In a break from writing for a late lunch, I turn on Channel 4 to take my mind off a problem I'm having with the next sentence.
There's an old Western playing. Almost immediatly, our heroes shoot half a dozen guys dead in a bar.
Watch with Mother. Great family viewing. We take this sort of thing for granted.
Yet, it's against the TV Guidelines - any time of the day or night - to show corpses on the News. Sometimes, it's true, in Bagdad, there's no avoiding them - but producers go to great efforts to cut dead bodies out of transmitted footage as much as possible.
Cowboys - fiction - that's different. Pistol killings hardly rate as what the regulators call "moderate violence." All that matters is that we don't see any pain suffered. And no regrets, minimal grieving.
A great message for children. Good entertainment before Countdown. Sanitised homicide.
What a strange culture we live in.
