Sordel is feeling somewhat soiled today, having been forced to visit the Daily Mirror website so that you, Dear Reader, do not need to.
The poor old Mirror (broadly speaking a distorting mirror, given that the people therein reflected are always wickeder, more repulsive or otherwise just more than they would be in real life) is up in arms because of the injustice of a largely random competition having a largely random result.
Nathan Hageman (separated from the hangman by one small letter) is evidently a "thug" and a "brute", as well as being £1 million pounds the richer as a consequence of a roulette spin on the new Ant & Dec vehicle, Red or Black?. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, the roulette ball seems to have paid no attention whatsoever when bouncing around the wheel to the fact that Hageman was sentenced to five years for beating up his ex-girlfriend.
In this, as usual, God has had his little joke at the expense of those who care. Some might say it was affliction enough on His part to have permitted Red or Black? be green-lighted in the first place, but now He compounds the misery by allowing the sun to shine on the unjust man while the rest of us get the thorough drenching that only ITV on a Saturday night can bestow.
Simon Cowell is reportedly livid that someone of such low moral character should get rich from reality television which (apart from setting up an obvious but quite unwarranted joke) merely suggests that Cowell did not understand the rules of the competition that he himself had scratched on the back of a beer-mat.
Before we castigate the creator (and the Creator) too energetically, however, it is worth noting that there evidently was another and more immediate failure: on the part of the show's producers when they were "vetting" contestants. Evidently, Hageman admitted to having a criminal conviction for ABH and aggravated burglary, but claimed that the victim was a man and not his ex-girlfriend.
It reveals the mentality of the producers to a nicety, then, that their consciences (which would have been untroubled by a violent criminal winning the prize had his victim been a man) pinch somewhat when the victim is revealed to be a woman.
Sordel, meanwhile, is willing to admit to having watched roughly five minutes of Red & Black? last Saturday and would like several series of The X Factor to be taken into consideration. I consider myself to be the principal victim and can assure you that no women were harmed.
Can I haz my million still?
Showing posts with label Simon Cowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Simon Cowell. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas (War Ain't Over)
Staunch though his championship may be of the popular hate figure Peter Mandelson, Sordel's defence budget also extends to chinooks for Simon Cowell. Cowell (in the popular imagination at least) is stricken this holiday season as a consequence of the bird flipped collectively in his direction by the people of Great Britain when they made "Killing in the Name" number one this Christmas.
"Fuck you," chorused the Facebook masses: "I won't do what you tell me!"
This is a pretty remarkable consensus given the fact that the bankers took their bonuses, the MPs refused to give back their swag (or the bags that it came in) and we are still (still!) prosecuting two unjust wars overseas. Way to go, People of Britain ... you really managed to focus out the Pervasive Evanescent this holiday season.
Cowell, if only because he scowls so much and wears a lot of black, is good casting for a pantomime villain, and - in the dim apprehension of a great many Rage downloaders - cheating him of the top of the festive chart is the equivalent of stick a large bomb down his underpants and running away chortling.
Apparently all that was needed to motivate the campaign against the harmless Joe McElderry and his largely pleasant single was the perception that Cowell's X Factor had locked up the "coveted" throne at the top of the hit parade and was preventing other musical acts (JLS, Cheryl Cole, Alexandra Buck, Leona Lewis and the X Factor Charity single, presumably) from getting their fair time in the spotlight. Next week the big chart showdown, for example, is scheduled to be Cole vs. McElderry. Assuming that the Facebook community is resting on its laurels and collecting its winnings from William Hill, you wouldn't need the National Weather Center's help to forecast business as usual for 2010.
Cowell, like the Formerly Red Baron, is with us so untiringly that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may as well advertise for a keyboardist & second drummer before heading into the coming decade as a sextet.
Before we bid a fond farewell to 2009, however, it is worth shunning the sherry long enough to remember with due sobriety the many British families bereaved this year as a consequence of the brace of conflicts continuing in the absence of an effective Facebook campaign to end them. Sordel will be remembering in his prayers also the families of the many Soviet troops killed and injured in Afghanistan as a consequence of the U.S.-backed insurgency there.
Killing In The Name indeed.
And on that cheerful note Sordel bids a Merry Xmas to all his reader.
"Fuck you," chorused the Facebook masses: "I won't do what you tell me!"
This is a pretty remarkable consensus given the fact that the bankers took their bonuses, the MPs refused to give back their swag (or the bags that it came in) and we are still (still!) prosecuting two unjust wars overseas. Way to go, People of Britain ... you really managed to focus out the Pervasive Evanescent this holiday season.
Cowell, if only because he scowls so much and wears a lot of black, is good casting for a pantomime villain, and - in the dim apprehension of a great many Rage downloaders - cheating him of the top of the festive chart is the equivalent of stick a large bomb down his underpants and running away chortling.
Apparently all that was needed to motivate the campaign against the harmless Joe McElderry and his largely pleasant single was the perception that Cowell's X Factor had locked up the "coveted" throne at the top of the hit parade and was preventing other musical acts (JLS, Cheryl Cole, Alexandra Buck, Leona Lewis and the X Factor Charity single, presumably) from getting their fair time in the spotlight. Next week the big chart showdown, for example, is scheduled to be Cole vs. McElderry. Assuming that the Facebook community is resting on its laurels and collecting its winnings from William Hill, you wouldn't need the National Weather Center's help to forecast business as usual for 2010.
Cowell, like the Formerly Red Baron, is with us so untiringly that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may as well advertise for a keyboardist & second drummer before heading into the coming decade as a sextet.
Before we bid a fond farewell to 2009, however, it is worth shunning the sherry long enough to remember with due sobriety the many British families bereaved this year as a consequence of the brace of conflicts continuing in the absence of an effective Facebook campaign to end them. Sordel will be remembering in his prayers also the families of the many Soviet troops killed and injured in Afghanistan as a consequence of the U.S.-backed insurgency there.
Killing In The Name indeed.
And on that cheerful note Sordel bids a Merry Xmas to all his reader.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Brownian Motion
So: the big result is in.
The charming thing about The Apprentice is that it isn't decided by a public vote. Going back to my earlier comments on elitism, we should celebrate an area of televisual competition in which victory is allocated solely on the basis of the decision of a single judge who (rightly or wrongly) is acknowledged as the expert. Generally unerring though Simon Cowell may be, he is still forced to share power with the two lesser lights on his various panels, and is then forced to submit their collective decision for ratification to the collectively tin ear of Britain. The future Lord Sugar stands alone; it is indeed his way or the highway.
Had the European elections been settled on a similar system, the BNP would probably not have won its first two seats last night. Someone (quite possibly - on the basis of his extensive experience of European voting systems - Graham Norton) would decide for us all, and the inevitable confusion that follows from allowing the Great British Public to settle any question of moment would have been avoided.
The downside of all this, however, would have been that the losers would not have been able to call upon an enormous range of fanciful excuses to explain their failure.
If you listen to the Labour faithful (as we must now describe Lord Mandelson, who has engineered the biggest turnaround since Saul stopped persecuting Christians and changed his initial letter to P) then we all want him and Gordon to get back to the serious business of sorting out the economy. The anti-Labour vote was seemingly a slap on the wrist delivered to all politicians but focused upon the ruling party. The vote for the BNP was cast by people too stupid to be trusted with the vote in the first place, who evidently have no idea that the BNP is a racist party. So, at least, run interpretations repeated last night with such unanimity that any teacher worth his salt would have inferred collusion.
This post hoc gerrymandering, in which the vote is explicated one way or another to suit the standpoints of the politicians, is what happens when the usual excuse for ignoring the British public - "the only poll that counts is the one held this week/next week/sometime/never" - is rendered fatuous by an election actually having taken place.
What we really want is someone with the authority of the soon-no-longer-to-be Surallan to tell us all Why I Fired Them. In the absence of that certainly, the paths of our political masters are as inscrutable as the movement of pollen particles in water.
We can only congratulate ourselves that so many of them have sunk without trace.
The charming thing about The Apprentice is that it isn't decided by a public vote. Going back to my earlier comments on elitism, we should celebrate an area of televisual competition in which victory is allocated solely on the basis of the decision of a single judge who (rightly or wrongly) is acknowledged as the expert. Generally unerring though Simon Cowell may be, he is still forced to share power with the two lesser lights on his various panels, and is then forced to submit their collective decision for ratification to the collectively tin ear of Britain. The future Lord Sugar stands alone; it is indeed his way or the highway.
Had the European elections been settled on a similar system, the BNP would probably not have won its first two seats last night. Someone (quite possibly - on the basis of his extensive experience of European voting systems - Graham Norton) would decide for us all, and the inevitable confusion that follows from allowing the Great British Public to settle any question of moment would have been avoided.
The downside of all this, however, would have been that the losers would not have been able to call upon an enormous range of fanciful excuses to explain their failure.
If you listen to the Labour faithful (as we must now describe Lord Mandelson, who has engineered the biggest turnaround since Saul stopped persecuting Christians and changed his initial letter to P) then we all want him and Gordon to get back to the serious business of sorting out the economy. The anti-Labour vote was seemingly a slap on the wrist delivered to all politicians but focused upon the ruling party. The vote for the BNP was cast by people too stupid to be trusted with the vote in the first place, who evidently have no idea that the BNP is a racist party. So, at least, run interpretations repeated last night with such unanimity that any teacher worth his salt would have inferred collusion.
This post hoc gerrymandering, in which the vote is explicated one way or another to suit the standpoints of the politicians, is what happens when the usual excuse for ignoring the British public - "the only poll that counts is the one held this week/next week/sometime/never" - is rendered fatuous by an election actually having taken place.
What we really want is someone with the authority of the soon-no-longer-to-be Surallan to tell us all Why I Fired Them. In the absence of that certainly, the paths of our political masters are as inscrutable as the movement of pollen particles in water.
We can only congratulate ourselves that so many of them have sunk without trace.
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