57. A Connecticut Yankee in King Kos's Court

BUT FIRST THE SCOTS.

Taggart was back on the box last night. A new one-off (ITV1).
This is a Scottish thriller for Scots.
White Heather Club it ain't.
What it is, in case you are anti thriller or living in another dimension, is Detective Chief Inspector Matt Burke (Alex Norton) and his unglamorous crew taking on an assortment of hardcase Scottish villains.
There are no sympathetic characters (except perhaps the gay Detective Constable Stuart Fraser played by Colin McCredie) and the grim, generally ugly, locations chosen by the makers of the show are well matched by the grim, generally ugly, appearance of most of the cast.
It seethes with violence and resentment.
It has incomprehensible plots with stark endings.
It is snarled out in a broad Scottish brogue.
It defies you to be critical and if you are: stuff you!
You're probably a Sassenach anyway.
I love it.

BLOG WARS.

This was a sort of Connecticut Yankee in King Kos's court documentary in the Storyville series on BBC4 and told of the remarkable influence wielded by bloggers like Kos in the Connecticut Democratic Senatorial primary race of the 2006 mid-term elections. (Whatever all that may mean.)
I have about as much faith in politicians as I do in clergymen or estate agents or tabloid journalists.
So I did find it rather sad, and no little disturbing, that one young woman sat cross-legged (the lotus position?) mouthing a relentless diatribe about anybody who dared to criticise the glorious leader of her faultless country. There was something of the automaton about it.
The politician the bloggers were bent on deposing was clearly a smug tosser.
The one they had chosen to replace him was clearly a wealthy tosser.
I wondered what everybody over there was on.
It could almost have been written by Mark Twain.
I was reminded again that we are divided by a common language.
I remembered the unwittingly funny comment by the 1963 - 69 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that he never arrived in another country without thinking that the people there would like to be Americans.
What a smug, dog-ear-pulling President that one was!
I am an admirer of many things American.
But much of what they have exported they should have kept to themselves.

THAT CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER THING.

Was this an American import?
After all the free publicity gained from accusations of bullying I gather that the recently mediocre viewing figures for this dire crap shot up by a couple of million last night.
No, I wasn't one of them.
Channel 4 will be overjoyed of course.
They will probably be planning yet another series.
There's no justice.