Tabloid Tactics

Like thousands of anti-war protestors I bought a copy of the satirical song entitled 'War! What is it good for?’ designed to mock as well as draw attention to the violent actions of the present British government under Tony Blair. Also like many I spoke to I felt a distaste for this tabloid approach to gaining publicity for an extremely important and valuable message. The single should have entered the charts at number 6 and made a big media impact, yet it was pushed out to number 21, according to The Stop the War Coalition "This was due to the outrageous decision by the chart compilers to invalidate thousands of sales because some people bought more than one copy by mobile phone text message, the first time this method had been used for sales." They went on "So the Blair spoof was just outside the top 20. How convenient that this avoided the widespread media coverage that would have followed a top 20 placement. That said, over the previous week it was a featured item on most of the main TV news channels, and the record still made chart history by being the highest entry ever by an act unsigned to a record label." Somehow this approach reminded me of the tactics of PETA within the animal rights movement who use celebrity media culture regularly within their campaigns. I feel torn by all this, on the one hand I know that the principles of peace and non-violence are rarely championed in our society, yet I cannot help but wonder if these methods really help establish a society that has any greater understanding than before. I feel more and more that we need to lift our standards and look to the intelligent and dignified example of say Martin Luther King, Jr., not the vacuous world of media entertainment for our approach.