My Loathing of Julie Burchill is Absolute

My loathing of Julie Burchill is absolute. If you are not aware of her existence you are truly blessed. She is a loathsome and idiotic journalist, bearing an uncanny resemblance to ‘The Penguin' in the film Batman Returns. How the woman has forged a career in journalism (she writes for The Times) is beyond me and I find her success to be offensive to the point of revulsion. I trust nobody reading this will have seen Burchill's documentary Reality TV is Good For You because anyone who did is no doubt now blind and in therapy having scraped out their eyeballs with a teaspoon. God knows I came close myself.

I understand that Burchill likes such [semi] respectable fodder as Morrissey and Reservoir Dogs but these seem to be exceptions to a rule of ‘if it's shit I'll like it, claim it has substance and political relevance and to top off the whole steaming pile with one crowning turd I'll make a documentary about it. So fuck you.' This would appear to be the case with Reality TV is Good For You in which Burchill defends such reality-TV dross as Big Brother and Pop Star or is it Pop Idol or perhaps I'm a Fatuous Cunt, Make Me Famous. One of the three.

In one ludicrous part of the programme Burchill interviews a clearly unimpressed Tony Wilson and argues that Girls Aloud (I had to check the spelling of this band name and found myself reaching for the spoon again) are serious musicians, having dubbed them ‘panty liner punk' (for fuck's sake). She then extends her misplaced notions of musical substance to include the contestants on Pop Idol (yeah, I'm afraid I do know its name really). Even Simon Cowell disagreed with this to an extent on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Obviously I'm not about to say that he denounced his own television programme or the music that made him rich, the man's not an idiot. However, he did say something to the effect of Pop Idol offering entertainment, enjoyable music and that if one desires artistry or substance in music then Pop Idol isn't for them. Now, please understand that I don't necessarily condemn someone for their taste but this Burchill doesn't restrict her arguments to taste. She sees fit to point a gun at the head of politics and drag it kicking and screaming into the affray, though I'm sure the threat of getting into bed with it would have much the same effect as a gun.

In her defence of Big Brother Burchill claims that anyone who doesn't like it is, in her own words, an “upper-class toff” and that Big Brother is the working-class equivalent of a gap year. Moreover, she claims that no one of the working-class attends university. This is indefensible drivel; does Burchill envision university students running about in tailcoats ‘roasting' their classmates' arses over open fireplaces? Another cringe making interview sees Burchill ‘chatting' with an individual in the know as regards Big Brother: none other than Jade Goodie. They are filmed in a rather shabby looking café. The camera slowly pans across the interior, ending with a lingering close-up of a plate of pie and mash. WORKING CLASS! We're keepin' it real. This amusingly backfires somewhat when one notices Goodie's visibly upturned nose at what is in all fairness (I was being polite when I said shabby) a dirty little café.

Burchill's dreadful taste, face and shocking level of inability as a journalist, as regards structuring an argument (the documentary in question frequently resorts to petty name-calling which can be amusing I admit but isn't the stuff of good journalism) induce in me a sense of nausea and a desire to vomit over her. All this is (according to the cliché) my problem, not hers. Which is fair enough because what really turns my stomach is that Burchill's views regarding class are offensive and redundant. There are others who manage to be crap journalists with bad taste and leave it at that without attempting to be political. One's class does not dictate one's taste. I'm from a working class background (the only difference now being income, much like Burchill) and my hatred of Big Brother has nothing to do with class, I hate it because it's fucking shit. Furthermore, I know that the more popular Big Brother and its reality-TV brethren become, the less chance there is of there being any halfway decent television programming in the future.

By D. Diedrich

Copyright February 2006