Round-up

1. Channel 4 is axing Celebrity Big Brother (about time) because of the Jade Goody incident. Imagine that: axing a whole show just because of one innocuous incident that happened last season. While I am glad that such tripe has been removed from the airwaves, Channel 4's reasoning is pathetic and politically correct. A great shame from a channel that has produced such excellent and un-PC documentaries as The Great Global Warming Swindle and the Dispatches episode about Islamic hate-preaching in mosques.

2. The co-creator of hit BBC1 drama Life on Mars has revealed that politically incorrect character DCI Gene Hunt was given a make-over prior to filming because he was deemed to be too racist. One example that was in an early draft script but never made it to the screen was the character referring to the Caribbean barman at the bar frequented by Hunt and his police squad as "chalky".

The silliness of this is touched upon typically briefly later in the article:

Mr Pharoah described it as a slightly "bizarre conclusion" that the sexist and homophobic elements of the character were found to be acceptable while only racism was "a step too far".

He suggested that this may have been because "two wars had been won" - meaning homophobia and sexism are at a point in UK culture that they can be featured, albeit carefully, in TV drama - but that racism is still a taboo subject.

The conclusion is indeed bizarre, but then Mr. Pharoah goes on to give a completely cockamamie reason for this political correctness, which doesn't actually explain anything. Since when have homosexuality and sexism not been taboo subjects? And whoever fought, and won, any "wars" against such things? He doesn't explain WHY racism should still be a taboo subject and other controversial things shouldn't, or how removal of this taboo status could be achieved.

He then also lets loose with this stinker of a line:

Mr Pharoah also admitted, when asked in a Q&A about whether letters had been received about the character's actions, that he had been unhappy with the way the Daily Mail had made DCI Gene Hunt a "pin-up".

"He became the pin-up boy for the Daily Mail for a few weeks and that was deeply disturbing," he said. "They lost the irony... they knew exactly what they were doing."

The unspoken connotation here is that since the character is a racist (among other things), that therefore makes him extremely popular with the Daily Mail, which apparently shares the same vices. Any examination of the Daily Mail's "lionisation" of Hunt, however, clearly reveals that they appreciated the character's hard-hitting stance towards crime, and his ability to give criminals what they deserve and put them behind bars. This is in stark contrast to the current lily-livered PC police force, which is afraid of doing pretty much everything. But given such a chance to demonise the "evil right-wing" Daily Mail, the folks at the Guardian are hardly likely to shirk the chance, are they?