Proof The 'Culture Wars' Don't (And Never Did) Rely On Facts
You know it's serious when a fictional lesbian causes the curtain to slip for the 'culture war' enthusiasts - reminding us they don't (and never did) care about facts at all.
I used to read The Sun. I know, it’s a crime and should really be something I have to publicly apologise for. But as a child I would finish the school day, walk to my grans house and read the showbiz section of the infamous red top as soon as I burst through the door, absorbing all the petty drama and news on who’s leaving Eastenders as if each word was a tasty little morsel of food.
At the age of 12 I wasn’t fully aware of who the writers were or what they stood for. At that time, Dan Wootton was one of the showbiz editors, alongside Kevin O’Sullivan who was known for his scathing tongue and at times accurate and what I perceived to be factually conceived articles.
Aside from the fact that these two men have now grown into what could only be described as the gangrenous toenails of British media, I enjoyed the fact that what they were saying (at least to me at the age of 12) felt honest.
Fast forward to August 2024 and O’Sullivan is still chatting away about TV, but this time he’s firmly nestled in the throat of Talk TV, which is like if GB News and LBC decided to have a one night stand and produced this slightly incestuous platform full of bizarre headlines and oddly named shows like ‘The Political Asylum.’ (Definitely sounds fine and not ridiculous.)
As I scrolled through his X feed, past the articles about Meghan Markle and past his own retweets of his own tweets, I found the focus of today’s newsletter.
The tweet, shown below, explains O’Sullivan’s dislike at the BBC 1 drama Sherwood casting a lesbian woman in the role of Sheriff of Nottingham ahead of its second series. What is important to note is that ‘TV Kev’ appears to not have seen the show at all - thinking its some Merlin-esque retelling of the literal Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest rather than the thrilling modern day drama it actually is.
With this in mind, he blasts the state broadcaster for ‘woeful wokery’, going on to say:
Sherwood, partly inspired by the murders of trade unionist Keith Frogson and hairdresser Chanel Taylor, and is set in 2014. It’s a show full of intensity, unpacking British attitudes to the miners strikes, union workers and the way communities are pulled together and apart by the disparity between striking and non-striking workers.
O’Sullivan clearly didn’t understand this, until he was neatly corrected by Sherwood writer James Graham, who accurately identified the shows narrative. Succinctly Graham identifies the faux outrage that O’Sullivan has concocted, to which the response from O’Sullivan is the most compelling part of this back and forth and arguably the most honest thing he’s written in a long while.
‘Who cares?’ and ‘I know' tell us everything we need to know about the real motivation people like O’Sullivan have when it comes to shouting about the world around them and it’s ‘wokery’.
His job, in part, is to create headlines as much as it is to report on them. With Talk TV reportedly losing £54 million in 2023, it’s no wonder that O’Sullivan and fellow commentators like Piers Morgan and Julia Hartley-Brewdog feel they need to create media moments based on the slightest whiff of diversity - but his tweets above show that he doesn’t need facts or truth to convince him to press send on whatever he is writing. It tells us everything we need to know. That his initial outrage isn’t dependent on fact, rather on him reading the headline of an article and then regurgitating it to fit his narrow minded world-view, with no fact checking involved at all.
In a later tweet, he even admitted to having read the headline from The Times about the shows lesbian role and not continuing on to read the rest of the article. Yet, despite his platform, continued to share this ‘fact’ to his audience who were appropriately riled by what they see as truth.
So what’s the result of this?
It shows us that people like O’Sullivan, and Wootton and Morgan never have and never will have a care for facts when it comes to the stories they run. Their role at Talk TV is not to report on the news, but it is to create hysterical slinging matches between commentators and journalists to bring in the ratings and advertisers and ensure that Rupert Murdoch continues to pay their wages. Like tiny infant children, they just want to show Daddy Murdoch that their show has the most views, the most engagement and that they’re the one doing the ‘real journalism’.
But in reality, all it does it continue to plant seeds of falsehood in gullible minds - making them think that ‘wokery’ is genuinely one of the biggest problems our country faces. Looking at the responses to his original (now deleted) tweet, it’s clear to see that BBC hating, LGBTQ+ repulsed members of the British public will believe what O’Sullivan said to be true even when he himself has admitted it to be incorrect. They don’t need factual proof, because their echo chamber is impenetrable to anything that doesn’t align with their world view. Fact or fiction, if it speaks to their hatred of anything ‘abormal’ - they’re believing it.
So although this damning lifting of the curtain exposes the divisive, ratings focused motivators behind the ‘culture war’ enthusiasts clickbait, it’s important to note the worrying amount of regular people who will still see what they say to be true - no matter what. Behind the daily notification chimes from their Google alerts for ‘Meghan Markle’ these people are arguably addicted to consuming information that points the finger of blame for all of societies ills towards those who are most marginalised.
How we tackle that? I don’t know - but at least this week we have been able to see transparently the self-centred and nonsensical reasoning behind many journalists unintelligent, untrue and inaccurate outrage, and it be challenged and squashed with honesty, accuracy and most importantly integrity by those who are actually putting unique and entertaining stories into the world.