A small point, but with a bigger point lurking behind it:

I think there’s obviously a lot of truth to the idea that kids benefit from having desirable behavior modeled for them, but the demand to have it appear in media is a cheap substitute for the much more difficult thing that actually works https://t.co/fsgKMLao5s

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) October 20, 2024

As a child, I wasn’t interested in books and TV programmes that centred on children my own age. In fact, juvenile characters, supposedly there to be identified with, were generally distracting and off-putting, if not downright annoying, a thing that broke the spell. A phenomenon known to some as The Wesley Crusher Effect.

I remember being interested in astronauts, adventurers, superheroes or whatever. But being represented, in the ham-fisted modern sense, wasn’t an obvious factor. As noted in the thread linked above, the whole point of the exercise was to inhabit the minds of people who aren’t you, and whose circumstances therefore seem much more exciting.

As to the larger point – the much more difficult thing – it does rather suggest a parental lapse of some significance.

Lifted from the comments, an idea for late-night viewing. First, some context is in order, but do let me know what you think.

It began with some rumblings on common progressive attitudes regarding crime and recidivism. Not least a practised unrealism and the failure to acknowledge just how different the mental landscape of the criminal demographic can be:

Among which, these.

Pretentious sympathy, of course. But still.

Such views passing entirely unchallenged in the inevitable, rather fawning Guardian profile. A profile in which Mr Stafford Smith chides and insults the victims of burglary, and the law-abiding generally, while offering excuses for those who break into strangers’ homes and steal their belongings, and who do this over and over again.

Mr Stafford Smith goes on to boast that he dislikes Conservative voters much more than criminals, and Ms Decca Aitkenhead, his Guardian interviewer, claps along approvingly. As if rhetorically minimising crime and its effects – say, on the elderly who find their homes violated and stripped of any valuables – were somehow a credential, proof of their own elevation. There’s a weirdly demented quality, one that’s not acknowledged as much as it should be.

At which point, I was reminded of the Guardian‘s own Zoe Williams, who scolds those who would rather not live next door to thieving, feral neighbours – say, the kinds of creatures who blast out loud music at 3am, and who hurl pets from upstairs windows:

As I can tell you’re curious, here’s Mr Murgatroyd with three of his twelve children. Everyone in the photo has been subject to Antisocial Behaviour Orders for repeatedly terrorising their neighbours.

Here’s Mr Murgatroyd exchanging views with the mother of his children:

So, with the above in mind, here’s the pitch.

Imagine, if you will, a reality TV show of perhaps a dozen episodes, in which, having been banished from their current council-house digs, the Murgatroyds move in next door to Zoe Williams, our Guardian columnist and champion of the downtrodden – albeit, until now, from a safe distance. Would we be treated to heart-warming chats across the garden fence, and exchanged cups of sugar, while the families’ respective children – Zoe’s are named Thurston and Harper – have jolly times together?

As a real-world test of Zoe’s scrupulously progressive worldview, one shared widely by her peers, it would, I think, make for instructive viewing.

And as svh suggests in the comments, “She deserves no less.”

Update, via the comments:

Picturing the scenario above – Zoe Meets The Murgatroyds – does rather reveal the absurdity of her pretence. But this pretence is far from uncommon among professed egalitarians. It’s a fantasy world, quite laughable in its dishonesty. Unless we’re to believe that Zoe, dear caring Zoe, would be thrilled to have violent morons moving in next door to her.

And yet she and her colleagues tell us that any effort to remove such ‘problem families’ or to inhibit their malevolence – so that their neighbours might have some semblance of a normal life – is “dehumanising,” a “demonization of the poor,” and is merely “trying to shunt people out of society for not being rich enough.” As if the victims of the Murgatroyd family, and any number of others just like them, weren’t people whose resources were also modest. As if the law-abiding targets of their sociopathy weren’t almost always working class.

Again,

But such is Zoe’s concern for the common man.

And do note the conspicuous flattening of values, the equalising of victims and victimiser, the quite literal demoralisation.

Apparently, we shouldn’t register any meaningful difference between that nice Mrs Wilson, who doesn’t have much but is always friendly and obliging, and the laughing ferals who trashed her tiny flat, nicked her pension, and pissed all over her carpets and furniture.

And they call this being progressive.

Guardian columnists, and progressives in general, don’t seem particularly interested in the functional working class. Their greatest enthusiasm, and their most ambitious contrivance, seems reserved for the feckless and dysfunctional, the pathologically selfish, the incorrigibly criminal. That’s when we get displays of what amounts to a perverse art form.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that there’s little in-group status to be had in pretending to care about functional people of modest means. Instead, they pretend to care about more exotic demographics. And so, among progressives, we get pretentious compassion for unrepentant and habitual thieves, habitual burglars, habitually criminal drivers. Because needlessly endangering the lives of others is now a basis for excuses, sympathy, and applause.

Oh, and dog thieves and armed muggers. Obviously.

And once you register this pattern, this weird convolution, it does seem to crop up quite a lot.

From the comments, where a question is asked – and promptly answered:

Nope. https://t.co/FVOon2TJ4A

— The Critical Drinker (@TheCriticalDri2) July 20, 2023

Regarding which, John D replies,

Ah, but then those of a progressive inclination couldn’t piggy-back their Current Year politics onto someone else’s work, established over many decades. Plus, there’s lots of self-congratulatory subverting to be done. All that signalling about how antiquated and tiresome it is to have a white, male hero being daring and heroic. Because hey, nobody wants that.

The Screen Rant article, by Shaurya Thapa, is, it has to be said, not entirely persuasive. There’s some obligatory wittering about things from the past being “problematic” – among which, the fact that a film series about an iconic male character has always featured said male character:

Which does seem a bit like complaining that every season of the detective series Bosch features, among other things, a white, male detective named Harry Bosch.

But this is, we’re told, “the perfect time for a female Bond.”

A woman named James.

We’re also told, “A gendered spin on the character can open up more potential for exploring Bond’s individuality.” And this exploration of the character’s individuality will apparently be achieved by erasing a rather fundamental aspect of the character – his maleness – and replacing him with an entirely different person of a different sex.

Readers are invited to ponder whether similar transitions might enrich the character of, say, Miss Marple, who, via similar logic, could be depicted as male, and as always having been male. Thereby exploring her individuality. Answers on a postcard, please.

The recent, sex-swapped iteration of Doctor Who is invoked as a “positive example” on this front, as if Jodie Whittaker’s brief, unloved manifestation had been a rip-roaring success – despite the terrible writing and wildly unpopular retconning, both loudly derided by fans, and despite the subsequent, rapid death-spiral of viewing figures. Because boring and alienating much of your audience, and shrinking it dramatically, is a political triumph. A breath of “new life.”

Onwards and upwards!

Mr Thapa, by the way, has written over a thousand articles for Screen Rant. He claims many areas of expertise, and many “domains of knowledge,” including fact-checking. He also boasts of his “academic background,” details of which are, sadly, not divulged.

Jonathan Kay shares the, um, joys of fully intersectional Canadian television:

The taxpayer-funded media colossus known as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has unveiled a new show called Lido TV, in which a pair of talking tomatoes (they look like testicles, but apparently they’re supposed to be vegetables) deliver woke sermons to whoever is so unfortunate as to hit the play button… After video clips from this self-parodic mess went viral, it emerged that Lido’s production company has been bankrolled in the high-five figures (at least) by public funds. Your (Canadian) tax dollars at work.

Viewers of pallor will doubtless be entranced by 20-minute episodes titled Colonialism and Privilege, and stern lectures – delivered by the host, singer Lido Pimienta, and two giant, talking testicles – on just how bigoted and generally awful their collective ancestors were, and how this historical beastliness is, “like, affecting all of us, all of the time, on every level.” Likewise, viewers unpolluted by pallor will be empowered and destined to flourish, armed with the knowledge that any failure or shortcoming in their lives, almost any resentment, can be traced back to, and promptly blamed on, the aforementioned colonialism, privilege, and pale devilry.

The boggling awfulness of the project – applauded by Maclean’s as “subversive” and “surrealist political edutainment,” the work of a “polymath” – isn’t easy to convey in words. Happily, clips are available. And yes, an entire episode. If your idea of a good time includes pretentious displays of indigenous authenticity, rambling, barely relevant interviews, and excruciating sketches about land acknowledgement, this is the one for you.

Update, via the comments:

Time for an open thread, I think. In which to share links and bicker.

Oh, and over on the shopping channel QVC, the conversation turns to higher matters.