Daily Mail: Ban This Filth - Full Story And Pics!

The stupid Daily Mail has been reporting about the first stupid knock-on effects of the stupid Mothers' Union/Bailey Report on "The sexualisation of childhood."
Yesterday it was 'Goodbye boys! Crackdown on sexual imagery in outdoor advertising will see provocative underwear poses banned'
"In what is seen as a victory for parent-power, sexually explicit images of women will be removed from billboards near schools..."
Brilliant - cause children only see advertising billboards near schools, don't they?
The rest of the time they have bags over their heads.
And if any Daily Mail readers weren't sure what a "provocative underwear pose" looks like they helpfully illustrated the story with the photo above, captioned;
'Banned: Images like this would be banned from billboards near schools'
Genius.
Today we learn;
'Four biggest internet providers to allow parents to protect children from porn in government crackdown'
Brilliant idea!
Cause most teenage boys with a raging horn wouldn't be able to work out how to over-ride that in four minutes, would they?
No more silly and pointless hysterical token gestures in the sex wars, please.

TV Kissing Poll: Lesbians Good! Married People Yuk!

YouGov has just published the findings of a poll they conducted in June about how people feel about seeing fellas kissing and a'cuddling on TV and that.
You may recall this was quite a big story back then, mainly because of a MADE-UP STORY in The Daily Mail about a wholly fictional "Lesbian TV Watershed Kiss Ban", Christian and Syed canoodling in Eastenders, and The Bailey Report into "the Commercialisation and Sexualisation of Childhood".
Wisely YouGov also raised that thorny old question as to whether kissing outside marriage is ever okay.
I know what you're thinking - but how does this break down according to party affiliation?
As you can see below Lib Dems are pretty levelheaded about things.
But Tories would rather french kiss their dog's bumhole than see two blokes spooning on the tellybox.

And finally here it is broken down according to age.
Fagburn is colourblind, so may have got this wrong, but among 18-24s it appears lesbian kisses are the most acceptable, and married kisses are the least acceptable.
The world's turned upside down!

Right, I think this has settled the whole gay and lesbian kissing on TV before the watershed thing once and for all, so let us never speak of it again.

Via PoliticsHome.
Don't forget to read the small print.

UPdate: More detailed look at the findings from The Guardian.

Mike Stock: Pop As Pornography

"Pop music in this country is almost completely dominated by American acts who have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency.
"As far as music is concerned, it has been a slow but unmistakable descent into pornography. Why? Because it's easy. Put some sexualised dancing and scantily-clad females in the video, and get it on the box. Job done..."
"Bring back pop music for young people, expose it on television and drive all this sexually explicit trash back to the stone age where it belongs."

80s has-been Mike Stock wades into the debate du jour with an open letter to Ofcom.
Hardly surprising - Mr Stock (of him, Aitken & Waterman fame) kickstarted this silly "debate" last August with this bizarre outburst;
"These days you can't watch modern stars - like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga - with a two-year-old.
"Ninety-nine per cent of the charts is R 'n' B and 99 per cent of that is soft pornography."
At the risk of repeating myself, here's what I wrote at the time explaining why Mike "Sam Fox" Stock is a hypocrite, a wanker, a fucktard and a total and utter bell-end.
The Mirror's report has just gone online and is but of course illustrated with a photo of Rihanna's crotch and two of Lady Gaga in a see-through dress.
Fagburn's favourite line?
"Stock singled out Nicole Scherzinger's performance on Britain's Got Talent (watch it in the video player below)..."
Please accept their sincerest hypocrisy.
Fuck off Mirror!
Fuck off Mike!

• Purely by happenchance Mike Stock's The Go! Go! Go! Show - "The show 4 kids" - opens at London's Garrick Theatre next month. It sounds like an absolute pile of shit.

The Daily Mail Vs Ofcom: TVOD

Brilliant column by Charlie Brooker in The Guardian today, as per.
'If the Daily Mail is so worried about the sexualisation of children, all they have to do is hit 'delete'
'Starlets and sex, sex and starlets – all of it on plain view on the Daily Mail website which, to the best of my knowledge, has no age restrictions in place'
"Last year, outraged by Christina Aguilera and Rihanna's raunchy pre-watershed dancing on The X Factor, [The Daily Mail] ran a fuming article accompanied by shocking pictures of the most extreme bits, which helped fuel thousands of complaints.
"Later, Ofcom agreed that the routines were 'at the limit of acceptability', but went on to say the images in the Mail article were 'significantly more graphic and close-up than the material broadcast and had been taken from a different angle to the TV cameras... Readers would have been left with the impression that the programme contained significantly more graphic material than had actually been broadcast'..."
So the Mail are hypocrites - who knew?
And yes, the piece is fucking hilarious.
No wonder it's the (second) most popular story on The Guardian website right now.
However Steve Hewlett has the sinister story that lies behind this story over in MediaGuardian today;
'Why the Daily Mail has it in for Ofcom'
"This ongoing spat boils down to the Mail's hostility to regulation – something the paper may receive more of from the PCC"
In fine, the Mail wants Ofcom gone as it fears regulation and restrictions of its own online video content.
Oops!

• A very interesting recent post on The Media Blog about how the Mail tries to increase traffic to its website by running endless stories about American celebrities; 'Rihanna or the Queen: Who does the Daily Mail prefer?'

Update: Christopher Woolard from Ofcom writes for MediaGuardian on the Bailey Report and the TV watershed...

EastEnders: Inventing Outrage

Do you remember this story from earlier in the week?
EastEnders: TV Watershed Gay Non-Outrage!!!
The BBC had received "some" complaints from viewers "who felt a scene featuring Christian and Syed in bed together during an episode of EastEnders was inappropriate."
They posted a response on the BBC Complaints website.
Fagburn thought it was pretty good - and a nicely drawn line in the sand in the wake of the Bailey Report;
"The BBC cannot discriminate by treating gay characters differently to heterosexual characters.
"We have also received a lot of very positive feedback about the storyline regarding Christian and Syed's relationship."
Effectively Auntie was saying "So what? Piss off."
But a rather strange piece appeared today on the Guardian's Comment Is Free website claiming;
'The EastEnders furore shows gay equality is still a long way off'
Sorry! What "furore"?!
The story only made it into one newspaper, Metro.
'EastEnders forced to defend Christian and Syed's gay bed scenes'
This was dutifully regurgitated by Jamie Tabberer in The Pink Paper
"Eastenders bosses have been forced to defend its resident gay characters' bed scenes following complaints..."
On Comment Is Free Frances Ryan was happy to repeat this nonsense once more;
"Two weeks ago, in its primetime soap EastEnders, the BBC showed resident gay couple Christian Clarke and Syed Masood in bed. On Thursday it was forced to release a public statement to defend it."
This is shamefully tabloid-esque - the BBC were not "forced to release a statement".
They posted one from the Editorial Complaints Unit on the BBC Complaints website.
Complaints to the BBC are automatically referred to the Editorial Complaints Unit if anyone refuses to take "sorry" for an answer more than once.
You can read recent rulings here.
Other FURORES the BBC has been FORCED TO DEFEND include
"A programme [that] gave the erroneous impression that pensioners, as a group, were more prone to road accidents than any other age-group."
And a complaint about someone being bleeped during an interview WHEN THEY HADN'T ACTUALLY USED A CUSSWORD! ("Upheld!")
Frances Ryan carries on regardless;
"This means two things: there are still viewers out there for whom homosexuality is of such concern a nod to its existence warrants complaint, and there were enough of them to require a broadcaster to feel it had to respond."
Not really, no.
"Some" may have been two complaints - it was a matter of persistence, not quantity.
The BBC always responds to all complaints, anyway.
Even campaigns co-ordinated by loopy Christian fringe groups.
If I emailed the BBC complaining that the number of launderettes in Albert Square was unrealistic, I'd get an official reply. Probably.
Ryan concludes puffily;
"What we see on screen has an effect, and the more popular and widespread the programme, the greater this is. The complainers are right. What their children see does matter. This is the very reason the BBC should keep its nerve and refuse to pander to them."
Er, they have.
What is point?