Stating the Obvious

Sometimes you see a news story and just know that you have to make the obvious comment on it.  So, when I sew on the BBC News Channel yesterday that film director Michael Winner's widow had been attacked in her own home by thugs, it was obvious that Death Wish had to be referenced.  Frustratingly, the media (some of whom usually know no bounds when it comes to taste) steadfastly refused to make any references to Charles Bronson.  How I fervently hoped that at least one outlet would observe that the victim had declined police assistance as she'd decided to use 'other means' to gain justice.  But no - no mentions of Charles Bronson or gun-toting vigilantes.  I despair of today's mass media.  Perhaps we'll just have to wait for a few weeks, until the police investigation proves fruitless, for The Sun to start calling for 'street justice' for Winner's widow and organise a fund raising campaign to allow her to hire a vigilante to hunt down and rub out the criminals.  Maybe then, the Daily Mail will run a story of how Mrs Winner was helped through her ordeal by the ghost of her husband, who appeared and told her: 'Calm down dear, it's only a robbery with serious assault'.

I'm sure that if we were in Russia, we'd have been given the full Death Wish treatment for this story, (if we were in South Korea or Taiwan, we'd probably be treated to a computer animated version of the assault, followed by a computer animated Charles Bronson hunting the pepetrators down and killing them).  That said, I was mildly surprised to find that Russia Today hadn't reported that Vladimir Putin had won the Russian Grand Prix rather than Lewis Hamilton.  I was expecting them to have some footage of Putin leaping into the cockpit of a Formula One car seconds before the start of the race, providing a display of incredible driving skill as he forced his way from the back of the field to beat Hamilton to the finish on the last lap.  I thought that there'd be lots of shots of him in the car, with a bad back projection of the track behind him.  But again, no.  The Russian media really let themselves down there.  I mean, they didn't even 'whitewash' Lewis Hamilton, so that they wouldn't have to show President Putin being forced to present the trophy to a black man.  You just can't rely on anything these days, can you?