Reid rage
The Christian Congress for Traditional Values have finally come up with a response to Ofcom’s comprehensive debunking of the complaints against JS:TO. “Bishop” Michael Reid, founder of the CCTV and the distinctly dodgy Peniel Pentecostal Church (“BIG SHOP SALE” now on – “Super-low prices on sets of three titles…”), made the following statement:
This entirely predictable judgement is exposed by the shared patois between Ofcom and BBC executives who claim great artistic merit in the programme. A claim of artistic value is the customary defence for using the most odious and hateful material, deliberately chosen by the admission of BBC executives, to challenge traditional values – in this case the sacred image of Jesus Christ. It is the height of intellectual pretension to claim metaphor, satire and artistic dream sequences justify obscene mockery of Christ as a sexual deviant. That is an argument for no restraint at all in the name of art. We note too the dismissive reference to “some people” being offended. Sixty thousand official complaints to the BBC represent an historic outpouring of genuine outrage. Clearly the Ofcom Code will always give greater weight to what it calls “freedom of expression” over protection from offensive material. This judgement is risible and this Code is as valuable to standards of decency as a chocolate fireguard.
You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
We at the CCTV shall continue to fight to protect our imaginary friend from perceived slights,
the Mercedes-driving bishop did not add.
Good to see they didn’t bother to read the bit in Ofcom’s report where they pointed out that the entire second act was a dream sequence, and thus not a literal interpretation of Jesus, and are still confused that the same actor can play two different characters without them actually being the same character.
Even though Ofcom repeated this point over, and over, and over again, just to make sure the particularily thick of logic got it.
All this from the man who allowed his now-dead assistant, Benson Idahosa, to lock the doors of the church until the congregation met the requisite offering – as declared by the Lord through his profit[sic] Benson!!
I can’t believe that he’s talking about putting freedom of expression over the prevention of offensive material like it’s a bad thing. If you’re offended by something you have the option to not watch/listen to/play/read/other it, but if you just ban it those who don’t care (JS:TO may have received 60,000 complaints but most were from one source and the vast majority who watched it didn’t complain) have to suffer because they can’t enjoy it anymore.
wot If I told them I think Jesus is a twat? would they try to prosecute me for that?
If they did, Dan, they’d also have to clamp down on Spanish language courses.
I distinctly remember having to learn the phrase ‘Jesus es mecanico’ in one of those ‘learn Spanish for your holidays’ courses they do at night schools!
Either ppl are not democrats or they think that the points made by 60,000 ppl matter. No need to be democrats, but if one is, then it’s a contradiction in terms to slight this record-breaking number.
I very much doubt whether either the BBC or ofcom could possibly have paid close attention to detail given this vast number of complaints. I made various points which were not addressed at all. (Sniff! Boohooo)
There was very little need to pay much attention to the detail, since 40,000 of the 60,000 complaints were the extact same complaint, generated by a webform (many of which didn’t even originate from the UK).
It’s no contradiction at all to slight this number – it’ll be broken within a year. Not due to the so called “moral disintigration” of media, but because it’s practically much easier to organise such mass mailings and because neither the BBC nor Ofcom have any kind of strategy to weed out dupilicated faked complaints. A programme that got 100 complaints year ago would have actually involved much more effort by the outraged than the entirety of the Jerry Springer complaints.
I suspect we can find 60,000 people in the country who deny the Holocaust happened – but that doesn’t mean they’re not incorrect moron, or that it’s a mainstream opinion in the overall population.
From memory, if one leaves out these 40,000, then the previous record was still doubled.
There are gradations of ‘mainstream’. (As a non-democrat, I dont necessarily place much store by whether something is mainstream, but Im corresponding with democrats who do – or should.) Rather than operate with a system where things are either ‘mainstream’ or’non-maistream’ (and how often ppl claim that their own view is mainstream), I dont think ppl should be satisfied with anything less than proportions or percentages. Without these, there is no way of demonstrating how ‘mainstream’ something is, & it’s amazing how often ppl try to do just that without the relevant statistical backup.
The fact that over 1.6 million of the viewers didn’t complain seems to be pretty decisive statistical backup.
Not often you can say one side is outnumbered by multiple orders of magnitude without any hyperbole.
Rubbish! Whatever nonsense was put on tv, the vast majority of viewers would not actively complain.
By your argument, everything that has ever been shown on tv must be above board, since those complaints figures have never been reached.
Now, surely you’re not claiming that, are you?
Pretty much, yeah. I don’t think anything’s ever been broadcast on British television that’s wrong, save for libelous factual innacuracies, and that’s what the libel laws are there for.
I certainly don’t think ANYTHING, EVER has been broadcast on television which the “vast majority” of viewers objected to.
TV has been broadcasting for 50+years on numerous channels, becoming more ‘daring’ in the process. Anyone who says that nothing has ever been broadcast on any of those channels in all of that time that is wrong (and what proportion of it have they seen?) is clearly either a dupe of the system or someone who would regard so few things as wrong that if everyone were like them we would be living (or dying) in an anarchy. It’s more likely that they are an ideologue precommitted to the dogmatic (and untenable) position that everything in their own culture in their own time is normal and ok.
No, actually just a person able to distinguish between factual reality and a representational picture created by groups of highly charged electrons, usually of fictious events.
The simple truth is that television, even with your so called ‘daring’, is woefully short of the chaos and negative impact caused by real events in real life.
The only position I find untenable is yours that there’s an absolute morality.
Everyone holds to an absolute morality. Some examples:
(1) It is absolutely true that anarchy is the best way.
(2) It is absolutely true that everyone should choose their own morality for themselves.
(3) It is absolutely true that each situation should be treated on its own merits.
(4) It is absolutely true that love/tolerance is always best.
I don’t believe that there is any societal, or even widespread belief that any of those four are absolute. Certainly, I don’t subscribe to any of them.
To be fair on Christopher (for a change) I think he was just listing examples of individual moral standpoints. I don’t think he was saying that they were absolute, just that an individual may think they were absolute.
But my point was that I don’t believe many people do hold an “absolute morality” and his examples weren’t very good ones.
To clarify: Im not dealing with the question of how many people hold to any of these four beliefs. I can’t imagine that anyone would hold to all 4! They are just four examples of how apparent relativists are generally crypto-absolutists.
But they’re four examples that absolute relativists wouldn’t hold, so they’re stupid.
If anyone did hold them, they would be an absolutist. Many people hold them to a high degree, which means that they are more or less absolutists. The ppl you describe as ‘absolute relativists’ must also be absolutists of a kind. The point is only that the world is full of absolutism, and it’s difficult to imagine a non-absolutist position.