Re: The Mary Whitehouse Story
- From: "Enzo Matrix" <enzo55@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 11:50:02 +0100
michael adams wrote:
"Enzo Matrix" <enzo55@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u5qdncp6WOElPK_VnZ2dnUVZ8sPinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sofa - Spud wrote:
Geoff Lane wrote:
I notice that the beeb is doing a biog of Mary Whitehouse.
I wonder if they will tell us about the extreme right-wing ideas
she and the busybody organisation she created supported?
Will they tell us about the lecture at UMIST where, afterwards, she
clained she didn't see the two streakers who ran across the stage,
just feet away from the podium?
Will they tell us about her proposal that _all_ media should be
pre-censored to ensure it presented only "christian" values?
Her whole thing was supposed christian values etc, but at the time
she just came across as a whining busybody. Times were changing and
she just could understand it - it wasn't as though there was some
moral collapse it was just a natural modernisation of ideas as
regard sex etc.
In the end she was just a prematurely old woman in a hat with horn
rimmed glasses whining about stuff. As the generation moved on she
didn't. What should be remembered is her organisation lives on with
a particularly seedy looking bloke in his 40's who looks like he is
70 whining about christian values etc. With these people there is no
debate - it's there way or the highway. As an adult I'm more than
capable of decided what I want to watch.
Best consign her to the dustbin frankly.
I once saw Mrs Whitehouse in one of those panel discussion shows. I
wasn't Question Time, but was a similar format. She had made a
statement about filth on telly and then spent the rest of the
discussion asking quite personal questions about the sex lives of
the other panel members. It was very strange. She seemed to be an
old woman with a dirty mind who was getting some sort of prurient
pleasure out of prying into sex while preventing others from doing
the same.
At one point in the discussion, Mrs Whitehouse was asked if she had
ever seen an X-rated film. She said that she hadn't. The interviewer
incredulously asked her how she could say that they were wrong if
she had never actually seen one. Mrs Whitehouse said "I don't have
to see these films to know that they are wrong".
...
That seems fair enough to me. If somebody you trusted said "this film
shows a woman being shagged by an alsation "would it be necesary for
you
to actually see the film, before deciding whether you'd want your own
dog to see it ?
Fair comment. I think it is fair to make a decision based on such a
recommendation for oneself, but to then force that decision upon others,
many of whom will not share one's sense of morals and ethics, is simply
wrong.
Fast forward three decades to the Chris Langham controversy. On his
Radio2 show, Jeremy Vine interviewed a criminologist
...
A self styled criminologist I think you'll find.
...
who had advised the police on
the case.
...
Par for the course. Plod are as dewy eyed as are TV producers and the
general public when it comes to the spoutings of so called "experts"
in most fields.
Conveniently forgetting, as many Court cases show, that its not too
difficult to produce an equally qualified expert to say the exact
opposite. Providing you pay them enough.
That's a recurring theme in "Law & Order". McCoy is forever trying to avoid
getting embroiled in a battle of the experts.
...
The bloke had also advised other police forces in the UK and
Canada on child pornography cases but claimed that he had never
actually looked at any of the images. He claimed that even looking
at just one would cause the viewer to become irretrievably corrupted.
...
That's nonsense, as it would be very difficult if not impossible
to demonstrate experimentally.
Exactly! And yet he is an "expert" (albeit a self-styled one as you
pointed out) so people will believe him.
...
Jeremy Vine was rather
startled by this claim and asked him how he could advise on the case
without having seen the images in question. The crimnologist replied
"I don't have to see these images to know that they are wrong" -
almost exactly the wording that Mrs Whitehouse had used thirty years
before.
...
Right. So what you're saying is that you'd have to actually see
images of a fifty old man having sex with an eight year old child
before deciding whether they were "wrong" or not, are you ?
It's a matter of degree. I wouldn't have to see that sort of picture to
know that it was wrong. However, these days pictures of Samantha Fox taken
at the start of her career when she was 16 and now considered to be child
pornography. I certainly don't think that this "criminologist" should be
allowed to give an opinion of that sort of picture without having viewed
them. And how about the pictures of Julia Somerville's kids? If he been
involved in that case and had simply taken peoples' word about them, Ms
Somerville would no doubt have been banged up.
However, all of that is fairly moot. If this "expert" is going to testify
in a court of law about such pictures, he *must* have viewed them at some
point. If he hasn't then all of his testimony is hearsay and inadmissable.
How times change.
What was once a comically ridiculous statement by a stupid
interfering old biddy is now a powerful argument used by a respected
criminologist.
...
"Respected" by yourself, Jeremy Vine, and a radio producer ITYM.
Maybe I myself should have placed the word "respected" in inverted commas.
--
Enzo
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
.
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