Oh My God - They Killed Kenny - You Hirsute, Scottish Bastard! continued (2/3) By Silver Fox

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3)

It's true that many people were appalled and outraged by the kidnapping of a British citizen in Iraq; it's equally true, however, that many will have also nursed an unwholesome desire to see actual video footage of some unfortunate cunt receiving a Tehran Trim on the late news. Most people though, if they're honest, won't have felt much of anything. Cold, you say? I knew you were a disaffected and detached sort of fucker, Silver Fox, but this sets a new low even for you, you say? Balls.

Like many of you, I'm sure, I felt a vague, humanitarian sense of aw, that's a choker for the poor sod upon hearing of the initial abduction, and, similarly, whenever I saw members of his family pleading tearfully on the television, I felt a pang of sympathy for them. After all, when all's said and done, it must be fairly frightful to have a loved one's life hanging in the balance. I even felt rather sorry for his Thai bride who is going to have to hustle if she wants to get into the Eastern Delights Christmas 2004 catalogue - or at least, stock up on ping-pong balls. I'd be lying if I said I lost any sleep over it though, as I had no personal connection with the victim or his family. Despite the efforts of the media to turn him into a cause celebre, he was only one man, and a stranger to boot, as far as I was concerned.

Far more worrying to me were the ramifications his kidnapping and death (I'd already written him off after the first day, to be brutally frank) would have on an already frightening and volatile situation. And, to be even more disturbingly honest; the whole Gulf scene was dwarfed in my consciousness by the gargantuan struggle of getting to Kwik Save to buy malt loaf before they closed.

Besides that, I couldn't accept the concept that Mr Bigley was a hapless victim of circumstance. Unlucky maybe, but not completely Fate's plaything. He knew that choosing - and I emphasise the word choosing even though I couldn't be bothered to italicise it - to work in Iraq was not without an element of risk, but he went anyway. Nobody held a gun to his head until he got out there.

Like the many other contractors working in that area, he weighed up the pros and cons and made a decision in keeping with his personal priorities. The debate was the same for him as everyone else: You can really rake in the mazuma working in Iraq right now - although there is, of course, the considerable danger of being kidnapped and murdered by one of the many extremist factions that are running around out there armed to the teeth and waiting to use some soft-target-no-mark as a poker chip.

H'mmm ..rake in the mazuma, eh? Now; many people may claim to have viewed things differently, but I'd be surprised if they did so very convincingly. We each of us have our lives, and let's face it - our own problems. No matter how tearful and enraged the media tells us we were, we actually only felt what we felt.

Even the man who begat this whole sorry witch-hunt didn't seem that affected by Bigley's situation to my jaded and world-weary eye. If he had been, he would have stormed out of Billy's show and done something constructive to help him; lobbied the Government, chained himself to the railings at Downing Street, or something. Instead, he just went on Richard and Judy's show and waxed sententious. Still; I guess that made him a part of the big drama, right?

Which kind of sums up what I imagine Billy Connolly was getting at. It's hard to be sure of course - his statement has doubtless been edited, taken out of context, distorted and generally mucked about with to the point where it is probably unrecognisable - but that's what I've gleaned from what I've heard. The Big Yin quite rightly deplores the media's crass and lazy claim that we all agree with them - a claim that allows them to peddle more sensationalist bullshit and thus further entrench the views of their corporate masters in the hearts and minds of the masses.

You recall the nauseating scenes of specious grief by vapid simpletons when Diana, Our Lady of Mine Maimed AIDS Victims bought the farm? Thousands of people with no sense of their own importance scrabbling desperately for a crumb of emotional reality from one family's sorrow? This middle-eastern nastiness is, to the jackals of the media conglomerates, a similar bonanza - only more so. In Diana's case, it meant merely the chance to coin it in by printing Special Commemorative Editions and photographic retrospectives ad nauseam; distasteful, perhaps, but essentially harmless.

By adopting Ken Bigley as a martyr, and fomenting a vengeful, bombastic outlook, the tools of the Industrial-Military-Complex are hoping not only to sell papers, but also sell us on the return of the sort of gunboat diplomacy that used to make their lives so much easier. The furore and ducking-stool mentality that is being created around Billy Connolly is just another part of their agenda; a warning to anyone else that wants to challenge the consensus opinion promulgated by Those Who Know Better.

As a peformer myself (you may of heard of CrackTown..? It's a sort of Simon and Garfunkel meets Derek & Clive affair cobbled together by a couple of scabrous malcontents that even Mr Bigley's erstwhile captors wouldn't want in the house.), I cannot stress strongly enough the threat that Connolly's ordeal by tabloid represents to free speech.

If Govan's favourite son can be treated like this, what chance do the likes of my beloved associate The King Rat and I stand when we release our song, George W Bush Is Occasionally Wrong About Some Things And Doesn't Have Superpowers? And, if things go on like this, what chance will any of us have of ever hearing another point of view? Keep at it, Billy-boy - even though you made a right twat of yourself on those Lotto ads.

Continued on www.thisisUll.com...... Oh My God - They Killed Kenny - You Hirsute, Scottish Bastard! continued..

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