Media Watch

2/5/00

Newsnight Pokes Fun at the Soldiers who Died.

Sometimes I get comments that I am too quick to see anti-male sentiments where none exist. However, look at the backdrop photograph that Newsnight chose in order to represent the desecration of Winston Churchill's statue by hoodlums on the 'anti-capitalist' march in London on May Day.

This is surely an example of Newsnight taking the piss out of Winston Churchill. The BBC is happily sticking two fingers up at the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers who risked their lives and their health, and lost both, on the battlefield, trying to protect the people of this country, and those of other countries, from a heinous, Nazi regime.

It is because of these heroic individuals, men mostly, who set out in the dark to face what must have been a very frightening unknown, that today we have the freedom to express our views and our liberty. They were men from all classes and of many ages, all determined to protect those at home from the terrifying prospects that could materialise if their battle was lost.

But the Newsnight team mocks the image of the man who represents these people. Rather than focus on the appalling desecration of Winston Churchill's statue or on the disgusting graffiti daubed on the Cenotaph, Newsnight decided to ridicule his image, and, by implication, those who followed his orders.

Had the desecrated statue been of a great Jewish leader who had struggled for freedom and justice would Newsnight have presented its viewers with an image designed to poke fun at it? I don't think so. Not at all. Newsnight would have devoted their programme to countering 'anti-Semitism' and they would have taken the matter very seriously indeed.

Had the desecrated statue been of a great black leader who had struggled for freedom and justice would Newsnight have presented its viewers with an image designed to poke fun at it? I don't think so. Not at all. Newsnight would have devoted their programme to countering 'racism' and they would have taken the matter very seriously indeed.

Had it been women who had mostly been sent to war to be slaughtered on the battlefield in the struggle for freedom and justice would Newsnight have dared to mock their female leader? I don't think so. Not at all. Newsnight would have devoted their programme to countering 'sexism' and 'misogyny', and they would have taken the matter very seriously indeed.

It is because Winston Churchill was a white male, as were most of the soldiers at his command, that Newsnight pokes fun at him, and, by implication, those who followed his orders.

The emotionally-retarded feminists who control Newsnight cannot understand, or in any way empathise with, the suffering of men, particularly white ones. They always try to mask it, gloss over it, poke fun at it, hide it, deny it. It's nothing of concern to them. In fact, it's something to be laughed at.

Well. I wasn't there on any of the battlefields. I'm not an eighty year old veteran who still wished that his brother, his father or his best friend had lived longer. I'm not a widow whose first, whose greatest, whose only love still lies buried out there somewhere, dead at the age of 23. My father did not die in the war. And I'm not physically disabled or psychologically scarred because of any battle that I was in.

In fact, I'm not anyone who has suffered directly as a result of that war.

But, clearly, the Newsnight team couldn't care if I was.