How Celebrity Big Brother Exposes Media Obsessions

The latest series of Celebrity Big Brother is proving fascinating. I'm not watching it, mind, as we lack the aerial to watch any TV right now. But I am watching the newspaper coverage of the show with fascination. In the first week it's gone through three phases:

1. Fascination with Chantelle, the fake celebrity
2. Jodie Marsh being “bullied”
3. George Galloway and Rula Lenska little kitten game

Each tells us something about the modern media.

1. That its obsession with celebrity is becoming recursive, disappearing up its own backside as the whole game of somebody being a celebrity simply because the media has decided that they're a celebrity is highlighted.
2. Stupid women with big tits must be protected from analysis by people with more intelligence.
3. The media's obsession with sex suddenly gets uncomfortable when middle-aged people start playing games with a sexual undertone. I wonder how different the media coverage would have been if it was two much younger people playing that game.

You'll note that I've ignored the whole “George Galloway wasting taxpayers' money by being in the house” angle. That's because I don't care about it. His constituents had plenty of opportunities to see the kind of man they were electing, and they want ahead and did it anyway. They deserve everything they get.

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