I Need Your Help

by Jon Gardner on 18.08.09

I put a lot of effort into some of my derision. I don’t just sneer and hope for the best, I promise you I don’t. Sometimes I spend hours concocting hate cocktails, ready to blurt out at the TV when they become appropriate. But I have found lately that, no matter how hard I throw things at the screen, nothing is changing. Nobody is listening.

I’m a reasonably ordinary person; I think you’d agree if we met. But I’ve begun to reel at just what western television executives seem to think I want by way of entertainment, and just what current affairs I, in fact, consider to be “affairs” at all. No matter what I do to smear and snicker at the risible pap that my TV keeps vomiting on me, it clearly isn’t being heard.

This week I have learned that it’s “too late” for Peter Andre and Katie Price to fix their marriage. I have learned that the Shrek-looking monster that the press has shoved to the front of the Britain’s Got Talent favourites list is capable of swearing. I have learned that Britney Spears can fall afoul of erect nipples if she goes out in the cold. This year, not only have I had to sit through the seemingly unending dirge-riddled media circle jerk that was the life and death of Saint Jade Goody, but now I am being given constant updates as to the health, wealth and whereabouts of her talentless (but not victimless) doorstop of a widower, Jack Tweed, following his early release from prison for a violent attack on another man. More of us than care to admit it could reel off more facts than we care to know about the mental, emotional, romantic, financial and medical tribulations of Kerry Katona as they stand right now. I know what Demi Moore looks like with a missing front tooth! But nothing I seem to say is doing anything about any of this.

It’s not me, is it? I’m not mistaken in my horror, am I? You feel it too, you must. You’re reading 4Q right now; you’re half way through my ranting and haven’t thrown the magazine away yet so you at least have a modicum of good taste and sense it seems. So ask yourself, really ask yourself and others, what can we do? Abstinence won’t do it. A handful of right minded people choosing not to watch Britain’s Tallest Frog won’t stop the cud-munching masses from watching it and keeping it popular. Sending Ant and Dec to Iraq did nothing. They just came home again. What a swizz that was.

Friends, it’s time for an offensive. Bear in mind these spot-lit half-lives that we fawn over so readily all became a part of our collective consciousness because they were forced on us to begin with. Jordan and Peter met on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Jade was Big Brother’s Little Fuckwit That Could. Nobody actively chose to invite these no-marks into the glare of the A-List to start with, and yet here we are. Simply choosing to change channel does nothing to protect us from the tidal wave of shit that just keeps coming. Kerry Katona has proved to be such a wretched disaster of a human being, no doubt battered by the unending pressure to live up to the allusion to a talent she simply doesn’t have, that she now has her own reality show, focusing on just what a mess she is. This is supposed to be funny. Some would no doubt claim that hers is a tale of warning; we could be put off living like Kerry and this could even save lives, just like Saint Jade saved lives by inspiring young girls get smear tests so they don’t die of ignorance, blah blah blah…. But this is not why we are peddled this pap. Katona is on the cover of magazines that people who like to read personal disaster stories will always buy. Media fascination with train wrecks has made famous the short fuses, the empty headed, given them too many hand grenades to play with and sat back to project the results in HD at prime time. We may as well watch snuff movies.

Knowing for ourselves that we deserve better isn’t going to change a thing. Snorting down our noses and changing to More4 doesn’t do dick. Someone needs to be sodomised with a copy of OK! Magazine for people who can affect change to start taking notice. We need an intellectual revolution or next up will be OJ Simpson – The Chat Show.

Get to it.

Jon Gardner despairs, he really does.