The Schofield Affair
Last few weeks, the UK has been rocked by a daytime TV sex scandal, but it didn't start that way. Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby are hosts of This Morning, which is possibly the biggest show on the British morning telly.
About a month ago, it was reported that there was significant friction between the hosts, and Phillip was the problem. My reading of the news at the time was that Phillip had perhaps gotten a little too big for his boots and was a nightmare to work with. However, over the past few weeks, the story has taken a twist - with it being confirmed that Schofield had, in the late 2010s, had a sexual relationship with a showrunner.
The issue was that Schofield, who came out as gay in 2020 after being married to a woman for decades, was nearing his 60s while the other man was 16. While 16 is the age of consent in the UK, some people began looking into Schofield for evidence to uphold accusations of grooming. Carl Benjamin's (nee Sargon of Akkad) new outfit, Podcast of the Lotus Eaters, was quick to establish that Schofield was a patron of the young man's child theatre group and that they had connected before the young man turned 16. Additionally, others have been keen to connect Phillip to his brother, a convicted paedophile.
The Schofield affair has done little to quell the "groomer" anti-lgbt rhetoric and particularly the idea that mainstream media is a highly efficient sex abuse ring. Yet, over the same time period, similar allegations emerged regarding Anglican church minister Rev. Mike Pilavachi. It is alleged that Pilavachi, who founded and led the Soul Survivor festival, used his position and the festival to predate on vulnerable young people for decades.
In terms of magnitude, the Pilavachi scandal is far worse than the Schofield affair. Yet, it was scantly reported on by mainstream media. Both cases are gross but for different reasons. The Schofield affair is an abuse of power with a workplace subordinate, seemingly in exchange for career opportunities. In this, the Schofield affair puts a gay twist on #MeToo. The Pilavschi scandal is also an abuse of power, perhaps overlooked because of the seemingly good work and a cult of personality around the person. The resounding questions in both situation becomes, "who knew what and why didn't they have the moral conviction to come forward?"
Of all the potential fallout from the Schofield affair, new normativities seem to be emerging to construct the "acceptable gay". The age of pride seems to be drawing to an end as public attitudes towards legal but morally dubious sexual expression begin to sour.
Targeting the Kids
Conservative social media has heavily featured the ongoing news around Target and it's line of Pride merch. There was some misinformation that Target had produced a number of items with Satanic vibes such as "Satan respects pronouns". While this is not a Target shirt, the public impression is that it feasibility could have been a Target shirt, because marketing firms are all-in on leveraging conservative outrage to sell product. I find outrage marketing to be not only gross, but also a significant sign that neoliberalism is under strain. But, that's capitalism for you.
In a similar fashion, the inclusion of LGBT friendly swimwear was always going to court controversy between those who feel that acknowledging LGBT youth is important, and those who feel that there there is an agenda to coerce young people into LGBT lifestyles. It is a conflict between "born this way" and "manufactured to be this way" worldviews. The issue is that there is a growing public mood that social policy design is the underlying mechanism behind public behavior, and that policy makers are unthinking automatons that exist solely to repurpose their own biases as policy. As such, pushes for representation (of all stripes) becomes defacto evidence of agenda that is antithetical to seemingly traditional White western worldviews.
What is a Woman?
Speaking of agendas, Daily Wire made their "what is a Woman" documentary freely available on Twitter. In a special arrangement with Elon Musk's company, Daily Wire entered an agreement to use a dedicated Twitter Events platform to market their film. However, after signing the contract, the film was reviewed by Twitter and was found to violate policy, so disability was limited. This caused outrage within Daily Wire, with Ben Shapiro leasing the charge to inform their audience that they were being censored. Then, in swoops, Elon Musk to save the day, asserting that there were stay-behind actors who were not 100% on board with his new regime. Musk seemingly cleaned up the bad elements behind this misunderstanding, and the film is now highly viewed on Twitter.
I find it difficult to believe that there was not some degree of planning behind the whole thing, as the controversy appears to have helped market the movie. Musk gets to look like the beleaguered hero that saved the day, whole Daily Wire gets to look tough by being ready to denounce Musk if he does not live up to his commitment to free speech.
Twitter offering specific events marketing marks a new strategy for content promotion upon the platform. It will be interesting to see if the platform provides similar services to films that provide counter-conservative narratives moving forward. However, considering that Ron Desantis also used the newly created Twitter spaces to launch his presidential campaign, it seems that Twitter is happily orientating itself towards being the Truth Social / Parlour/ Gab alternative - a hub for right-wing conversation.