Galloway Outwits Big Brother. 14th Jan 2006.

Chris Edwards

This week's massive, unrelenting media/New Labour propaganda onslaught 
against Galloway, part of the ongoing campaign of "character assassination 
on grand scale", as his libel lawyer put it, fails to get him ousted from 
the Big Brother House. ITV News ran lengthy pieces all day long on their 
bulletins on eviction day viciously attacking him, ending with a thinly 
veiled invitation to evict him that night. Can you imagine how his opponents 
would have crowed to the heavens in the media this morning if he had been 
the first to be evicted?

And the most amusing thing of all is that he has outwitted Channel 
4/Endemol. Galloway obviously anticipated that Celebrity Big Brother would 
censor his political conversations. When "Big Brother" asked, on eviction 
night, what he thought he had achieved on the programme (obviously fondly 
anticipating his eviction), Galloway replied: "I wanted to show that I am 
not a desiccated, calculating, manic zealot who only talks or thinks about 
the war" and "I hope to show that there's nothing extreme, nothing 
frightening about me." Thus, by censoring his political comments, Channel 
4/Endemol have played into his hands and helped him in his attempt to 
normalise the grossly distorted, "fanatic" image that the media has created 
of him over a period of several years.

This does not means that Galloway has not been talking about the war and 
other political questions on the show, perhaps thinking that the censorship 
would not be quite so ruthless. Celebrity Big Brother producer Pete 
Bazalgette admits censoring Galloway political comments (The Guardian. 
14.1.06. p9) hiding lamely behind the arcane Broadcasting Act which says 
that Galloway's political comments could only be aired if there were 
"countervailing views". Yet the responses to Galloway's political comments 
from the 10 other celebrities would have provided precisely such 
"countervailing views". Thus, Bazalgette's excuse won't wash.

Channel 4/Endemol's purpose is to make money by exploiting the celebrities 
while humiliating and degrading them--such is their contempt for them. 
Galloway shows that he is not so "grandiose" and/or "self-important" (take 
your pick) as to refuse to perform silly role-play tasks required of him by 
Celebrity Big Brother. This episode merely shows that Galloway is not so 
"self-important" that he is unwilling to humble himself on TV to raise a 
large amount of money for a Palestinian charity. If he had refused, he would 
have lost the money for the charity Interpal. Meanwhile, his po-faced, 
humourless warmonger enemies try to make hay out of it as though it had been 
a piece of bizarre behaviour of Galloway's own design instead of a task 
imposed upon him by the programme.

At the same time the media screams relentlessly about Galloway supposedly 
being absent from his duties as an MP. By way of reply, an Organgrinder Big 
Brother blog contributor named "Wilfred" writes: "Are you all saying you are 
quite happy to pay other MPs to have lunch while ordering the daily bombing 
and murder of innocent Iraqi civilians?" Which says it all really, doesn't 
it? At least Galloway is trying to stop the war through appearing on 
Celebrity Big Brother--most other MPs are still supporting the pointless war 
and bloodshed, including the killing of our own troops. And, of course, MPs 
never go on overseas junkets, do they?

Why do so many people seem to despise Galloway? In some cases it is obvious: 
Zionists hate him because he has consistently opposed and exposed their 
attempt to "wipe Palestine off the face of the map"--something that they 
have largely succeeded in doing. By the way, the term "Zionist" refers to a 
political ideology not a race. It is the ideology that justified and led to 
the "wiping of Palestine off the face of the map". Non-Jews George Bush and 
Tony Blair are Zionists. At the same time, many liberal Jews oppose Zionism. 
Galloway is despised also partly because other anti-war MPs and trades union 
leaders have not joined Galloway in trying to form a political alternative 
to the warmongers, to Blair's New Labour. They have shied away from this 
task and left Galloway to fight alone. As a result, he is isolated, exposed, 
and thus vulnerable to being either ignored or witch-hunted by the media. 
The sensationalist, negative media exposure he gets in turn enables his 
enemies to smear him as "vain", "narcissistic" etc.

One of the reasons why Galloway chose to go on Celebrity Big brother is 
because the activities of the anti-war movement are under-reported by the 
media. For example, the press and TV completely ignored the 1500 strong 
International Peace Conference in London just before Christmas which brought 
together people from the anti-war movement internationally, including from 
the US and Iraq. Iraqi oil trades unionists fighting privatisation and 
occupation, Cindy Sheehan, Rose Gentle, and other members of military 
families against the war were present (What? you didn't know it had 
happened?). See reports at:

http://www.traprockpeace.org/london_peace_10dec05.html

Before entering the Big Brother House Galloway wrote:

"We need to use new and innovative methods to put across our arguments. I'm 
determined that there are no no-go areas for us and I believe Celebrity Big 
Brother will be hugely successful for our ideals. If I'm wrong at least many 
will eat in the Gaza Strip because I tried...Sure, there may be an indignity 
to be suffered along the way."

http://www.respectcoalition.org/?ite=960