Saturday 13 April 2013

Munchkin Fury: So It's Come To This...

Can you imagine the editorial meeting behind this headline?
"Find me a Munchkin and make sure they're furious!"
Ding Dong! Freddie Starr Ate My Dead Donkey! redux.
For Judy's sake, if this is now the story five days after Thatcher's death, then she's won.
Once again the tabloids - and the Daily Mail, in particular - have (re) set the agenda, by turning a silly non-story about a silly song into something people are seriously discussing.
As if this really matters in the general scheme of things.
"Ding Dong! The witch is dead!" might have been a throwaway line you'd email or tweet when you first heard the good news on Monday, but surely should have been left at that.
If people wanted to indulge in chartjacking - another form of self-indulgent clicktivism, and sign of our increasing apolitical impotence - why not choose a song that was actually written about Thatcher, and communicates some of the anger, misery and sorrow she caused?
If The Guardian believes this is "the best protest available", then let us pray for a riot or four.*
Well, it's what she wouldn't have wanted.
The ironies here are far too many to list.
Radio 1 has crisis meetings to decide they'll only play about five seconds of the song.
Presumably just the word "ding". 
While all media repeat that - apparently unutterably offensive - song title endless times.
Oh, and a word to The Sun: No Munchkins actually "sang the ditty" - the voices heard on the track are those of other actors sped up - so aren't their views on this somewhat invalid? 
(An idiot at Pink News - the same record-breaking idiot who claimed Thatcher was "a gay icon" - thinks it was "sung by Judy Garland").
How depressing that anyone's even discussing this story in any other terms than what a joke it all is, and talking about the tragedy of how people have got caught up in yet another media manufactured moral panic?
And that - to use the tabloids' favourite word of this week - really is "sick".

* Legal disclaimer: I'm not calling for anyone to riot - please stay at home and tut. 

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