My colleague Robert Shrimsley has written a nice opinion column on the mess surrounding the Live8 tickets.

Rob writes (and it's worth a read):

Found on eBay earlier this week: Absolutely vital point of principle. Good condition. Much-prized individual liberty. Works best in combination with a free society. PayPal and personal cheques only. Time remaining three hours.

Within hours it was being heavily discounted. An hour later it appeared to have been deleted altogether.

Freedom, liberty, principles and integrity joined Nazi memorabilia as the only things the world's most famous online auction house is squeamish about offering.

The commotion began this week when Sir Bob Geldof voiced outrage that, wholly predictably, tickets for the Live8 concerts were being sold at huge profit on eBay.

He had a point; eBay was on uncomfortable ground in facilitating the venal profiteering of those selling their tickets for near 100 per cent profits. It could have asked sellers to take their business elsewhere.

He went on to heap illogical emotional abuse on the site. EBay were "electronic pimps". They were hurting the poorest people in the world. Of course, in truth, this secondary market had no impact on the world's poor.

Indeed since the concert is seeking to raise consciousness not money, the seller's behaviour, while clearly amoral, had no adverse consequences at all - except perhaps to demonstrate how much could have been raised had Sir Bob sold the tickets rather than given them away.

EBay responded by offering to donate all its own profits from the sale. But Sir Bob did not want their "tainted" money - though presumably the poorest people in the world might have found a use for it. (Perhaps what it should have done is outbid Sir Bob by announcing it was raising the commission on all ticket sales to 50 per cent and giving that money to Oxfam.)

Unusually for those facing the wrath of Geldof, eBay stood firm. It decided there was a point of principle here. In a free society, eBay said, "people can make up their own minds about what they would like to buy and sell". It is a matter for their own consciences.

The whole point of principles is that you have to stick with them even when they are uncomfortable. Anyone can defend popular principles. The hard - but more vital - part is defending people's freedom to behave like gits.

It was a brave decision. That Sir Bob's heart is so completely in the right place disguises the fact that he is a demagogue who resorts to using the most base, emotional rhetoric to vilify those who cross him and stirs up mobs with the promise of simple solutions. He may often be right but means matter as well as ends.

Alas, eBay's defence of freedom proved about as solid as the armies of the Sudetenland in the face of Sir Bob's panzers and some bandwagon-jumping junior minister.

When they would not back down he cleverly called on people towreck the sales by flooding the website with impossible, multi-million pound bids. EBay caved within hours. Having cried freedom, they cried off. Liberty wasn't worth the price after all.

Aw, what the hell, it's almost the weekend....

and.. this is just brilliant (I assume the CIA picked up on the coded message in the last sentence.)

Yeah, right....

And still in South Africa... I mean, who wouldn't be shocked?

The truly worrying thing is a) that whoever put this up for sale may also be able to purchase a handgun, and b) someone bought it.


Big Hat Tip, as always, with thanks for getting the weekend off to a flyer....


And from Dave's blog:

QUESTIONS

Can anybody explain why disc jockeys are considered to be musical artists? I mean, aren't they basically playing records? Why does that require more artistic skill than, say, operating a toaster? I can understand why the people who make recordings are considered musical artists. But why does the DJ get credit for playing them? Isn't that kind of like making photocopies of the Mona Lisa and claiming you're an artist? I honestly would appreciate an answer. Although I suspect the answer is: "Dave, you are 275 years old."

Update: After reading the comments -- some of which are quite thoughtful, for this blog, anyway -- I think I need to clarify something. I'm not talking about radio DJs, who are unpretentious about what they do (at least the ones I know are). I'm talking about people like this. And I admit I may be totally wrong, and they may be terrific musical artists. I just don't get why. (I know, I know: Because I am 275 years old.)

This really looks like it will be worth checking out. Sarfraz Manzoor is a very entertaining and talented writer - he did an excellent piece for The Guardian a couple of weeks ago about how "Crazy Frog" is the natural descendent of Bob Dylan...!

(For those of you who are, as yet, thankfully uninfected by the appalling Crazy Frog, it's not this guy, but it's a mind-numbingly obnoxious example of artificial music at its worst. It's a remix of the 80s track "Axel F" by Harold Faltermeyer - which was pretty artificial in its own right - and has the dubious distinction of being the first ringtone to go to Number One in the British singles chart.

In short, be afraid. Be very afraid.)

One thing that worries me, though, about the BBC's blurb for Sarfraz's show is that among the "celebrity Springsteen fans" it names Tony Blair.

For the love of God, haven't we realised by now that this transparent excuse for a stick-figure statesman will say anything - anything - if he thinks people will like him for it.

It can surely only be a matter of time before he quits and moves to the US, where he can make a ton of money on the lecture circuit and from his lucrative soon-to-be directorships at Halliburton and United Technologies, and where he can be surrounded by people who will line up to kiss his ass every day.

You guys are welcome to him.


Sorry. Back to Sarfraz Manzoor... I'm really looking forward to hearing what Nick Hornby has to say. Nick, author of the simply brilliant "High Fidelity", is a genuine Boss fan. A while back, he wrote a nice book called "31 Songs", which is superbly entertaining, even if you're not a hard-core music devotee.

His number one song? The one he describes - correctly - as simply the greatest rock and roll song ever written?... why, this, of course.


Had a nice email this morning from my friend Bob who works at the Seattle Times. He says he's forming a band which will play only Kinks and Clash covers. He's going to call them The Kalashnikovs. Cool!


It's a beautiful day here today. Won't last though. This starts on Monday, and that's usually the signal for our weather to go completely to hell.

Think I'll take the kids to see this tomorrow. They have a childrens' workshop performance in the afternoon, and we'll be outdoors. Although like most things these days, I'm not going to actually tell them where we're going until we get there.

Their pre-disposition for sitting at home and watching crap appears virtually limitless. Every so often, though, they manage to turn me on to a gem of a show - something that is simply sublime in its chaotic, noisy anarchy.

This is one such show. Absolutely hilarious. Funniest thing I've watched in a fifteen-minute package for months. Real shame it's out of production and they're only showing re-runs.


Finally, just when we thought we'd had enough celebs for a while, this happens.

Interestingly, the original headline on that Reuters story was "Tom Proposes To Katie, Eiffel Tower Involved Somehow". Clearly someone on the desk thought it wasn't respectful enough.

Also, weirdly, the AP story announcing the impending nuptials was slugged URGENT. Oh please....

And - this would be laughable if it wasn't... , oh alright, it's laughable: the media name for the couple - in the fine tradition of "Bennifer", is apparently - yuk - "TomKat".

Gah!

Better late than never, I guess, but in the current climate just as meaningless.




Go figure.

And, just so we know what the going rate is these days...


Finally, nice piece by Brad Stone at Newsweek.com on the always thorny topic of fame and its consequences... and likewise.

This, I promise, is my only comment on this whole circus.

Today's headline in Slate is brilliant: "How Michael Jackson Got Off".

Inspired.

Apparently the big story now is which ratings pimp gets the first interview with the freaky one.

Want to see something truly worth watching? Forget Larry, Barbara, Rosie and the rest of them (Katie's busy). I vote for this guy. Or at a pinch, him.


Sorry - it wasn't my last comment after all. Thanks to Ken, here's last night's Letterman Top Ten List:

"Top Ten Things Overheard During The Michael Jackson Verdict".
10) "A celebrity acquitted in L.A.? Stunning."
9) "Of course he’s nervous, look how pale he is."
8) "Oh, finally, I can go back to my normal life of Ferris Wheels, pet monkeys and sleeping in oxygen chambers."
7) "No, I think he’ll do fine in prison."
6) "Are those tears of joy or are his cheek implants leaking?"
5) "Do you think this’ll be on the news tonight?"
4) "We the jury find the defendant creepy."
3) "Michael, good news – I just saved 15 percent on my car insurance by switching to Geico."
2) "I’m glad we live in a country where prison is reserved for dangerous outlaws like Martha Stewart."
1) "Another case of a white guy getting preferential treatment."

Now, there seem to be new opinion polls every day showing that people don't believe what they read, or don't even read...

But this one , while not entirely surprising, is a little more disturbing than most.

We can't really continue to hold onto the belief that the great mass news consumers discriminates between the sources of their information, when there are simply so many. While the challenge for the established press is to fight to regain the credibility and trustworthiness audiences in the past gave us credit for, sometimes we have to just hold up our hands and admit that - yes - audiences gravitate towards the delivery channel that best matches their needs, prejudices and capacity for understanding.

Example - on CSpan the other day, Rod Nordland, Newsweek's former Baghdad correspondent was the guest on a phone-in about "where to now for Iraq". It was illuminating, but ultimately soul destroying, to hear the number of people who called in (on the "support President Bush" number) and didn't want to discuss what Nordland had to say, but dismissed his direct observations out of hand because "Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post..."

Of course, we have to work in the context of our audience. Doesn't mean we have to put up with their uninformed, small-minded, blinkered attitudes.

Because I just don't have enough going on in my life, I take part in an absolutely brilliant daily trivia league, thanks to my friend Greg.

In between tournaments, there's often some great discussion on the message boards. Today the question designed to bring all work grinding to a halt was: "If you could go back in time to any date and any location to observe for 24 hours (you're invisible and you can't change the outcome, which is a whole other discussion) where and when would you choose?" (Pick five).

Cool, huh? After much "Time Tunnel"-esque headscratching, and leaving aside the last supper or the crucifixion (which would be hard to pin down geographically as well as timewise) and excepting any personal incidents (playing catch with your grandfather etc...), here's the five dates and places I came up with:


October 14, 1908. Tiger Stadium, Detroit.

November 22, 1963. 6th Floor, Texas Schoolbook Depository, Dallas.

May 9, 1974. Harvard Square Theatre, Cambridge MA.

December 17, 1903. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

February 11, 1990. Victor Verster prison, near Cape Town, South Africa.


Hard to keep it to just five, isn't it?


On the subject of dates in history, this is a pretty cool thing on the BBC website. Look up what happened on your birthday. Or some random date. Whatever floats your boat...