Give him an inch...

So, Simon Schama's been spouting off again. It doesn't surprise me. He's a very noisy chap who seems to do whatever he can to maximise self-publication; whether by bandwagonning or by purely incendricising debates.

You can have an opinion, and a nice, reasonable, quietly held opinion is a rather private affair. But in order to get your opinion heard and considered you don't just have to put it out there, you have to force for it to be received: merely laying it on the floor where someone may tred is not enough; you either need to attract attention to it; to put it in the way of people so they cannot avoid it; or to cause sufficient offense, disruption or simple curiousity that people will go out of their line of least resistance to at least investigate it, or hopefully agree or attack.

And this is the case with perfectly reasonable views. One way to get your very, very ordinary and uncontrovertial is to compare any contrasting view - again, quite possibly very reasonable - to something so disgustingly perverse that they have to respond. Eastenders is nothing without some sort of slanging match. And so it is that the easiest method to get any form of publicity for whatever you are doing is to compare an opposition to Hilter - that ultimate of evil. The association may be so far detached, so remote so as to actually be ridiculous; but at least people are listening to you if only to be able to shout back in your face.

And this is perhaps the most common way of drawing attention - setting fire to your argument so that people see the flames and the smoke and go and have a look.

The other is simply to use something which is the darling of the moment and - again, usually inflammatorily - somehow attach your argument to it. And it is this device which Schama has used to obtain the lead headline on the BBC Entertainment news website. Downton Abbey is currently being lauded by anyone who can get their voice heard above the hubbub. It is the done thing to heap praise upon it because it has proven so publically popular; and if you question that then you are a snob, or you are miffed that someone beat you to it or overlooked your own attempt. If you don't agree, you are either out of touch, or you are sucking sour grapes. And the critics don't want that - they want to be seen as normal, the voice of the people. Yes, I - as your reviewer - liked Downton, and therefore you can respect my view and tastes of these other items for your consideration... And so it is that when something reaches such a fever as Downton, these reviewers are outdoing themselves with superfluities, always trying to heap more praise than their immediate rival on it to over-validate their opinon.

And so it is that, in order to publicise something or other, Schama has done both - he has bandwagonned onto the cultural apogee of the moment; and thrown his tiny firecracker into that spotlight, picking the launch of the second series - where he is currently lecturing - to put wind in his sails.

His argument really holds no weight - on the one hand he criticises it for being inaccurate - it has never claimed to be accurate and regularly plays the artistic licence joker - yet in reality the innaccuracies he points out are mere triffles based on his own supposition of character traits or the financial stability of the house. On the otherhand he simply confirms that most of the portrails of anachronistic language and etiquete are pretty accurate. He seems actually to have more of a concern with the story-writing and the character creation than he does of the historical perspective. Which is odd because he speaks from the point of view of a professor in history, rather than an acclaimed playwrite or fictional author.

I have no particular problem with the tactics and I have seen them used and abused far worse, often by 'green' protesters or health lobbyists who will pick absolutely anything that is the zeitgeist to attach their argument too, very frequently very feebly.

I think my main problem is that I don't know why he is drawing attention to himself - what it is that he is aiming to achieve or pubicise out of it? But then perhaps is it a slightly shrewd move by the creators of the advertising for the programme to pay him to speak out to obtain a few free column inches of publicity.

Which appears to have worked.