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Brand's Toxic Brand

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 7:33 am

I heard a BBC radio programme this morning, where they looked at the papers. The host, a jovial type, has a journalism student as a guest.

It was all about Brand. I thought it was quite awful.

She thought the 'Dispatches' investigation on Channel4 was magnificant, or 'stella' journalism.

For her, Brand had gone from the 'left' to the 'right' merely for appearing and being interviewed by conservative journalists! That's quite a narrow definition of what being on the 'right' means. Think about it.

She thought, the student, that the women were incredibly 'brave' and courageous to come froward with their stories; that, alone, seemed to give them extra credibility. Yet, many of them are anonymous. The 'rape' apparently took place almost twenty years ago in Hollywood. How many of us remember accurately what we did twenty years ago?
How does one prove such a crime twenty years later?

Then the 'thoughtful' and sensitive host, brings up women journalists who are attacked viciously for their stories but also for just being women. How was that relevant to Russell Brand?

If this represents the current state of UK journalism, which sounds like semi-religious cult to me, then God help us!

Re: Brand's Toxic Brand

Posted by psingh <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=psingh' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 8:59 am, in reply to "Brand's Toxic Brand"

My own view on Brand is that he is a hustler, a con-artist, lot of noise and fury signifying nothing.

Re: Brand's Toxic Brand

Posted by Fionn <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Fionn' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 11:03 am, in reply to "Re: Brand's Toxic Brand"

My own view on Brand is that he is a hustler, a con-artist, lot of noise and fury signifying nothing.

Yes, he's so insignificant and signifying nothing that the whole corporate media have rounded on him and made him headline news in a coordinated attack to smear and destroy his reputation with MPs wading in to ask the police to 'act'. Whatever your opinion of him, he has successfully challenged the establishment narrative on many issues and exposed large swathes of the population to people like Max Blumenthal, Chris Hedges, Aaron Mate etc who would never appear on their radar before. Nobody's perfect (who is?) but he has contributed hugely to challenging the media and deconstructing bullshit blizards for a mass audience and this is the reason he is being targeted for character assassination and nothing else.

Re: Brand's Toxic Brand

Posted by Dovetail Joint <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Dovetail+Joint' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 2:44 pm, in reply to "Re: Brand's Toxic Brand"

Being successful, famous and charismatic, not forgetting rather rich, has never been a 'turn-off' in sexual relations, on the contrary. Now, strangely, having sex with lots and lots of women is labeled suspect and inappropriate.

Brand has... had his problems, which he's admitted openly, but he's attempted to 'improve himself'. He could have chosen another path and fully embraced the mass-media and become another harmless 'national treasure'... like... like Jimmy Saville. But Brand chose to become a 'prophet' and scourge the very Establishment he could so easily have become a protected asset of.

Nothing he's done in his private life, which has never been particularly private, justifies breaking him on the wheel.

Re: Brand's Toxic Brand

Posted by Ken Waldron <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Ken+Waldron' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 4:01 pm, in reply to "Re: Brand's Toxic Brand"

"Nothing he's done in his private life...justifies breaking him on the wheel."

I took a trip down to Newcastle yesterday with Radio 4 on...my god they have declared open war on the guy.
Every news bulletin was mainly a reiteration of innuendo about Russell Brand and his supposed "crimes": to the exclusion of nearly all other "news". It's a vendetta: whatever or whoever the original impetus to nail him, its been taken on wholesale and with glee by the establishment.

"I was never a fan of his..." runs the obligatory get out clause ...yea true, but you could see the guy was intelligent, learning on the hoof & taking others along with him.

-that alone appears to have made him a prime target.

Absolutely! (nm)

Posted by Der <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=Der' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 2:44 pm, in reply to "Re: Brand's Toxic Brand"

Jonathan Cook shares his thoughts

Posted by scrabb <iframe src='https://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/info/user=scrabb' width='330' height='300' border=0 style='border:none;'> on September 18, 2023, 4:04 pm, in reply to "Absolutely! (nm)"

How many of us remember accurately what we did twenty years ago?

I think I'd remember if i'd raped someone, or, if a woman, had been raped. Even fifty ago.

Jonathan Cook on the topic:

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2023-09-17/thoughts-russell-brand-furore/