Is this nutpicking? I think no
From time to time, I like to print a selection of the latest from Melanie Phillips. She is still a columnist for the UK's most popular newspaper, a regular panelist on "The Moral Maze" and referred to as "my friend" by people like Oliver Kamm, you know - she's not a marginalised loon at all.
Here's her views on racism in America; apparently racism is "historic" and the problem today is the "monstrously unjust reaction" to racism.
Here she is also, berating Alan Dershowitz for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. Sample (but it is very well worth reading the whole thing)
"Finally, let us not forget how long it took before Alan acknowledged that the Jimmy Carter he had assiduously supported was the same Carter accusing Israel of ‘apartheid’"
Funny old world, isn't it?
It's not that she's marginalised, but she is a loon: she belongs to what I've always called "the fascist fifth", that sizeable section of the population which basically responds with hysteria to anything they perceive as a threat to order or property and who are impervious to facts or reason. We can say "look, how ridciulous!" as much as we like, but it'll never change them or convince them in any way.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it's worth observing, now and then,
(a) just how ludicrous they are ; and
(b) that there's a lot of it about
and of course the nature of the "it" changes over time - amomg that fifth there's less fascism, now, more anti-taxism and libertarianism. (Though of course Mel is rather more in the traditional lock-em-up camp.)
But it's still a "look! idiot is idiot" thing really.
I'm actually trying to gently exert influence on those non-idiots who give her mainstream airtime as if she was a public intellectual - she ought to be blogging and writing in the rightwing press, not appearing on Radio 4 and getting hat-tips from Times leader writers.
ReplyDeleteWhy shouldn't she have mainstream airtime? It takes all kind.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the opposite view (or rather a whole range of views on the other side) is grossly underrepresented.
Actually I think I'd like to devise the term "flogging and blogging" for writers of Melanie's type.
ReplyDeleteYou read it here first.
Dear me, you could even say, to paraphrase our good friend Norm, that it's somehow suspicious that Dershowitz didn't denounce Jimmy Carter until recently!
ReplyDeleteThat is, if you were using anti-semitism as a cudgel with which to beat your enemies, no matter how unlikely that charge was. Which I'm sure no-one does.
Jesus. Seeing fake Jimmy Carters everywhere. "I can't believe it's not paranoid schizophrenia!"
ReplyDeleteapparently racism is "historic" and the problem today is the "monstrously unjust reaction" to racism.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't what she's saying.
Indeed not. Her main point is that Obama hates white people.
ReplyDeleteWell she certainly doesn't think that all racism are historic.
ReplyDeleteAnd after outing Dershowitz for being a closet appeaser of anti-semitism she's found a new target for her ire - yes, it's the Jews!
That should read "all racism is historic" of course.
ReplyDeleteAndrew - I didn't like the Jews article much, but the one a few days back about global warming was interesting.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that Andrew - I have a new tagline for my blog:
ReplyDeleteordinary, middle-of-the road, pragmatic people who habitually observe reality without the impediments of ideological baggage -- and who are now horrified beyond measure.
Which reminds me, I need to get the Dadablog going.
ReplyDeleteWe hit unforeseen technical difficulties, about which I had a long debug session with Google engineers as to what was happening; this still isn't clear.
But, for the record, the Googler in question, Pete Hopkins, couldn't have been more helpful, and I have it on record that they have no objection to the introduction of artificially generated Melanie Phillips blogposts into systems they control for satirical purposes.
There is still antisemitism around.
ReplyDelete