'Galloway can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society'

[T_i_B]

Even though Nick Cohen hates Galloway and the anti-war movement anyway, regardless of reality-TV appearances this is still an interesting article.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1686697,00.html

The first series of Big Brother in 2000 drew a long howl of disgust from the British intelligentsia. Martin Amis said it proved that meritocracy was dead - because 'now you can become famous without having any talent by abasing yourself on a TV nerdothon'. Writers as diverse as James Hawes and Ben Elton wrote state-of-the-nation novels about contestants who will do anything to please the peeping Tom producers and their creepy audiences. I lost count of the newspaper pundits who said the show encapsulated everything that was sinister in modern life, and may well have said it myself.

The leaders of the anti-war movement should have paid attention. The rage showed that there were limits to the tolerance of the liberal middle class. We had our lines in the sand, damn it. Unfortunately, they were on the wrong beach.

The liberal media have turned on Galloway because of a far more heinous crime: his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother. The Independent and the BBC are furious that Galloway is failing to represent his constituents while he is in the Big Brother house. Why they believe an operator who saluted Saddam and described the fall of the Soviet Union as 'the worst day of my life' should want to observe the niceties of parliamentary democracy is beyond me. He was hardly ever in the Commons when he wasn't on Big Brother

However dunderheaded the charge, the SWP, which runs Galloway's Respect party, is panicking. The comrades in his Bethnal Green and Bow constituency admit in a communique to the faithful that 'it would be foolish to pretend that the issue will not cause us some damage'.