{"id":12,"date":"2005-01-24T20:21:44","date_gmt":"2005-01-25T00:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/01\/24\/bully-for-britain-and-a-big-brother-t"},"modified":"2005-01-24T20:21:44","modified_gmt":"2005-01-25T00:21:44","slug":"bully-for-britain-and-a-big-brother-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/01\/24\/bully-for-britain-and-a-big-brother-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Bully for Britain, and a Big Brother, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I wrote this over a week ago, but didn’t post it because it deals with a family member. But now I’m so besotted by MarsEdit<\/a> (which is solving my weird posting problems), that I have to try posting something with lots of links and a picture — just to see MarsEdit perform. Here goes:<\/p>\n

What is it with the British and their obsession with Big Brother<\/a>? Incredible, but true: Germaine Greer was on Big Brother<\/a>. I don’t understand how this could happen. Apparently, one of the major reasons<\/a> she walked out of the house after only a few (5) days was because it was too filthy to bear. <\/p>\n

One of my nieces<\/a> went on Big Brother (series 2<\/a>, prior to the “celebrity” series now apparently in the making), which I found pretty weird at the time. I was amused — and appalled — by the scandalettes<\/a> (amplified in the British press) that swirled around Penny<\/a>. Then, in 2001, shortly after she was voted out the house, I met some Brits at a Massachusetts party who went all ga-ga on learning that I’m Penny’s aunt, and I thought, “This is soooo<\/i> weird! People like<\/i> this…” Now, maybe Penny’s a bit eccentric<\/a>, and then again she was trying to find a bridge<\/a> from teaching English to getting into acting<\/a>, and it seems that tabloidissimos<\/a> grease the publicity wheel. (Even now, the Big Brother experience still provides a publicity hook<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

But whatever compelled Germaine Greer<\/a> to subject herself to this exercise in sado-masochism<\/a> exceeds the scope of my …interest. Can’t figure that one out. It’s funny, though: Penny was considered a nutter because she constantly cleaned the Big Brother house. After reading Greer<\/a>‘s account, however, I’d have to say the choice was either to clean or to leave. And then there’s this: the house is also bully hell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Because I am a teacher, I deal with bullying in schools. I would quite like to have a look at the epidemiology of bullying to see if the rise of Big Brother and the rise of bullying have anything to do with each other.”<\/i> [From here<\/a>] <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So there you go: we’re all canaries in the mine these days, those on the tube and those watching. It’s an experiment in social modification: Big Brother is watching you.<\/p>\n

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I wrote this over a week ago, but didn’t post it because it deals with a family member. But now I’m so besotted by MarsEdit (which is solving my weird posting problems), that I have to try posting something with lots of links and a picture — just to see MarsEdit perform. Here goes: What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}