Friday, September 03, 2004

...kiddies' mastermind is a swizz...

They've just done a tour of the top private schools and rounded up all the children with Asperger's syndrome. Every one of them has a plum accent (often hilariously superimposed over some regional gutter twang that their nouveau riche parents have sent them away to expunge) with a compic impediment, that irritating Autistic inability to answer an open question appropriately, and a disorienting gaze. It's even freakier than the average edition of See Hear (why, oh fucking why, do they film some parts of the programme silently so they have to dub people who can already speak perfectly comprehensibly? Do the BBC use the show as a sink for their Disability Rights Act obligations to employ the disabled - perhaps the sound guy is also deaf?).

I always thought Mastermind was supposed to be a celebration of the capacity of the individual for self-motivated learning (hence the specialist subjects). Clearly the next generation is just to be a cheap exercise in psychological programming.

A pox on it, and a pox on all the children.

(Except the one who just pronounced Thames as "tames")

PS: I note that it was laced with a question about the forthcoming new series of Doctor Who, just to keep the PR going now that the tabliod-baiting Dalek rights fiasco has been milked dry.