I was browsing YouTube, as one does, and saw a new interview with Seth Myers interviewing John Oliver. For those who do not know both are (different types of but none the less) late night Talk Show hosts. So, a Talk Show host was being interviewed by a Talk Show host about his Talk Show… this is the world in which we live.
The description showed that interview was on an interesting subject which I previously knew about from Oliver’s own show. Mike Pence, who is famously homophobic (among other things), has a new book out about his bunny rabbit Marlon Bundo. John Oliver’s new book was about a rabbit called Marlon Bundo who falls in love with another boy rabbit and gets married. As far as political spats go this is very amusing and the audiobook version (voiced by Jim Parsons (Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory) and others) is delightful. However, the bigger issue is, why is a host interviewing another host?
Regular readers will know of my distain for names, celebrities, news-anchors mouthing off into the cameras etc. and yet it still happens. Oliver’s Marlon Bundo book has knocked James Comey’s pre-ordered memoir off the top of the best-sellers list. Remember Comey? The guy who came out just before an election and announced that he was going to re-open an investigation which had been satisfactorily concluded into a candidate and not announce that there was already an investigation into the other candidate. Comey destroyed, in this action, the credibility of the FBI and his credentials to be head of. However, since his spat with Trump, people are flocking to read his book as they read Hillary’s ‘why me’? book. But this is not surprising. The top selling books on lists are by established authors, celebrities and people lauded as the ‘new so and so’. I read one lauded as the new Dostoyevsky and other than length of the book it was nothing like (and I can’t even recall the name of the book or author). The Oprah Book Club may be as dangerous to literature as bird flu is to chickens.
This isn’t just relegated to politics. One turns on the BBC radio and it is the same comedians on different shows. Some funny, most not. Same with TV and films. Old films get ‘rebooted’ (aka made more violent and/or grittier) and in football the same mangers get the same jobs whilst former players all become pundits despite their lack of journalistic training and integrity. All these happen due to the name of the individual. And…nothing changes. It all stays the same. Same books, same TV, same politics (how else can you explain Boris Johnson?).
Recently we have seen a slight change. 1/3rd of children now draw scientists as women (50 years ago it was 100% male), children are marching on Washington saying lives mean more than money, guns, ego etc. and yet they are being met by the same names and same voices and as Leonard Cohen said
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another foetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
It is murder
People often say that life would be boring if everyone was the same. Usually these are the people who perpetrate the hegemony without realising it. They also claim that ‘variety is the spice of life’ and I’m sure a black person in 1950’s America would agree that ‘just because my skin pigmentation is slightly different I have the exciting and very real possibility of being lynched! Yippee!’, yippee indeed. Unless new voices come in and real change can take place it will remain the same until the end of time.
Wouldn’t life be boring if everyone was the same?
It is.
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 