Well, not exactly. From elsewhere:
I don't know if anyone else has been watching sporting reality show "The Games" on Channel 4. I don't know about you, but I've been quite amazed at the lack of attention Julia Goldsworthy MP has received.
After all, the press and the pro-war movement were foaming at the mouth for the entirety of George Galloway's stint on "Celebrity Big Brother", a programme where famous people stay in a monitored studio-cum-residence and complete challenges - the winner receiving money for their nominated charity. George's cat impression and robotic dancing made the front page of the papers and led some pro-war journos and bloggers to wear their keyboards out typing righteous invective on his lack of political gravitas and the alleged "desertion" of his constituents.
And yet, when the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury does an amateurish gymnastics floor routine to the Kaiser Chiefs' "I Predict A Riot", on a near-identical programme, competing against "Question Time" heavyweights like one of the Nolan Sisters and the woman that used to be in the Scottish Widows adverts, there's a deafening silence.
You could argue that "The Games", with its sporting theme, sets a better example to the public than "Celebrity Big Brother" did. But the "Big Brother" format often sets the contestants team challenges and makes them work together (for example, GG's feline antics were done to help Rula Lenska complete one of her challenges), while all the sports played in "The Games" are individual events and contestants compete against each other. At the end of the day (to use a sporting cliché) both programmes set out to enforce the TV dogma that 'celebrities' are more important and worthy of airtime than 'ordinary' people. In fact, "Celebrity Big Brother" was arguably more subversive in this regard, in that the sole non-celebrity involved ended up winning the thing. Meanwhile, "The Games" is fighting for airtime with the Commonwealth Games, where actual British sportsmen and women are doing rather well (even the Scottish ones, it would seem).
Then there were the accusations that Galloway was leading the life of riley on some TV junket, rather than getting down to the nitty gritty of answering constituents' letters about dog fouling and Housing Benefit. "The Games" may have a slightly shorter duration that "CBB", but Goldsworthy, like all the contestants, spent a full three months in training for the show - time which could have been spent in Falmouth and Camborne, doing whatever it was George supposedly wasn't doing in Bethnal Green & Bow.
As an MP, Goldsworthy is about as 'liberal', as her fellow Liberal Democrats, consistently voting for a smoking ban, but against gambling law relaxation and against transsexuals being allowed to change their legally recognised gender. The only area where she appears to be (neo)liberal is on economics - she advocates tax cuts (so presumably wouldn't want to see more Government investment in sport).
Is the massive difference in the treatment of these two MPs entirely down to the fact that Goldsworthy looks a lot less lumpy in a leotard than Gorgeous George? Or would the media have remained silent if Galloway had packed in the cigars for a bit and done a few handsprings with MC Platnum? Somehow I don't think so.
http://mcgazz.livejournal.com/97064.html
|
