Daytime TV

Hands up who hates Jeremy Kyle!

A sea of hands appears from the masses.

Yes this man, as we all know, and has been discussed ad infitum, is a seething mass of contradiction and bile. A truly appalling hate monkey.

What interests me is the hypocrisy of it all. His show is deeply cynical as it's marketed toward those that he, on an individual basis, uses as targets for his particularly loathsome brand of friendly fire.

What separates the audience (at home and in the studio) from the 'guest' (a hell of a euphemism)? Aren't they the same people? Who stands up in the audience to add to the chorus of studio disapproval if not the same people that appear to receive Mr Kyle's (and his Punch and Judy therapist colleague) help?

It seems to me that the audience of this show are being conditioned to sublimate their own self loathing at a specific target, so as to feel better about their own lives. After all these people have time to watch daytime TV! Here's Dave who regularly cheats on his bedraggled 17yo girlfriend (specifically, the mother of his child), isn't he worse than you. So now you, the unemployed scum watching this rancid soap opera, have an enemy, and as Bill Hicks once said, everyone has to have an enemy. The unemployed are taught to hate each other and ultimately themselves. The Kyle circus allows that to happen with approval and safety by sharing his opinion we can feel validated that we are on the correct side of the moral fence. But it offers no help to the problem of unemployment, social division and the massive issue of wealth distribution this country endures. Nor does it ultimately offer any help to Dave who, having been wound up by Kyle and his audience, will feel more inclined to take his frustration out on his girlfriend again.
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There is a massively pernicious issue with unemployment: society portrays them as feckless and lazy. All too ready and eager to wake up when it's double figures o'clock and crack open a can of lager in time for the afternoon repeat of Kyle's awful show. Then the government and it's Worklessness (it's not even a word ffs!) Tsars (the quasi religious that believe all work is good for the soul, if only people could be disciplined to accept crap wages, long hours and unfulfilling conditions), are justified in condemning their lifestyle. But since the unemployed receive a pittance in handouts to live on what else are they meant to do: catch a taxi to the West End to soak up an opera or a visit to a museum?

Why don't we invest in utilising the skills of the unemployed and not worry about paying them handouts. Why not let them express their skills, such as art or music or (in my case) writing, while unemployed? In fact, introduce a Citizen's Wage and then let people contribute their creative works to, perhaps, a central database that people can access or purchase from to pay for itself. Thereby the artists contribute to the culture of our society (which we can export via the interweb).

So many possibilities, yet this stupid capitalist government wants to do nothing else but kick the ladder from beneath them, having reached the top.