FlyTheNest

In less hysterical times, a minor act of curatorial reinterpretation and recontextualisation would be of little interest outside the museum world. Instead, it sparked yet another confected outbreak of needless hostilities in Britain’s ongoing History Wars. Writing in the Spectator, Charles Moore complained that the bust of Sloane had been “locked in a display cabinet”, hardly a unique fate for an artefact held by the British Museum. Although having never thought it a good idea to test if the cabinets in the museum are indeed locked, I am not in a position to determine if the bust of Sloane has been singled out for special treatment.

BreamwaterShark
@BreamwaterS
Replying to
@RobBurl

@Jo_Coburn
and 3 others
Why would you give a wider platform to Sikora? He represents a minority, politically tendentious position in science. You couldn’t get Dominic Cummings to come on wearing a lab coat?

we fall into the trap of promoting fake culture-war stories by engaging in them, or allowing them to grow unchallenged because there is more serious real politics to attend to

gilsey wrote:The leftie BBC.

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Random reply, plenty along these lines

BreamwaterShark
@BreamwaterS
Replying to
@RobBurl

@Jo_Coburn
and 3 others
Why would you give a wider platform to Sikora? He represents a minority, politically tendentious position in science. You couldn’t get Dominic Cummings to come on wearing a lab coat?

citizenJA wrote:

gilsey wrote:Re culture wars, Nesrine Malik's piece was good on the problem but short on solutions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -elections" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

we fall into the trap of promoting fake culture-war stories by engaging in them, or allowing them to grow unchallenged because there is more serious real politics to attend to

For all the clear appetite and motivation for concocting and believing these lies, we are terrible at defending against them. Either we accept their premise, and start debating the pros and cons of cancelling the lyrics, or we think it’s clever to rise above them and not give the right the culture war that it wants. Either way we fall into the trap of promoting fake culture-war stories by engaging in them, or allowing them to grow unchallenged because there is more serious real politics to attend to. This is the serious real politics. It is winning elections. It is fostering a siege mentality that can be easily converted, as Gaetz did, into fear of the other lot getting in and establishing an anarchic regime that vandalises history, opens the borders and embraces the thugs and vandals of Black Lives Matter.

The main challenge that faces any progressive forces over the next few years isn’t in convincing the electorate of the mendacity or incompetence of the Conservative party, it’s exposing the vast complex of lies that it is being sold every day, and those who sell them. We can either do that, or we can continue to stumble, out of credulity or cowardice, into culture-war traps as they pave the way to the next rightwing election victory.

The BBC comedy insider disputed this story, telling the Guardian there had already been substantial pressure from BBC executives over the last 18 months to find pro-Tory, pro-Brexit comedians. Instead, the source said the real issue is that many of the Conservative-leaning performers considered by BBC producers “aren’t very good”.

The insider added: “Internally we’ve been asked to make sure we have more balance across our shows – we are constantly on the look out but there aren’t many people who have those viewpoints on the comedy circuit. Tell me the names that we’re missing out on? Some people aren’t very good. The issue is a shortage of rightwing comics.”