Comrade Doctor
Friday, November 15, 2013
Guardian profile: David Tennant, our favourite Doctor … his time has come | Culture | The Guardian.
I try to avoid conspiracy theories. The **** up theory is usually just as explicative - and given the ineptitude of the average human usually far more plausible. It's getting hard however to believe that the BBC's evident bias is just an accidental by-product of being staffed by the metropolitan liberal intelligentsia.
Consider this profile of David Tennant in todays Guardian for example. Neither Britain's Pravda nor the BBC writer being interviewed see any need to put in context or explain the following statements (my emphasis).
With David it's his intelligence that makes him sexy. Obviously he's a good looking boy and in good shape, but fundamentally it's his intelligence, he is curious and full of ideas. He is also rock solid Labour, which is always a plus.How could that conceivably be a "plus" in relation to his acting or general suitability to portray a Time Lord from Gallifrey? I am a huge fan of Dr Who. I consider the Tardis to be the cleverest construct in the whole of science fiction and love the humour of the show compared to the po-faced, up-themselves worthiness of other great sci-fi franchises. But it's hard not to notice than any business-person who makes an appearance is seeking to profit from the sufferings of others or to destroy a planet in order to revenge himself on the board that fired him.
The Doctor is contemptuous of material things and has no visible means of financial support. Nothing so vulgar as a job or inherited wealth. He routinely steals what he needs and uses his sonic screwdriver to take money from the local equivalent of an ATM (owned no doubt by vicious capitalist bankers). He hands out the stolen 'credits' to his companions without any regard for the loss to the bank's depositors or investors.
Not one left-wing writer for the show has ever come up with the obvious plan to go back in time a few centuries with an item of modest value and invest the proceeds of its sale. That would allow the operation of compound interest to make the Doctor indpendently wealthy. It's the first thing I would do with a Tardis, but then I am capitalist filth.
Any noble supporting character in the show is usually (UNIT, Torchwood) a public employee wielding state force with gleeful abandon and no visible resource constraint. Thus the corporation's left-wing bias is utterly clear in its most popular fictional offering. Indeed the only BBC show that does not toe the leftist line without reserve is its most popular non-fiction offering; Top Gear - a show which the BBC hierarchy is known to loathe. They only keep broadcasting it because it makes more money for them than anything else. How terribly vulgar. If only they had a sonic screwdriver, eh?
Finally consider this story from yesterday's Telegraph. Maybe the left-wing bias arose by metropolitan accident, but it seems to me no accident that it continues. We now have a self-perpetuating Marxist elite on our hands, hostile to all our efforts at betterment and contemptuous of all our claims to ownership of our labour and investment.
Tell me again why a free country even has a state broadcaster in the first place?
The bbc has been turning up the level of propaganda lately. They seem to be feeling more confident for some reason and are taking less care to hide it.
Listening to radio 4 the bias just continues to drip out of every discussion programme. The people invited to speak, the discussion points, the things left unsaid, the directed hostility of the interviewer, the avoidance of the obvious questions, the listeners allowed to comment. This is how the bbc has operated for years. But at least on radio 4 they make some effort to make things look semi normal and balanced.
What I find much more disturbing is radio aimed at younger people like Radio 1. Listening to the propaganda news broadcasts on that channel I am both enraged and staggered at the audacity of what they are now doing. Every news piece is either an announcement about the government doing something about some perceived problem the bbc wants fixed, or more likely a repetition of "calls" that have been made (usually from a tax funded charity or academic) for something to be done by government. There is never any actual news. The readers plainly indicate what they approve and disapprove of by simple tone of voice. And all is backed by a dance music beat which numbs the brain into submission. It is real 1984 stuff.
Posted by: Tomsmith | Thursday, November 21, 2013 at 01:31 AM
Tom, Isn't it one of the rules of DR Who that you can't change the past? Like you can't "take out" Hitler in the confusion of the trenches of the great War with a Barett M82 from the door of an invisibly 'parked in the air' Tardis.
I know the Good Dr does not like guns, despite being willing to attempt to commit Dalec genocide on a regular basis. I guess it is not genocide when it is Dalecs?
So, if you can't change the past by shooting Hitler then I guess you can't change it by investing $50 at compound over 100 years... or investing in tulips then getting out before the crash, or south sea shares or buying up some Hudson's Bay Company or IBM or Apple shares...
The BBC Left wing metropolitan bias is just a naturally self selecting distilation, once something like that tips it is self re-inforcing/perpetuating. Like hires and promotes like manegirially speaking.
If you want to get into conspiracy - and accident and greed and ego and incompeternce tho.. How about this scenario?
The Soviets want to hasten the end of British Imperial influence or maybe parasitically pervert it to their own ends and influence British thought.
They know the BBC gets fed from the British University system. They have a grip there with fellow travellers and agents.. sleepers, agents of influence, useful idiots.
Some go into government, the civil service, foreign office, MI5, run for election, and one or two even get caught. Some go into the BBC... The soviet Empire eventually collapses, but the BBC gets made over...
All good for a best selling Dan Brown Novel, maybe following the investigations of a smart (American) script writer and plucky cute researcher looking to do a piece on a significant BBC anniversary... ^_^ who could take that sort of thing seriously?
Posted by: Moggsy | Monday, November 18, 2013 at 09:09 AM
Yes, I realised that but he wrote it (as most of his stuff) for the BBC, which is supposed to be politically neutral, so the point stands. If we had the leisure I am utterly confident that I could introduce you to more sexy Tories than you could me to sexy Labourites. I have never met anyone in the latter category, but then I am very vanilla. Perhaps if I liked being dominated and abused, I would feel differently.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, November 16, 2013 at 09:48 AM
Nice misrepresentation of the article there! Your quote is from the writer of Blackpool, not anything to do with Doctor Who. And he's saying that being Labour is always a plus in terms of sexiness, not acting or Timelordliness.
(I don't personally find being Labour all that sexy, but it's sexier than being Tory, certainly ;))
Posted by: Pickwick | Friday, November 15, 2013 at 05:25 PM
"Tell me again why a free country even has a state broadcaster in the first place?"
Not just one state broadcaster. Channel 4 is state owned. And, I don't know if it's still the case, ITV used to have a licence that lasted for seven years, it would only be renewed if the government was happy with what it had produced.
There is no need for conspiracy theories: the long march through the institutions was a complete success.
Posted by: Andrew | Friday, November 15, 2013 at 05:07 PM
Watch City of Death.
Then tell me who you rooted for;
The Doctor (Hippy leftie boho troublemaker)?
Or Count Scarlioni (intelligent, self-supporting, independently wealthy, visionary genius)?
Posted by: GigerPunk | Friday, November 15, 2013 at 04:20 PM
I hope to post on Karl Marx later today, Friday, based on primary sources. Life is full of surprises.
Posted by: Demetrius | Friday, November 15, 2013 at 03:21 PM