Well, I've been called blimpish before, but this week I've been in a particularly blimpish frame of mind. I'm an avid Radio 4 listener (for you poor chaps and chapesses a long way from the the UK, that's BBC radio's generally intersting all-talk station—magazine programmes, quizzes, news, plays &c), but for the last few days, every time I switch on my radio, all I seem to get is discussions about vaginas, penises, erections, orgasms and other messy businesses. Perhaps this sort of stuff has its place (though in a married bedroom only), but I certainly don't want it in my car at 9.00am (no innuendos, please!)9.00 am Old Age to FortysomethingYes, that's 9 in the morning, nor did I enjoy being promised that there'd be more at 11.30am:
Kaye Wellings explores British sexual attitudes and preoccupations through anecdote and frank talking. What do we get up to in the bedroom and beyond, and how do we feel about it?
Gay Times 13 September 2007More at 9.30pm. At least some of the children will have gone to bed, I suppose. And all again next Monday and Thursday.
Tom Robinson explores the portrayal of homosexuality in the media.
He looks back from the late 1950s to the early 70s. Contributors include actor Murray Melvin, broadcaster Paul Gambaccini and author Maureen Duffy.
It's all about a series called 'The Sex Lives of Us' What a strange title; why not 'Our Sex Lives'. But why have it at all? Why right in the middle of the day?
But it isn't just these slots; it also gets into the other programmes too. Yesterday afternoon, at school chuck-out time (think cars full of kids with the radio on), I too was driving home, and as the subject of the usual discussion on health topics there was a horribly detailed programme all about erectile dysfunction, the relative usefulness of Viagra and Cialis, frigidness, menopausal 'loss of drive', testosterone patches &c.
'Mum: what's Viagra?'Here's the blurb from the BBC website:
This programme looks at sexual dysfunction. Most people encounter sexual difficulties at some point in their life. Common disorders include loss of desire in both women and men, erectile dysfunction and inability to attain orgasm in women. Treatments depend on the cause of the problem and range from medication or surgery to behavioural psychotherapies.Look, I'm not going to blimp on about this. It's just so, well, over the top, and out of place, that I'm rather disorientated, like the old surrealist joke:
Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. Fish.
14 comments:
Well if you're a Colonel Blimp, so am I. I had barely digested my cornflakes as the gorge began to rise in my throat listening to the unutterable, frankly distasteful sub-porn that flowed from the car radio at 9am. I'm a married man and no prude but this was completely inappropriate. (BTW Wimmins' Hour is barely better). I'm going to write a virtual green ink email to the idiots who put this filth out. They'll only know if we let them know.
They don't consider it filth. Its called degeneracy and it gets very bad very fast. I'd join you except I've stopped listening. I loved the BBC but she is sunk, even her news is in tatters. I would warn you they court controversy. They may use your complaint to slot in more filth in their reply to listeners. This is how it generaly works. When they got rid of the signature tune that used to delight so many of their faithful listeners I'm afraid their contempt was there for all to see. Then again, maybe I don't love her enough.
Good luck, and if you don't get satisfaction maybe it's time to go for the licence fee. Money talks to this kind of goul.
Your tax dollars at work.
In the US they call it "sweeps week."
I.e. certain times of the year "how many viewers/listeners" is carefully tracked per show by ad executives.
Stations put on the most tittilating stuff to try and get a boost in ratings, hoping people will be drawn to this swill.
I don't know what your Beeb's excuse is though.
This reminds me of the view expressed by Malcolm Muggeridge in his essay “The Great Liberal Death Wish” that “sex is the only mysticism that materialism has to offer”, and that the liberal attitude to sex could be expressed by new version of Descartes’ famous axiom. Copulo Ergo Sum, or I Screw, Therefore I Am. MM was not being frivolous or vulgar, and meant that the disappearance of a transcendent anthropology left sexual intercourse as the only opportunity men and women had to fulfil their deep human need to go out of themselves and, somehow, connect with other people, and thereby find a purpose in life which was not limited to the satisfaction of their own bodily needs. But getting people to accept this unnatural way of looking at things was a far from simple process. As MM explains.
“If sex provides the mysticism of the great liberal death wish, it needs, as well, its own special mumbo-jumbo and brainwashing device; a moral equivalent of conversion, whereby the old Adam of ignorance and superstition and the blind acceptance of tradition is put aside, and the new liberal man is born- enlightened, erudite, cultivated. This is readily to hand in education in all its many branches and affiliations. To the liberal mind, education provides the universal panacea. Whatever the problem, education will solve it. Law and order breaking down? - then yet more statistics chasing yet more education; venereal disease spreading, to the point that girls of ten are found to be infected? Then, for heaven's sake, more sex education, with tiny tots lisping out what happens to mummy's vagina when daddy erects, as once they did the Catechism; drug addiction going up by leaps and bounds, especially in the homes where television is looked at, surely it's obvious that what the kids need is extra classes under trained psychiatrists to instruct them in the why and the wherefore of narcotics.”
It wouldn’t be so bad if the Church was doing something about it. But:
“It is, indeed, among Christians themselves that the final decisive assault on Christianity has been mounted; led by the Protestant churches, but with Roman Catholics eagerly, if belatedly, joining in the fray. All they had to show was that when Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world, He meant that it was. Then, moving on from there, to stand the other basic Christian propositions similarly on their heads. As, that to be carnally minded is life; that it is essential to lay up treasure on earth in the shape of a constantly expanding Gross National Product; that the flesh lusts with the spirit and the spirit with the flesh, so that we can do whatever we have a mind to; that he that loveth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. And so on. One recalls a like adjustment of the rules in Orwell's Animal Farm. A whole series of new interpretative 'translations' of the Bible have appeared supporting the new view, and in case there should be any anxiety about the reception of these adjustments in Heaven, God, we are told on the best theological authority, has died. Christian faith arose upon belief in Christ's promise of the resurrection of the flesh and the life everlasting. What liberalism seeks is not the life eternal, but the oblivion of death: the liberals' doctrinaire advocacy of contraception and abortion is evidence of their overpowering death wish”.
It seems to me that the BBC programme to which you refer is part of the ongoing liberal brainwashing process, and that it is our duty as Catholics to call a spade a spade and fight against it.
I am not in the position to get your Radio 4. My personal choice is for music and I am well served in this regard by ABC Classic FM. This is Australia, in case you mix ABC up with an American site.My brother, (RIP) used to enjoy such programmmes as you refer to. I certainly see why you like them...the non-sexual ones!
I do get, though, on a daily basis, a flood of spam, offering me Viagra, an enlarged penis,....etc. I have a means of returning these spams unopened but still they come, day after day. They really sicken me.
Yes Fr. you are quite right, having devoted yourself to the priesthood you should be protected from exposure to such 'messy businesses'. But at least you can choose to turn the radio off. My concern is for the children in our schools who are exposed to equally 'messy businesses' in the name of political correctness whithout the opportunity to 'bail out'.
In the Fifth Form (Year 11 to younger readers) it was our unfortunate biology teacher's duty to teach us the mechanics of 'human reproduction', as demanded by the O level syllabus circa 1959. A widowed former nurse in her 30s, she was unable to hide her embarrassment, no doubt complicated by the fact that our class consisted of 24 girls and 2 boys. At one stage my dear friend Veronica whispered to me: "I don't like to think of Mummy and Daddy doing that, do you Wag?". My reply, based on 16 years of life experience was: "Well, perhaps they don't now they've got us!" For the record my parents had other children aged 9, 7 and 5 and were in their 40s!
Hard as they try, our son and his wife, both devout Catholics, are unable to protect their children from the assault on their innocence which society bombards them with from their earliest years. No chance of our grandchildren saying, as I did to my mother at the age of 14, on being told that the parents of one of my friends were unmarried: "But they can't be if they've had a baby!" O tempora! O mores!
They obviously don't have sex lives like us married Catholics if they have to keep talking about it & have so many difficulties! i stick to Heart FM..never really heard anything offensive on there!
A dose of the truth
Never heard it ... never saw it.. but I see the flow of the BBC tide if you all got it right! Only one comment: We lost the 'desire' or frankly 'the need' after cooperating with our Creator in the creation of 7 children! So: BBC, please can anyone help us ... WE LOST THE DESIRE!! OUR LIVES LIE IN TATTERS! And while your BBC experts are at it : can you help me recover the DESIRE to drink 10 pints a night which I used to enjoy at a previous time of life???
People who have genuine problems in this area don't need it used as entertainment by the sleazy BBC.
It belittles what for those who go through this is a nasty embarassing and relationship threatening problem.
The last place on earth anyone would go for help on this is Radio 4-so who were they aiming this at?
I like you and Paulinus have become Blimp like. I had huge respect for BBC radio 4 that of late has changed as has their programme content. I intend to make my feelings known and doubt i will get a polite response as has been the case in the past.
I'm a radio 4 listener - it's on in the background all day - apart from woman's hour which makes my blood boil...
it is so antagonistic to catholic sentiments -just look at that reprehensible ethics committee series, and this 'sex' topic is just prurient dross - come off it guys you hear worse on the school bus - it's distasteful and childish and frankly rather sad and depressing, but it does reflect contemporary society and the enemy we have to confront - abject ignorance, narcissism and a secularism utterly devoid of any charity .
just be grateful you were listening to radio 4 and not watching jeremy kyle - that would have had you reaching for the holy water and the tranquilizers....
At my age, I find it all rather bewildering.
Do people really want to talk about themselves ?
And does anyone want to listen ?
One of the few things broadcast on the wireless which still makes any sense is the shipping forecast.
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