Tis the season to be jolly.

It most certainly is and many, many people will have derived unbridled joy from seeing the latest X Factor winner consigned to the dustbin of history where he so richly deserves to be.  He didn’t make the number one spot due to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of people who were sick and tired of having their choices made for them by the media.

Rage Against the Machine are the Xmas number one and that fact is an illustration that some members of the public at least haven’t succumbed to the herd like mentality that afflicts so many.  “But Fifteen million people watch the X Factor, it must be good” I hear some of you shriek.  Try eating dog shit, forty million flies can’t be wrong!  It’s the same principal. 

Choice has effectively been removed from public hands by corporations and executives.  For instance, films are shown to test audiences first and then cut and edited according to the whims of the morons who were in that test audience. 

The books on sale in your local bookshop are there because a head buyer has decided they should be there.  There is no support for struggling authors these days, just the frantic desire to pack the shelves with tried and tested product. 

Music has no originality any longer because it can’t survive without the support of the big record companies and radios stations and none of those are going to risk anything that upsets the delicate, neutered sensibilities of the docile general public.  A public that has been made that way by the proliferation of mediocrity and banality that has swamped the airwaves and the rest of the media for more than a decade now.

But this victory for Rage Against the Machine (who, coincidentally, are also on Sony) has at least shown that some people are willing to stand up to the torrent of crap.  It might be a bit early to start shouting that we’re all mad as hell and not going to take it anymore (I think that is a dream I will never see fulfilled)  but this is a start hopefully.  Let’s just pray that this kind of revolt goes on and spreads into other corners of the media.  Perhaps one day there will be a ritual firebombing of the offices of HELLO and OK.

Maybe in time, the thought of the latest Z list wannabe selling pictures of their wedding will inspire revulsion and derision rather than sycophancy and fawning envy.

But then again, I’m not holding my breath.  In the meantime, just rejoice in the fact that the X Factor and everything to do with it has been temporily beaten.  Then again, when does Britain’s Got Talent start?  Pass me the gun…