David Beckham and the Crock of Hype

Few things in life are guaranteed to irritate me more swiftly than ill-founded cultural elitism. Actually, well-founded elitism doesn't sit any better with me, but in this instance I am thinking of the kind of culture Nazi who embarks upon unprovoked assaults on your taste in music or movies or books, whichever they consider their personal area of artistic expertise. As much as I love Oxford there is no pretending the city is not awash with such pseuds - I know one or two of these specimens personally, one in particular who feels it's his mission in life to deride music he doesn't approve of. Perhaps I'm excessively touchy about this sort of thing, but I fail to see how you can avoid taking this as a personal slight since taste is highly personal, especially your taste in things in which you are particularly interested.

Regardless, such criticism betrays an unpleasant arrogance and willingness to offend, often in wildly inappropriate circumstances. I was in the pub with a bunch of friends and ex-colleagues in Jericho a few months ago. We all left pretty late and I offered three of them a ride home to save them considerable time waiting for buses or a few quid on a cab ride. No sooner had I turned the key in the ignition than our self-appointed arbiter of taste decided to protest vigorously at what's in my CD player. Perhaps thirty seconds of "Are You Gonna Move It For Me" had elapsed before a snort of "What the hell's this rubbish?" emerged from the back seat. Instead of either snapping "It's the Donnas, and they fucking rock" and cranking it way up or inviting him to consider whether now was the time to be impersonating Lester Bangs in light of who was giving whom a ride, I merely sighed and punched a random button on the autochanger and we got a blast of Rammstein instead, Sehnsucht as I recall, which met with a little less disapproval.

However, I digress. At the risk of sounding like the kind of culture fascists who so arouse my ire, I found myself nodding in agreement throughout the whole of this article by David Aaronovitch in today's Observer Review section regarding the nauseatingly excessive marketing of both the new Harry Potter book and David Beckham's transfer to Real Madrid this week. Like Aaronovitch, my problem is not that I dislike Harry Potter or think the books are rubbish, or that I regard Beckham as mediocre. I've read the first couple of Potter books and enjoyed them immensely and as a season ticket holder at another Premiership club I've seen Beckham's considerable talents up close a number of times and even enjoyed them on occasion, despite the skewering of my team they orchestrated. The issue I have is that the hype regarding both is so overbearing that it renders both a matter of supreme indifference at best, more likely intense irritation.

To remark upon the coverage of Beckham's move rather than the Potter publication, the coverage has been incessant and increasingly pointless - and anyone who thinks this is an oxymoron hasn't been watching Sky Sports News this last week, as they reported breathlessly upon Manchester United's acceptance of a bid on behalf of Barcelona from a man who wasn't even a club official, read aloud rumours direct from the back pages of the tabloids and treated the views of barely lucid ex-players with the gravity which current affairs programmes accord to heavyweight political commentators.

There was nothing to say. It was transparently obvious that United were going to sell Beckham rather than keep him. It was equally obvious that the number of realistic likely destinations was less than two, given that Barcelona had no Champions League participation to offer and that AC Milan repeatedly stated that they weren not interested in him. Only Real Madrid had the required money and profile. Who the hell cares so much that this obscene level of coverage is warranted? I'm a committed and active football fan and a big admirer of Beckham but I couldn't care less. Yet in this age of the three-minute attention span we were expected to maintain a ludicrous level of fascination for over a week with the less-than-enthralling non-saga of the transfer of a gifted footballer from one wildly successful and un/popular corporate entity to one even more so.

What probably irritates at least as much is the fact that even the broadsheets who are deriding such blanket coverage are indulging in it themselves. A glance at the Guardian Football site today shows no less than eleven headlines on the subject, none of which had anything new to report or offered an interesting alternative view of the whole charade. Whichever way you look at it, no news is still no news. And if there's no news, why print it?