Happy Saint George’s Day every one

To join a campaign to have April 23rd recognised as a public holiday in England please visit:

http://www.stgeorgesday.com/home

Enjoy the day of the patron saint of England.

The Crazy Englishman

I have spent part of the evening watching CNN (an organisation that should be sued for misleading advertising if ever there was one….. News????)
About a week ago an American “shock jock” Don Imus made a remark about a women’s basketball team on television. The comment was racial and derogatory to women (and while I may be The Crazy Englishman I am not crazy enough to repeat it.)

The celebrity gaff was immediately picked up by the media and has garnered wall to wall coverage on CNN despite the fact that Imus was sacked by his employers more than 24 hours ago.

It is a given that Imus was wrong to say what he said and he has since apologised to the ladies concerned. Imus is the latest in a long line of recent outbursts by celebrities such as Mel Gibson and Michael Ritchie and unfortunately he failed to learn the lesson of those who passed before him. Enter rehab! Do not pass go! Do not collect $200! Go straight to rehab!

The latest celebrity trend in this country is to go into rehab the moment you goof up. Mel Gibson; Michael Ritchie, Miss America have all disappeared possibly off the face of this earth. Going into rehab seems to be the American equivalent of falling on your sword. It has become such an “A list” fashion that Britney Spears tried to get in four times in ten days before finally being accepted and she hadn’t even done much of anything.

If you ask most Americans what they are most proud of about their country they will immediately offer up the right of Freedom of Speech but as Imus and ilk have proved that as soon as someone says something offensive out come the censorship brigade.

In this land of free speech we have specially sanitised music courtesy of Wall Mart and Tipper Gore and the so called shock jocks moving to subscription radio faster that Ms Spears can try a new rehab clinic. The most trusted name in news (according to their own advertising) offer unending coverage of these incidents while completely ignoring the fact that outside of its examination of its navel fluff real people are living and dying in the real world and in just about every country outside of the United States those events are considered news.

Of course, I couldn’t use the term 24/7 for CNN and its like because in this country there is no such thing; of either news or navel fluff examination. After the sun falls in the Eastern and Central time zones CNN and its sister station (the laughingly named) Headline News together with Fox news runs “magazine style” programming because murders, wars terrorist tube bombings and comets possibly colliding with the Earth never happen after dark do they? These programmes treat their audience as morons by re running stories that ran 48 hours earlier and running them again 48 hours after that whilst presenting them as new. Of course in case breaking news might require someone to do some work these shows are repeated again through the small hours while the rest of the world goes on.

It’s free speech if you have nothing else to say and are prepared to bore your audience to tears with it.