Germaine Greer

Click on the title of this post to go to Germaine Greer's article, titled "Filth," which appeared in the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times, January 2005.

When Davina McCall asked me in her bright, overenthusiastic fashion why I called Big Brother a bully, there was not a hint of irony in the presenter's intelligent brown eyes.
People who have read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four will already be aware, however, that the whole point of Big Brother is that he is a bully.
They will also know that the language spoken by Big Brother'’s “Inner Party” bureaucracy is called Newspeak. In Davina'’s Newspeak, Big Brother is a force for good and the abuses that he designs are "“challenges"” --— character-building exercises, not degrading ordeals.
Both Kenzie and Lisa, two of my former housemates, can be heard regularly intoning Big Brother'’s mantra, "“It'’s all good"” -- which is Newspeak for "“It'’s all bad (but we musn't complain)."”