I think this is a Brit thing folks, but just to explain, a satirist called Chris Morris is behind a programme called Brass Eye. The edition shown last night has aroused a lot of controversy, as its theme was paedophilia, or rather the media's treatment of it. Did anyone else see it? I'd be fascinated to hear what people thought. Personally, I thought the programme was brilliant: to me, it was absolutely not saying "paedophilia is funny," which seems to have been the main assumption. It was satirising the prurient obsessions of the media, and pointing up what happens when a sort of siege mentality is deliberately fomented by sections of the media - most of it, in fact. The tabloid newspapers are largely culpable in this, of course, and I felt the constant use of awful puns was a nod in their direction. As for using celebrities, this seemed pretty clear to me, a reproach to the celebrity endorsed bandwagon; the celebs may be well meaning, but - as this programme illustrated - often hopelessly ill-informed on the cause they purport to champion. Is it really helping to mouth the sort of platitudes we saw last night, such as "nonce sense"? This programme was genuinely hard-hitting, in a way that hardly any satire is these days. Maybe that is why some may have found it too much. I also feel it was appropriate that it was shown on Channel 4, as the C4 news is probably the least culpable of this sort of sensationalism. That's my take... Azeem
