Friday 6 December 2013

Nelson Mandela

Whatever one's opinions on the man, it was inevitable when Mandela died the news would be saturated with wall-to-wall coverage, particularly by the BBC, to the exclusion of everything else.

And so it has proved and for that reason I have largely avoided reading the news today, although undoubtedly some bad news has been “buried”. I can’t bear to read of nauseating tributes by celebrities, by “devastated” people on Twitter who have never met him and by politicians jumping on a bandwagon as demonstrated by Gordon Brown who, without any self awareness, claimed Mandela taught him courage. At times like this I’m almost ashamed to admit I agree with Rod Liddle.

However the purpose of this post is to award the most shameless, self-publicity seeking, crass tribute of the day to…Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA.


3 comments:

  1. I suppose that you know the latin name for cockroaches is Blattaria; there is one, the German Cockroach, whose latin name is Blattella Germanica. I know he is Swiss.

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  2. I think St Nelson did control unrealistic expectations after the fall of apartheid and helped prevent S.A. descending into a bloodbath.

    The BBC specialise in this sort of thing and no doubt have a list of famous people who might snuff it and anniversaries, with programmes all sketched out and ready to roll.

    I must say the first time I became really irritated with the BBC was the Death of Diana, which was a newsworthy event and worth extended news programmes, but it disrupted the whole day's broadcasting and then the whole week, and they were scraping the bottom of the barrel, dragging out people she'd been at school with and all sorts of nonsense.

    They definitely helped fuel the hysteria which took over the media.

    Just about everyone I knew thought it was a bit sad but they didn't want to be bombarded with it, the way we were for a week.

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    1. Unfortunately for us, all this has been long in planning and having the airwaves swamped with this was always going to be inevitable. I learned last year when Mandala's health turned very much for the worse that one American TV station has had an entire floor of a hotel booked for years in preparation for the event, to ensure their reporters have a base to operate from.

      It's going to be obscene.

      The long-awaited full-public-view funeral opportunity for the PR-drenched Politicos to dramatically slash their metaphorical wrists, beat their breasts and don their meticulously-chosen designer-label sackcloth and sashes for perpetual posterity. Granted by camera lenses in their tens of thousands. The sanctimonious vanity on display is going to be excruciating.

      If ever people could see the pathological opportunism, lack of spontaneity, and inbred self-promotional tendencies in the world political class, let the world's public perceive it en masse at the coming funeral.

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