.

    Actions that affect oneself change oneself. The changes that happen to oneself then affect those one comes into contact with (the social ramifications).