Yes! A bit of flagrant one-upmanship here for me over Jeremy Kyle's car crash of a show, put out daily by - who else - ITV, the News of the World of television. I'll intersperse snippets of the glorious BBC story into my blog just to rub it in as much as possible.
A judge has branded The Jeremy Kyle Show "a form of human bear-baiting" at a court case in Manchester. District Judge Alan Berg said the ITV1 daytime programme was "trash" and existed to "titillate bored members of the public with nothing better to do".
Don't you love it when judges actually do what their title entails, and pass judgment on something? And this guy couldn't be clearer, or more right. Jeremy Kyle's self-indulgent and moronic 'chat show' has come in for a complete battering, but in my view fairly. The show does exist to titillate members of the public - indeed, perhaps all programmes do - but the emphasis on pitting hapless idiots whose intentions are guaranteed to be anything but honourable is only going to end in one thing. For some reason, ITV producers think we'd actually care to see it.
Judge Berg added that it was "human bear-baiting which goes under the guise of entertainment. It should not surprise anyone that these people, some of whom have limited intellects, become aggressive with each other."
That quote is particularly important; 'under the guise of entertainment'. Certainly, the only possible entertainment to be gained from tripe like Kyle's programme is derogatory laughter at other people whose lives are ridiculously fucked up. Not that there's anything wrong with laughing either; it seems that ITV has a strict policy in place to make sure that only people with low self-esteem, "limited intellects", and a lack of education get on this programme, to ensure the maximum brainless outcome possible.
"It seems to me that the purpose of this show is to effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people whose lives are in turmoil."
For the purpose of ratings and audiences. I mean literally, the above is all the Jeremy Kyle show does. Is that what we need, a damning reminder of how bad some people's lives are? A reminder, however, that is so pointedly exposing and mocking that the only reaction is simply not to care? Kyle himself doesn't help, of course, but before I get onto ripping him apart, here's some abuse for the producers:
"This type of incident is exactly what the producers want. These self-righteous individuals should be in the dock with you. They pretend there is some kind of virtue in putting out a show like this," said Judge Berg...
which is exactly true, and the same can probably be said for the show's regular watching audience, pretending there's some worthwhile element to it. The show's a pile of crap: it's not social commentary, problem-solving or educational. It's simply encouraging apathy to other humans' plight, and glamorising the failings of society for 'amusement'.
The only amusing thing is what a cunt Jeremy Kyle is. Taking his cues from the US, Kyle simply sits his contestants, sorry, victims, in their chairs and proceeds to abuse them, talk over them when they try to speak, criticise them, make wild claims about them as though fact and then ignore any response he gets, all the while swanning about looking like a plumber dressed in a cheap suit and getting his braindead audience to cheer him on.
My next guest is a story about the sponsor of Jeremy Kyle pulling the plug on their £500,000 advertising deal. Let's bring him out! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7019266.stm
