I used to live with a hippy (Hi Ben!) who would protest against things that would damage the environment and that sort of ilk.
I admired greatly his dedication to causes and his motivation to actually make a stand about things as it’s something that I have never done but that I feel I should do. However, were I to protest about something, it would be something to do with getting people to stop being dicks to other people. The charities I support are those which fit in with this philosophy – Amnesty, Shelter, NSPCC etc. – as I feel that until we stop this, we will struggle to make significant advances in other areas. I also feel that eradicating dick-ism is much more important for our growth as a species.
With that in mind, I have compiled a list of my current top 5 dicks so that we can learn from their behaviour and evolve.
As a side note, it annoys me that our society will get overly excited about cat bin lady (not that she didn’t deserve to be scorned) whilst at the same time ignoring examples of ongoing great dickishness.
1. Jimmy Saville
I am not going to get into a discussion about whether or not the allegations against him are true. Partly because it is irrelevant to my point but partly because pretty much the entire light entertainment industry has admitted that they are true.
As such, this is an example of double dickism – first by Saville and secondly by everyone who sat by and did nothing about it. Now, there are some, such as Janet Street Porter on last week’s Question Time, who will say there is nothing they can do about it. Which I feel is a dickish statement.
Satre wrote everyone has a free choice, even a prisoner. He said “The prisoner is free because he controls his reaction to imprisonment: he may resist or acquiesce.” People can react against situations that are wrong. If they don’t like them, they can say something. If they don’t get a satisfactory response then the ethical thing to do is to resign and have no part of the wrong-doing.
Street-Porter is therefore an honourary dick by association. And because she’s really fucking annoying.
Saville’s dickism is clearly obvious to anyone who has seen the news over the last few weeks. He takes the spot as top dick because his TV show fixed it for kids wishes to come true. After extensive internet research I have been able to find no stats on this, so I am going to make one up. Exactly zero per cent of children wish to be molested by a geriatric peadophile.
It’s like… seriously… did no-one stop and think: hang on a minute, we shouldn’t be allowing this to go on. These kids are going to be fucked up for life. We should put a stop to this. It’s almost enough to make me want to boycott the BBC but unfortunately they have the excellent Sherlock and I bloody love Sherlock Holmes, and so my willpower may not be enough to follow through with this.
Saville conducted the ultimate abuse of power and for this (and the fact he never fixed it for me to play at Wembley), he is King Dick.
2. Robert Mugabe
Mugabe is an evil evil evil man. Like, he’s a proper evil tyrant. Like Stalin or Hitler. And he’s currently in power, in Zimbabwe. And he has been for the last 32 years. 32 years in which he:
– slaughtered 20,000 in retribution for earlier uprisings
– imprisoned and tortured another 3,000 “trouble makers”
– instructed police to act violently and aggressively against protests
– outlawed anti-government protests
– allowed veterans of the civil war (taken very loosely as some of these veterans were 18 and the war had finished 20 years before) to forcibly take land from white people
– censored the press
– rigged the last two presidential elections
In those 32 years, the US has been involved in wars in Libya, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Yugoslavia and the Sudan. Britian has been largely involved in the same wars as well as fighting Argentina in the Falklands war. We clearly have an appetite for sorting shit out and imposing democracy on others, and some of the shit going down in these countries was less bad than that in Zimbabwe so why have we not just marched right in and stuck a bullet in Mugabe’s brain?
Earlier this year, there was that Kony thing that I hated. I can’t believe that people are getting all worked up about that when Mugabe, even at 88, is continuing to be President Dick. Come on people, get this fucker out of power!
3. Lads
A generic one this but I think you know who lads are. The ones that go out drinking and being laddish and engaging in “banter.” The ones who intimidate women with sexually suggestive acts or behaviour and generally lower the bar even further than it has sunk before. Swearing, drinking, shagging.
You know the ones. “Lads! Whey! Beer! Birds! Come on luv, gittcha tits out fer the ladddddds.”
Like… what the fuck? We are a country that has produced Shakespeare, Dickens, Newton, Brunel, Churchill, Lennon… and now we’ve got Mike Skinner and Lee Fucking Nelson?! If anyone makes me feel like I was born into the wrong era, it’s Lee Fucking Nelson.
And now we’ve sunk to this. The sort of culture that seems to basically encourages these lads (whey!) to essentially sleaze their way into women’s thongs, probably often not completely invited but it’s acceptable because well you know, she was dressed like a slapper and was drunk and up for it and that.
FUCK!
Like… I can’t even begin to describe how little I have in common with these people – with the probable exception of liking football – that I can’t even begin to comprehend why they think it’s a good way to live.
The bar just keeps getting lower and lower. Dicks.
4. Chris Brown
Now I have never knowingly heard one of Chris Brown’s songs and have absolutely no desire to. Yet I know that his a prime dick.
His dicknosity is due to the fact that he did this to his girlfriend Rhianna. Not only that, he is clearly not remorseful in the slightest as he got this tattoo of a beaten up woman on his neck.
Like… what? What part of any human being can think that is in anyway acceptable?
The worst thing is that for some reason is that somehow his music career has blossomed since all of this, as if millions of R&B fans are complicit in his dickness.
The best thing about Chris Brown’s entire existence is that fact that he inspired this beautifully scathing review of his latest album which is definitely worth checking out.
5. Adam Fillary
Music promoters are generally quite nice people. They are people who want to put on music they love for others who they hope will enjoy the same music. It can sometimes be a bit frustrating getting everything to come together but from my experience, not something that will make you act like a dick.
Which makes Adam Fillary’s behaviour perplexing. Adam is a local promoter and from my 10 or so years in the local music scence, I can’t recall either a) anyone having a good word to say about him or b) anyone complaining about a promoter as much.
I asked Facebook for examples of his behaviour earlier today and here are some examples:
– booking a covers band to play a battle of the bands and telling them they couldn’t play covers
– pay to play shows. No musician should EVER have to pay to play a gig. In fact, no musician should ever have to do a gig unpaid (with certain exceptions). At gigs, the bar staff, the sound engineer, the security staff, the cleaners all get paid so why oh why should the musicians – the stars of the show – be asked to do it for nothing?
– he exploits naive young musicians to this purpose
– he does so little research he attempted to book another promotion company thinking they were a band
– he considers himself a business man but also whines about how little money he makes out of it
– he tries to charge people who are on the guest list which caused one band members girlfriend to boycott the gig out of principle (I don’t know who this is but if you do, please high five her from me)
– his security staff once tried to stop a musician taking an instrument into the venue
– he books up venues and gig dates with no bands booked and then will email around with these amazing “opportunities” for bands to fill the slots
My only personal experience that I recall involves my band getting booked to play at the Zebra Bar in Maidstone which for us was around an 80 mile round trip which would have required at least 2 vehicles as there was eight of us in the band. We were booked to headline after some band who were supposedly the next big thing because they’d recently supported some decidedly average famous for five minutes indie band.
This band were allowed to overrun their set so that we had to cut ours short to around four songs and then when I asked for some money to contribute to our petrol we were told that they were asking everyone on the door who they came to see and no-one said they came to see us which is a blatant lie as we brought at least 3 people up with us. Eventually I managed to negotiate the entry fee to give back to our friends who came all that way to see us play for under 20 minutes.
Why would you book someone to headline that far away from where they are from and expect them to promote it enough to get people to come along to see them, especially if you (apparently) seem to consider the band on before them to be a bigger draw? Also, promoters that expect bands to publicise the gig for them annoy me. Their job is to promote. The clue is in the fucking name.
All of this and he will continue to send ridiculously long emails claiming that his company, Rock Matrix is essentially single handedly keeping the Kentish local music scene running.
No one person or group can engineer and entire scene, no matter how big your ego may be.
I have gone to several amazing local shows. The scene is there without him. The scene is better off without him. I for one will be pleased when Rock Matrix finally stops putting on gigs later this year if it is true. Several times before their emails have claimed that because no-one is supporting the scene (bullshit) that they will stop doing. I have my fingers crossed in the hope this isn’t a hoax. Dick.
Conclusion
Now, we have examples of what dickishness is, we need to make sure we stamp them out wherever we see them and evolve the human race onto the next level. Please, let’s all be nice to each other and that, yeah?
Consider other people’s feelings. Consider other people’s thoughts. Consider doing actual nice things for other people.
A honorary mention goes to Sepp Blatter who narrowly missed out on making the list.
Thanks to Ant and Lee/Brad for some of the great stories used above.