My problem is that several issues get mixed up into a frothing incoherent rage. Overpaid? Unfunny? Twerps? All these things may be true. I've never listened to them enough (at all) to know. But they certainly do seem to appeal to their audience. The fact that there were only 2 complaints in the week after the show suggest their audience weren't fussed by the prank (though I agree it was tasteless and offensive to the persons involved).
To my mind the person with a right to complain here is Andrew Sachs, and to a lesser extent his granddaughter. He's said he's prepared to accept their apologies and doesn't want to take it further. She wants blood, but then again, she's also just hired a new publicist, and perhaps there's a motive here involving her own career?
But to segue from that to taking the line 'we have to protect our vulnerable children' (which was the particular argument on the Today Show I really took issue with) is I think using the event as a flimsy excuse. The arguments I heard were about the level of 'filth' and how it had to be addressed. There's plenty of 'highbrow' filth on the bbc that doesn't attract this opprobrium, and I really do think it comes down to a class issue.
And to use the event as a 'reason' for dismantling public broadcasting is, I think, blatant opportunism.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-11-01 11:38 pm (UTC)To my mind the person with a right to complain here is Andrew Sachs, and to a lesser extent his granddaughter. He's said he's prepared to accept their apologies and doesn't want to take it further. She wants blood, but then again, she's also just hired a new publicist, and perhaps there's a motive here involving her own career?
But to segue from that to taking the line 'we have to protect our vulnerable children' (which was the particular argument on the Today Show I really took issue with) is I think using the event as a flimsy excuse. The arguments I heard were about the level of 'filth' and how it had to be addressed. There's plenty of 'highbrow' filth on the bbc that doesn't attract this opprobrium, and I really do think it comes down to a class issue.
And to use the event as a 'reason' for dismantling public broadcasting is, I think, blatant opportunism.