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For those of you living under a rock, ‘Brass Eye’ is the brain-child of Christopher Morris, who is currently one of the most hated men among tabloid journalists. Y’see, ‘Brass Eye’ almost got banned once. Chris Morris and his merry helpers tricked a selection of media-hungry celebs including Peter Stringfellow, Paul Daniels and umpteen clueless MPs into campaigning against ridiculous causes such as a “made up drug” called Cake, and an elephant who was kept in such bad condition she’d got her trunk stuck up her arse.
Today is the 1st of August, and a week ago there was a new ‘Brass Eye’, this time about paedophilia. “Wait!!” I hear you cry, “that is a taboo subject! It is wrong to make fun of it!” Well, in a way yes, it is a touchy subject. So should we be surprised that every newspaper in the land has got on their high horse and, oh wait, they’ve COMPLETELY MISSED THE POINT.
The ‘Brass Eye Special’ was a piss-take of the media hoo hah regarding paedophilia. The media – or rather the tabloid ‘newspapers’, if they can call themselves that – reacted in kind by getting themselves in a tizzy about said programme, branding it “sick”, branding Channel 4 “perverts” and saying it should’ve never been shown. The likes of Phil Collins, Dr Fox and Richard Blackwood were very upset they’d been tricked into campaigning about fake paedophile doings. Perhaps it was them and their cronies who made up the 2,000+ complaints to Channel 4. It probably wasn’t the 3,000+ who called in to praise Channel 4 for showing the programme. Most recently, MPs have jumped on the bandwagon, although they have since been ignored due to the fact it came to light that none of them had seen the programme.
A couple of days ago, ‘The Daily Star’ ran a news article about Channel 4’s “double standards” regarding them showing this programme (and more importantly, Channel 4 showing the repeat of it a day later despite the many complaints they’d received). On the opposing page in this ‘newspaper’ was a large photo of 15-year-old Charlotte Church, the headline reading “she’s a big girl now” and the story explaining how she was looking “chest swell”. Double standards, anybody? THESE are the sick fucks we should be campaigning against.
‘Brass Eye’ has done nothing wrong. What it did do was expose a few past-it media whores, take the piss out of the reactionary media (much like the old ‘Brass Eye’s and, before it, ‘The Day Today’ and ‘On The Hour’), and the media reacted in kind by getting a little hot under the collar. Chris Morris and everybody else involved with the programme: we salute you.
