Web Monitor
16:54 UK time, Monday, 3 August 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Where else would you find sexual politics and cheesy wedding dances sharing a stage? Only on Web Monitor. Remember to share your favourite bits of the internet by sending them via the comments box.
• Get your dancing shoes on - it's wedding season and silly season, which means it is actually silly wedding dance season. The trend documented on YouTube for some years includes the Dirty Dancing Wedding Dance (the famous jump being three minutes in) and multiple Thriller Wedding Dances. Now we have the Chris Brown R'n'B wedding dance video, which uses the singer's Forever as a soundtrack to a very grand entrance to the church. Controversially, the group dancing to this are asking for donations to an anti-violence charity - an interesting protest against Chris Brown's assault of ex-girlfriend and fellow R'n'B singer Rihanna. After more than 15 million hits in less than two weeks, the bride and groom explained this move on their website:
"Due to the circumstances surrounding the song in our wedding video, we have chosen the Sheila Wellstone Institute. Sheila Wellstone was an advocate, organizer, and national champion in the effort to end domestic violence in our communities."
Bethgg responded to our Twitter request for more wedding dances by recommending the divorce dance from the same group.
• The buzz amongst the newspaper columnists is all about gender politics after Harriet Harman's interview in the Sunday Times where she said: "Men cannot be left to run things on their own."
In the Independent, Joan Smith said the lack of women in top jobs is a crisis and should prompt the country's political leaders to ask themselves about their prejudices towards women:
" ...this debate is about being modern. Those of us who live in European democracies support a view of human rights based on equality and fairness, yet our political structures signally fail to reflect it. So do pictures of the present Cabinet and TV coverage of both houses of Parliament."
Web Monitor wonders whether Julia Langdon in the Daily Mail has gone all jolly hockeysticks:
"So what does she [Harman] do? Make a total fool of herself on day one by shouting her mouth off about how voters are fed up with 'boys running the show' and how she will thus ensure that the Labour Party rules are changed in order to determine that one of the two top jobs in the party must always belong to a woman. Oh Hatty! How could you get it so wrong? And how could you so deliberately misinterpret the facts?"
In the Times, Edwina Currie says Harman is talking "rabid nonsense" as someone's gender doesn't influence their ability:
"Firstly, we need the best people to run the country, irrespective of gender. I'd have thought that was a statement of the obvious, but it has passed Ms Harman by. In addition, women who have experienced discrimination should be wary of applying it to others, on principle."
And it is left to Yvonne Roberts in the Guardian to defend men:
"'You can't trust men' is as daft a generalisation as the belief still expressed by some that all women inhabit a malice-free zone in which they are at one with their emotions and mother earth."
• Where there's change you're likely to find resistance, and that seems to be true about the "free" debate which is being tracked by Web Monitor. As the Guardian'sPolly Curtis has noted, the work-for-free trend has been highlighted by industry watchdogs.
Curtis has accused employers and MPs and of exploiting work-for-free interns. And as the Guardian's FAQ explains, the nature of the work given to interns could mean that some employers should be paying them the minimum wage.
Talking of free work, if you want to help Web Monitor, choose your six favourite links around the web and send them via the comment box. To help you out, check out our list of sources on Delicious. As is customary, payment will come in the form of non-exploitative kudos.
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