The Null Device

As Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead stays stubbornly in the charts, the BBC, eager to not appear censorious and yet under sustained assault from its perennial foes in the Murdoch press and Daily Mail, has decided to half-heartedly censor it. A five-second excerpt of the song will be played, along with an explanation of sorts. Chances are the explanation will not be a list of grievances against Thatcher (the immiseration of the British working class, support for the Pinochet dictatorship and the South African apartheid regime, Section 28, a few getting rich on the suffering of many, Spandau Ballet, &c.), but instead saying something like that it got there as a silly internet prank piggy-backing on something a lunatic-fringe group said two decades earlier. Bonus points if they can mention Thatcher having been the first woman PM and insinuate an unreformed 1970s-vintage misogyny on the part of the original organisers.

Personally, I think that the BBC missed a trick by deciding to actually play a five second excerpt, rather than finding one of the actors hired to voice statements by Sinn Féin in the 1980s and bringing them in to recite the words. That would have made a more powerful statement about the absurdity of the situation.

Meanwhile, a small group of Tories have decided to fight market forces with market forces and launched a counter-campaign to get a different song into the charts; or, in the words of highly visible former Tory MP, successful popular novelist and somewhat less successful social media entrepreneur Louise Mensch:

Good morning! Are we all doing it #GranthamStyle today? Download #ImInLoveWithMargaretThatcher on ITunes and Amazon - see RTs for links

At time of writing, “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” is at #1 on the iTunes charts, and “I'm In Love With Margaret Thatcher” is at #8. For what it's worth, incidentally, the Wizard of Oz soundtrack is owned by 20th Century Fox, so this is one anti-Thatcherite protest Rupert Murdoch profits from.

¶ bbc censorship ding dong the witch is dead louise mensch margaret thatcher media slacktivism 0

A day after the death of an elderly, long-retired Margaret Thatcher, the reactions in Britain have been varied. The national news media have generally been lavish in their hagiography, at most conceding that Thatcher “polarised opinion” or was “controversial”; the implication being that all sides, from the yuppies whom made out like bandits during the Big Bang to the miners who were kicked in the teeth, had, over time, put their differences aside. (The BBC has been particularly fawning, careful to avoid giving a voice to anyone who may say anything remotely critical, or in any way shatter the illusion that the PM who smashed the miners' unions, immiserated the North and began the dismantling of the post-WW2 social contract may well have been a much loved and thoroughly apolitical member of the Royal Family. Between that and their silence on the privatisation of the NHS, one suspects that they are betting that, maybe if they cooperate enthusiastically, the Tories won't dismember them and sell the bits off to Rupert Murdoch before the next election.) Even the Guardian, whilst publishing a mildly condemnatory editorial, hedged its bets, as not to offend those of its readers who vote Conservative (and presumably there are some). Regional newspapers have been somewhat less equivocal, especially those in places like Sheffield, Newcastle and Wales. Meanwhile, television schedules have been cleared to make room for turgid memorial programming.

Last night, after her death was announced, spontaneous celebrations did erupt in parts of Britain; as of yesterday afternoon, the centre of Liverpool reportedly looked “like bonfire night on Endor”, and other celebrations took place in Glasgow, Bristol, Brixton and Republican areas of Northern Ireland. Elsewhere, the manager of an Oddbins was suspended after announcing a special on champagne “in case anyone wanted to celebrate for any reason”.

Other than that, there have been few signs of public jubilation in London; no red bunting bedecking streets, no spontaneous street parties around portable stereos blaring out Billy Bragg songs, no jubilant signs in windows, not even an uncanny sense of euphoria in the air. And, when one thinks about it, it's hardly surprising, as there's precious little to celebrate. An old, frail woman, whose actions caused considerable suffering for many (and, for a few, great fortune) a quarter-century ago, died at an advanced age, amidst luxury; and, short of being borne to Valhalla on the wings of valkyries, there could scarcely be a more victorious way to exit life. If she was aware of anything in her last days, it would have been of the triumph of her views and the utter vanquishment of all opposition. The welfare state has been dismantled to an extent she dared not imagine, trade unions are all but extinct, and neo-Thatcherism is the backbone of all admissible political parties. Other than there still being homosexuals and trains in Britain, there could have been little to disappoint her. Thatcher may be dead, but Thatcherism is stronger than ever. If anyone has reason to be popping the corks on those bottles of champagne, it would be the Conservative Party faithful and perhaps the Blairite wing of Labour, paying tribute to the end of a triumphant life.

While she may have been victorious, that is not to say that her victory was accepted. Perhaps telling are official shows of respect which were not called for, in case lack of observance says too much. For instance, football matches will not be observing a minute's silence. There will also be no state funeral, which would have required both a parliamentary vote (and the spectacle of Labour backbenchers defying the whip and Sinn Fein members being ejected from the chamber would have been somewhat insalubrious) and a national minute's silence. The funeral itself will be one step short of a state funeral, and the first Prime Minister's funeral attended by the Queen since Churchill's state funeral; it will be held next Wednesday, with central London under lockdown and a heavy police presence; one imagines that Thatcher wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Finally, at the time of writing, Judy Garland is enjoying an uncanny career resurgence in the British pop charts; Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead is at number 2 on the iTunes chart and number 1 on the Amazon MP3 chart. Yay for slacktivism!

¶ ding dong the witch is dead margaret thatcher media politics schadenfreude slacktivism uk 0

Not One Damn Dime Day, a proposed boycott of all consumer spending, was perhaps one of the most poorly thought out and piss-weak ideas for an alleged political protest ever; and Mark Dery tears it a new one, in style:

First, the whole business reeks of bobo sanctimony and cultural elitism. Any member of the Adbusters-reading, Supersize Me-watching leisure class who honestly believes she can Stick It to the Man by keeping her dimes firmly in her hand-knitted Guatemalan rucksack, right beside her manically underlined copy of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance, is unlikely to be seen rolling a 55-gallon drum of Miracle Whip out of Wal-Mart or rejoicing in fried offal at the local McDonald's. The NOMDD demographic consists largely, if not entirely, of inconspicuous consumers. It is axiomatic, at this late date, that the higher a certain sort of overeducated, deeply principled American climbs on the socioeconomic ladder, the more likely he is to camouflage his status and laminate his common-man credentials with the appearance (at least) of a virtuous proletarianism. This, after all, is America, where none of the children are above average. Our deep-dyed populism demands that all poll respondents, whether homeless or richer than God or Gates, insist they are "middle class."

Not One Damn Dime Day, and its cousins like Buy Nothing Day, are, according to Dery, symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the American left: a popular association of progressive ideals with asceticism, self-denial and a guilty, puritanical joylessness.

Ensuring that you're synonymous, in the public mind, with hair shirt-wearing self-denial and granitic humorlessness (think Kerry, Gore, Dukakis...) is not likely to win the hearts and minds of Middle Americans, most of whom shrink from things like the NOMDD Day because they sound like the political equivalent of the gray, gluten-free, sugar-free, fun-free snack foods drearily gummed by vegans and other humorectomy sufferers. A mass boycott that mandates total self-denial and, by default, sentences the participant to house arrest in order to avoid spending a plugged nickel, let alone a thin dime, is a mass boycott doomed to failure.

Too long have the censorious, humor-impaired wings of the left--the Dworkinite penis-is-a-weapon paleoconservative wing of feminism; the beige, Organization Man policy wonks; the excruciatingly earnest shoot-your-TV neo-Luddites--been the left's public face. We need an Xtreme Makeover. More profoundly, we need to stop embracing the politics of denial and withdrawal. Show me a sharp-tongued left-wing critique, built on notions of social justice and economic democracy that resonate with the common man yet, at the same time, embraces the Coneyesque cheap thrills and vulgarian pleasures of junk culture, and I'll show you a battleplan for handing the right's self-appointed morals czars their heads.

(I'm wondering: could this be a legacy of America's Puritan heritage? Could the fact that the American colonies were founded by zealous, gratification-denying idealists have formed not only the religious streak in the American right but the crusading tendencies and anti-materialism of American progressive movements throughout history?)

¶ culture leftwingers mark dery politics slacktivism usa 3

Hacktivists plan Jam Echelon Day on October 21:

Specifically, they suggest the following keywords:

FBI CIA NSA IRS ATF BATF DOD WACO RUBY RIDGE OKC OKLAHOMA CITY MILITIA GUN HANDGUN MILGOV ASSAULT RIFLE TERRORISM BOMB DRUG HORIUCHI KORESH DAVIDIAN KAHL POSSE COMITATUS RANDY WEAVER VICKIE WEAVER SPECIAL FORCES LINDA THOMPSON SPECIAL OPERATIONS GROUP SOG SOF DELTA FORCE CONSTITUTION BILL OF RIGHTS WHITEWATER GRUDNUK POM PARK ON METER ARKANSIDE IRAN CONTRAS OLIVER NORTH VINCE FOSTER PROMIS MOSSAD NASA MI5 ONI CID AK47 M16 C4 MALCOLM X REVOLUTION CHEROKEE HILLARY BILL CLINTON GORE GEORGE BUSH WACKENHUT TERRORIST TASK FORCE 160 SPECIAL OPS 12TH GROUP 5TH GROUP SF

¶ echelon hacktivism slacktivism surveillance 0