The Society of the Spectacle, or, It's Crazy But It Might Just Work

Always good to have advanced warning, even if at short notice, even if you assume someone is winding you up.

Still, George in the Big Brother house is quite something. What to make of it?

One the one hand, there is

"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength..."

...on the other, there's this and this. There's the occasional dropped bollock (see above) but otherwise the guy has got an uncanny political ability. His political judgement is, in general, superb.

More particularly, I can't think of a politician who better knows how to handle the media - how many won libel cases? how many inerviews? how many TV appearances? I have no idea, absolutely none, whether the Big Brother appearance will work out. But there's no other MP who could come close to pulling this one off... and if he does, of course, it'll be quite spectacular.

(You know what pisses me off? Whining about "missing votes". In a two party Parliamentary system, with a rock-solid whipping system, there's little bloody point turning up for most votes. Big Brother's going to a reach a bigger damn audience than an ill-attended speech, broadcast exclusively on BBC Parliament, will ever do. So good luck to George, and let assorted Blairites and wannabe progressives suddenly discover the unlikely merits of Crown-in-Parliament and woolsacks.)

...incidentally, here's a bunch of BB fans on GG...

Update: Unbelievable amount of comments, below, on an ephemeral TV show. Presumably we are all, like George, prisoners of the Spectacle.