Give money to Christian Voice: fund a mentalist
According to later today's Guardian, some pressure group called Christian Voice is trying to prosecute the producer of Jerry Springer - The Opera for blasphemous libel; also the Director General of the BBC for showing it on TV:
Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said in 2005 that the show portrayed Jesus as a "coprophiliac sexual deviant".
Hmm. Anyone else think Mr Green's case might be just slightly compromised by his familiarity with the correct term for being sexually aroused by faeces?
Good. Then if we're all agreed that he's at least put his foot in it*, I can skip the earnest ramblings about freedom of speech and instead let you know about a superb little radio programme I just heard: From Fact to Fiction. It's a series in which writers pen a 15-minute fictional response to the week's news. I've heard others in the series and not been especially enthralled, but last Saturday's was the best thing I've heard on radio in ages - a funny, witty, thoughtful, at times cuttingly satirical, surreal narrative called To The River, performed and written by a poet, Adrian Mitchell, and a singer, Andy Roberts. Yep, it does mostly rhyme, and there are short comedic songs... yet it's still wonderful. Get clicking before it's gone (probably by Saturday).
*To those with more visual imaginations than me: sorry. Also, to Mr Green's lawyers: that was A JOKE; and if it could remain a cheap one, that would be just peachy.
5 comments:
Paul Stevens of Olswang, the law firm representing Thoday, said the producer's legal team would argue that allowing a prosecution for blasphemy would contravene article 10 of the European convention on human rights, which guarantees the right to free speech.
It just occurred to me: wouldn't it be much more interesting if the lawyers cited the principle that the dead can't be libelled? Now that would be a case worth following...
UPDATE: Lest I be accused* of - like Christian Voice - judging things without bothering to attempt to understand them, I've been having a wander around the net and a more considered post will most likely appear here in the next few days. So, I guess you haven't been spared the earnest ramblings after all...
Oh well, I've got to write about something, I suppose. Oh yeah, and NO-ONE HAS TO READ IT! [starts muttering irritatedly about fundamentalists].
*by whom I'm not really sure, but anyway.
Read your post or read the article it came from? I've done neither, obviously :)
Ah, I meant the forthcoming post. But I guess the principle applies equally to, well, pretty much everything.
Rather glad you haven't read the forthcoming post actually; that would just be scary. Hmm. Or perhaps convenient - you could write it for me :)
Ir reminds me of all the fuss around Life of Brian.
With Palin and Cleese in that bizzare chatshow interview with various bishops,
'But he's not the messiah! That's the point.'
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