That's entertainment!

Sheet music from a jazz version

of Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer',

written in 1902

Mark Dice is an American YouTube content provider, and a good one. He is on the money with the stories, and his videos rarely run over six or seven minutes. Note to YouTubers, by the way, some of us don't have time to watch your 37-minute video. We have lives and work to do. Keep 'em short and punchy.

Dice mentioned some of the mainstream Left-wing American media heavyweights the other day - Carlson, Gutfeld, Watters et al - and I felt he was rather unfair in dismissing them as 'entertainers'.

When the British Broadcasting Corporation (more usually known by its acronym, the BBC) was set up in 1922 under the auspices of rather a stern man, Scottish calvinist Lord Reith, its mission statement (or 'remit' as it was called in those quainter days) was 'to inform, educate, and entertain'. Today, the BBC is a sorry affair, and fulfils none of the three elements of its original purpose.

Entertainment is a very good delivery system. It is why Aesop wrote his fables. We all know of the story of the ant and the grasshopper, the former working when the weather was fine to store food for him and his ant family when the weather turned cold, the latter fooling around and playing music. Then, when winter descends, the ant has his food all laid up while the grasshopper has nothing. (What a metaphor that is for current times. I recommend Aesop's Fables, for your kids as much as for yourselves). We take the moral message because we enjoy the story.

But my point is this. We live in a hedonistic era, whether we like it or not. We would probably not take to the type of dry, joyless Calvinistic lectures Lord Reith would have had to endure (much less fun than Aesop). We like a bit of pazazz and ring-a-ding-ding with our moral instruction. Which is why we watch Fox News, various YouTubers, and The Simpsons (when it was good) instead of reading The New York Times, which is about as enjoyable as a lecture from a nun.

The BBC is so joyless now that during the celebrations for Queen Elizebeth II's platinum jubilee - which means she has been on the throne for 70 years, longer, I believe, than any other monarch in history - they chose to ignore the street parties and cheering crowds and flypasts of Spitfire aeroplanes, and instead concentrated on how frail Her Majesty was looking. She's 96 years old, you fucking bastards. How do you think you will look when you are four years off a century?

I believe fundamentally that in a world becoming increasingly dark, lightness and humour and entertainment are essential components if we are to keep what Juvenal, the Roman poet, called mens sana in corpore sano. For those of you who were too busy fooling around at the back of the classroom during your Latin classes, that means 'a healthy mind in a healthy body'. I believe you will find it in the 10th Satire.

So, why should out information and education come wrapped in the tomb-shrouds of seriousness? The news is not good, I grant you, and we are whistling past the graveyard, but at least we are whistling. It is better to be informed than ignorant, but being entertained at the same time is the cherry on the cake.