High life
That's entertainment
Taki
But back to television. A study released recently by the Henry Kaiser Foundation in America found that children aged eight years and older spend an average of three hours a day watching the box, and approxi- mately six hours each day tuned into elec- tronic media such as television shows, videos, computer games and CDs. No wonder three teenagers at Windsor stabbed a Frenchman in the throat who asked them to turn down the noise. If a youngster zaps his brain click- ing non-stop from one infantile channel to another, stabbing someone in the throat becomes the norm, rather than the excep- tion. In the land of the freebie and home of the depraved, television has really made `So, you'd prefer someone with blond hair and blue eyes?' inroads. Teenagers are not only complete morons, they are also grossly fat from being sedentary, their mouths hang open while they chew gum, and they wear grotesque oversized jeans and shoes. They cannot artic- ulate a single sentence without using the F- word or the phrase 'you know'. But they sure know how to click the magic button.
And it gets worse. Two-thirds of children aged eight and over — and one in three children aged two to seven — have a TV in their bedroom. Almost half of the parents polled admitted that they watched televi- sion during meals. Just think of the horror. An obese man and an even more obese woman sit down to eat pizza, washed down with Coke. Their pimply, oversized chil- dren are told to shut up while the father puts up the volume. They are watching Jerry Springer, or something on that level. After wolfing down four or five pizzas, they go to the fridge during a commercial break and grab the chocolate cake and the ice- cream. And some more soft drinks. Then, after another commercial comes on, the woman screams at the husband to take `your filthy cigarettes outta my house'. He follows instructions to the letter. If this is not a scene from hell, I don't know what is.
Mind you, if an unfriendly foreign power had managed to impose on America and Britain the kind of filth, vulgarity, sex and violence that TV is sending into our homes, it might well have been viewed as an act of war. Yet our showbiz presidents, Blair and Clinton, find their most fervent supporters among the purveyors of the filth. In the Draft Dodger's case, Clinton devotees from elite intellectual circles fell away in droves once they saw through the sham. They were replaced by the far richer crowd of low-lifers such as Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen (the latter being the most egregious poofter since Barry Diller). What explains the huge enthusiasm of scum like Geffen for Bill Clinton? Well, he shares the entertainment world's low standard of con- duct. Clinton lies about the books he reads, as does Blair. The former sees only schlock movies in the White House; I have no idea what Blair watches, but it's bound to be no better.
Which means nothing is going to change any time soon. For when it comes to culture, both Blair and Clinton are illiterates. We saw Blair's true colours when Cherie Blair grabbed the Queen on Millennium Eve. The Dome is Blair, and pizza and a blowjob is Clinton. The grotesque Gallagher brothers at No. 10 is Blair; Madonna sitting on the right of Clinton at a Hollywood fundraiser is what the Arkansas hillbilly is all about. It's showtime, folks, encouraging our children to have very early sex, to listen to filthy jokes, perversion and vulgarity, and we owe it all to those nice guys who make lotsa moolah making TV movies.
In the meantime, I shall continue to read my second world war books, and dream of what might have been had Hollywood and the Sixties not won the war.
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