David Lammy is not happy about Stacey Dooley’s Comic Relief trip to Africa. Bad enough, his argument goes, that she swanned out there in the first place, trying to make a charity documentary and put some good in the world. Who does she think she is? A worthy person? Bah.
The Labour politician is enraged about something he calls ‘white saviour’ complex and has accused Dooley of using her Instagram account to make herself look like a ‘heroine’ trying to save ‘victim’ black children. While I don’t agree with his bigger argument about celebrities propounding what he calls hateful colonial imagery — privileged whites indulging themselves by tossing a crumb to oppressed blacks — hasn’t he got a point about her social media posts?
Dooley’s Instagram photographs from the Ugandan village where she was reporting on neonatal clinics and malaria have a queasy air about them.
I’m sorry, but they do.
Here is the 31-year-old television reporter and Strictly Come Dancing star clutching a cute black baby, who looks none too pleased with the encounter
Here is the 31-year-old television reporter and Strictly Come Dancing star clutching a cute black baby, who looks none too pleased with the encounter.
Here she is again with the same toddler, head thrown back, laughing: hers, not his. He still looks a bit fed-up.
And has she applied a post-production vanity filter to make her eyes so blue, her skin so clear and her teeth so bright?
Since that would be so ghastly and inappropriate, such a glutinous splotch of first-world narcissism in the middle of this dusty safari of poverty, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and presume she hasn’t.
Her other snaps include one of a little shack, presumably where the locals live or work.
And look here, another picture of indigenous women dancing and laughing, wearing colourful traditional robes.
Aren’t they just darling?
David Lammy is preposterous in a thousand ways and Stacey Dooley is terrific in a hundred ways more, but to be honest, some of this unseemly row is her own doing.
Although she is not to blame for the social media self-obsession that currently engulfs society, perhaps she could have done more to encourage her 669,000 Instagram followers to understand and appreciate the gravity of her African trip.
Beside her photograph of the humble shack, a fan called Jackie has joked that it is ‘the Strictly dressing room’, followed by a thumbs-up emoji.
David Lammy (pictured) is not happy about Stacey Dooley’s Comic Relief trip to Africa
Next to the photograph of the random child — whom she never gives the dignity of a name — Dooley herself has written ‘OB.SESSSSSSSSSSED.’
Isn’t that peculiar? It suggests that this poor unfortunate boy, born into grinding hardship in one of the poorest countries in the world, is something desirable to obsess over, like a puppy or a new handbag or covetable pair of shoes.
That is before she sets him back down in the sub-Saharan dust and returns home to her glamorous life in the UK, of course. To make matters worse, Dooley’s African images were sandwiched between the cheery clatter of her usual Instagram feed.
Stacey posing for magazine photoshoots, Stacey drinking pink cocktails with her friends, Stacey pausing by a mirror to admire her matching accessories.
It insinuated that her Ugandan trip had been just one more pit stop on the carousel of her lovely life.
A heroine? Well as anyone on Instagram will tell you, it is all about me, me, me.
Anyone like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Clarkson and Nigella. To be honest, I regularly check into their Instagram to find out what they and everyone else are doing — and am never disappointed.
Gwyneth has just helped actress Drew Barrymore celebrate her birthday, and takes time to praises her ‘immense brain’.
Jeremy is on holiday with his girlfriend in Vietnam and spent the morning picking up litter from the beach. Nigella has just finished a trip to Australia, where she ate a lot of gingered tuna.
Although she is not to blame for the social media self-obsession that currently engulfs society, perhaps she could have done more to encourage her 669,000 Instagram followers to understand and appreciate the gravity of her African trip
Meanwhile, are any of my enemies with Insta accounts in trouble or in pain? Let’s hope it is nothing trivial. These are the questions I ask myself while pouring a glass of rosé and happily scrolling through the not-so-secret lives of others, patrolling the very depths of their shallows.
I don’t post myself because I’m too busy wondering when and why everyone become so ‘OB.SESSED’ with putting the minutiae of their lives out there, for nosy parkers like me to consume as if they were episodes in a soap opera.
Even though a great number of celebrities are slyly marketing themselves rather than guilelessly sharing their lives, the concept of privacy and a real sense of self are beginning to be washed away in this ongoing sea of conceit.
And of course all this filters down into the ‘civilian’ population. Even children now film themselves doing many everyday things — for if you don’t record it and post about it, how can it possibly exist?
Of course, the weird culture of Instagram and other social media platforms is not unique to Stacey Dooley.
Millions use these sites to post the significant alongside the trivial, the profound together with the profane.
Perhaps she meant well, posing in the wretched village with the unknown little boy in her arms. Perhaps she thought there would be some benefit to posting the image online.
Yet it is hard to see what that benefit could be, except to burnish the halo and image of one Stacey Dooley.
And unfortunately, David Lammy agrees with me.
That’s not very charitable, Mr Lammy
He may have made a fair point about white celebrities such as Stacey Dooley posing with what David Lammy calls ‘victim’ black babies. Yet when it comes to the wider implications of charitable donations from this country to Africa, he is way off beam.
Being charitable to those who are less well off than we are is something inculcated in British schoolchildren from an early age.
From infant school onwards, we collected milk bottle tops and did good deeds for the starving children in African countries where famine, poverty and lack of medical resources were endemic. We were taught that we were the lucky ones — and we were.
Then we grew up and saw terrible films and images of even more starving babies in Africa and once more we gave generously. Over and over again.
Comic Relief has its faults, but it has raised more than a billion pounds, most of it donated by ordinary British people of every colour, people with only goodness in their hearts. Where the excitable member for Tottenham sees white privilege in any of this is hard to fathom. The biggest problem is not our unstinting generosity, but the widespread corruption and lack of will by some African governments to improve the lot of their citizens.
We all know that millions of pounds ends up in the wrong places. If Mr Lammy would care to address that issue, instead of admonishing those who are only trying to help, we might have a little more respect for him.
That's one hell of a date, Elle
Elle MacPherson and Richard Lugner attending the Vienna Opera Ball
Kim Kardashian did it, so did Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and of course Sarah, Duchess of York, along with Goldie Hawn, Geri Halliwell, Ivana Trump and Joan Collins. Now this year it is Elle Macpherson’s turn.
What is it, I hear you cry? Some fantastic treatment involving yak afterbirth and hot needles to improve the ageing or heavily freckled complexion?
No, silly. These ladies have all accepted the cheque and signed up for the dubious ‘honour’ of attending the Vienna Opera Ball on the arm of construction billionaire Richard Lugner. Every year the old toad pays a celebrity to accompany him to the social event of the year in downtown Vienna. And while it might be for charity, it is still rather creepy.
A few years ago, Lugner paid £376,000 plus expenses to have Miss Kardashian by his side, but they fell out even before the goulash got cold. ‘She was very hard to please,’ moaned Mr Lugner.
Perhaps he is not sordid, just lonely? Maybe! In 2014, the 85-year-old married his fifth wife, a Playboy model called Cathy who is 57 years younger than him.
‘It was a whirlwind romance,’ he said. At his age, it would have to be. Elle’s bells, what has she let herself in for?
I know who I’d pour a bucket of dirty water on
Toby Sawyer (pictured) is the homeless man who was filmed having a bucket of dirty water poured around him by a railway worker
Toby Sawyer is the homeless man who was filmed having a bucket of dirty water poured around him by a railway worker.
Southern Rail has apologised and suspended three members of staff over the ugly incident at Sutton station in Surrey. Now it has emerged that Sawyer is a convicted killer with a long criminal record, a man who has spent much of his life behind bars.
Is this supposed to make the transgression against him more or less reprehensible? Sawyer has done terrible things, and he is probably a right pest, especially if he was hanging around your home or your business.
Yet he has been punished for his crime and paid his debt to society. Today, he is sleeping on the ground. He has nothing and no prospects; a life ruined and a brain pickled by alcohol. The railway workers he annoys every day probably have little sympathy with his plight, yet nothing excuses them swilling him with dirty water, trying to wash him away like dog mess.
I hope I still live in a country where that will never be acceptable. Or excusable.
Horror. Ocado has ditched Waitrose in favour of M&S and for millions of middle-class shoppers, life will never be the same. Waitrose fans will have to use waitrose.com to have their olive breads delivered — or get used to the expensive treats at Marks. Not that it bothers me. I’m a Tesco girl all the way.
The BBC is losing viewers to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Hardly surprising as the terrestrial channels are often so dull, with only the occasional nugget of joy —Killing Eve, The Night Manager — to distract us.
Making an appointment with yourself to sit down at an allocated time and stay there until you have watched the scheduled programme until the very end? Well, it all feels so last century, as old-fashioned as gathering around the steam radio to listen to the King’s Abdication speech, or enjoying music with an ear trumpet.
Now the BBC is preparing, along with ITV, to launch is own streaming service called Britbox. The Beeb plans to keep shows on its free iPlayer service for a year before they move onto the paying service.
This means those of us who have already paid £150 for a licence fee are going to have to pay again to watch something we have already seen. Fantastic! Where do I not sign up?
Oh so very disappointed with the Beeb’s new This Time With Alan Partridge. Yes, it was a clever idea to have Alan filling in on a One Show-style programme, it just wasn’t very funny. In a world where big beasts such as Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan roam free over the schedules, there is just no room for an Alan. Our eyeballs have been so scorched by the reality, we have nothing left for the parody.
Steve Coogan’s comic creation is a joy, but semi-successful Alan is just not as amusing as aspirational Alan. There was nothing as funny as the big plate he kept in his briefcase for the Travelodge buffet, or the bottomless desperation of his graveyard Radio Norfolk show. Back of the net? Not yet.
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/01/jan-moir-stacey-dooleys-comic-relief-photo-sums-up-an-instagram-generation/
Main photo article David Lammy is not happy about Stacey Dooley’s Comic Relief trip to Africa. Bad enough, his argument goes, that she swanned out there in the first place, trying to make a charity documentary and put some good in the world. Who does she think she is? A worthy person? Bah.
The Labour politician is ...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/01/00/10435850-6758775-image-a-16_1551401793711.jpg
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