British Right-Wing Pundits

I always assumed that lefties accounted for a pretty big chunk of O'Rourke's book sales, but it might just be me

I bought O'Rourke and am a pinko commie. But I've only kept one book. It's essentially the same joke in all the rest I discovered, and it gets tiresome.

i don't know much about pj o'rourke. i read an interview with him once thou, he didn't seem like ann coulter or rush limbaugh.

nothing can make you like the guardian more than reading another paper you pick up on the bus/at the barbers/etc

anyone see jonathan meades last night?

I AM Jonathan Meades - haven't you worked it out yet?

Nothing can make me like the Guardian less than its contents, i.e.:
(a) Beano comic;
(b) women journalists only allowed to write columns about their fluffy-wuffy bwains being too feisty-weisty to understand art/politics/music/the world/life;
(c) except P Toynbee: "VOTE GORDON HE IS THE FUTURE (C) MILLBANK PROMOTIONS PLC 2007";
(d) aforementioned Brooker modern life is all shit well come up with a better idea then or top yourself;
(e) "many over-verbose, jealous bloggers have been speculating in indigestible 3000-word tracts about the whereabouts of Maddy but I ALEXIS know the truth";
(f) what do you think about Palestine, yeah Palestine, yeah Palestine, that place that's just across the sea?

I've stopped reading the Times as well now except on Saturdays. Arrant Tory rot, as though it ever were anything else.

ps: that mugging was staged.

he seemed a lot more reactionary and dullardy than i was expecting. I enjoyed last week's show, and what i can remember of previous series, although I was possibly too young to really 'get' him then.

Apparently the Piloti guy from Private Eye is/was doing a show about the Orient Express at the moment. great days for reactionary architecture buffs.

anyone see jonathan meades last night?

i was going to mention the programme somewhere. i quite enjoyed his lecturing at first but he ruined things by being so utterly glib really.

ps: that mugging was staged.]

haha

he wasn't really reactionary. his point was flashy buildings that middle-class people like to see on "city breaks" don't actually provide much income for the inhabitants of the still pretty run-down north, and that instead of channelling money to poncey architects the money could be spent on things like, hhhhm, let's see, schools or even "subsidized jobs" -- hurrah for defense contracts! -- or other things that might make a difference.

the example of Bilbao skewed the argument a bit...unless Liverpool really does draw in as many tourists as the Basque commercial capital.

how dyou mean? that bilbao has 'worked' because it pulls in tourists?

essentially yes.

Liverpool gets loads of tourists - Beatles etc.

i know but that seems more of a constant that non-Beatles 'cultural sightbites' may not have really expanded upon. and more than Bilbao now? but i'm guessing Bilbao didn't get a lot of visitors before the museum - i could be wrong.

the bilbao example was more interesting because of the area's particular insularity and pride tho and the juxtaposition of this and Gehry's Guggenheim (fell from the sky/could've landed anywhere else, doesn't care about/reflect the 'native' culture/community). so how Bilbao's communities square that with the commercial benefits on their city is maybe more interesting than it would be in a lot of places.

they have papers at the barbers?

i read fhm the other day, at the barbers. well actually it was a little while ago. i just didnt want to tell you guy at the time, in case you said something

when i say guy, i mean guy as in blueski, not guys as in everyone else

that could have done with unpacking -- it's a fascinating topic. my guess is that no way did bilbao get that many tourists pre-guggenheim; but then the whole cheap-flight city-hopping phenomenon only took off in the last ten years or so too.

did you really read it 696, or just look at the pretty ladies?

i looked at the ladies

though there was this article about the decline of manufacturing on teeside which wasnt bad

the article was typed in 8pt Frutiger over a photo of Billie Piper in her pants

but then the whole cheap-flight city-hopping phenomenon only took off in the last ten years or so too.

a book about this would be v interesting, initially on stats basis (general increase across all european major cities generally? unexpected successes irrespective of recent developlements e.g. guggenheims or regen projects?) but also the commercial, cultural, environmental and subsequent political effects of course.

yea it was kinda annoying having to read the whole article to be able see everything properly

Has no-on mentioned Frederick Forsyth?

He doesn't like longlife lightbulbs. Or at least seems to have some kind of house that destroys them, therefore they are a bad idea obviously.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/2615

Ahhh the express - the headline to-day "Interest rates to go even higher". What even higher than under your beloved Thatcher? No? Well then shut the fuck up.

take note at the easy ride the mail is giving gordo. i only read the front covers admitedlly thou it did say in the newstatesman he has gone out of way to have huggles with the owners of the mail and the sun.

have huggles with the owners of the mail and the sun

shiver

I saw R Wade in Daylesford Organic once - with Ross K in a barbour and cap. How I laughed.

uh paul dacre and gordon brown liek each other lots.

private eye's been saying this for ages.

wonder what the statesman's deal is, cos the guy who bankrolls it (geoffrey robertson? labour qc, super-rich) is or was brown fan #1.

I like the way the comments blame Blair for long-life light bulbs, as if he designs and markets them himself.

what people don't realise is that dacre is a saloon bar socialist and that the daily mail has been an extended satire ALL ALONG.

I think you're confusing 2 people there, Geoffrey Robinson (ex Labour MP, very rich, owner of the NS) and Geffrey Robertson - leftish QC married (so help him) to Kathy Lette.

xpost

Geffrey Robertson - leftish QC married (so help him) to Kathy Lette

He is not! Is he really?

what people don't realise is that dacre is a saloon bar socialist and that the daily mail has been an extended satire ALL ALONG.
-- Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 17 May 2007 15:26 (1 hour ago)

I think you're confusing 2 people there, Geoffrey Robinson (ex Labour MP, very rich, owner of the NS) and Geffrey Robertson - leftish QC married (so help him) to Kathy Lette.
-- Ned Trifle II, Thursday, 17 May 2007 17:05 (5 minutes ago)

I understood Marcello's post easily enough, but if people are likely to be confused by it, why would only those two be confused (and how long have they been lurking on ilx)?

Geffrey Robertson - leftish QC married (so help him) to Kathy Lette

He is not! Is he really?

Yes really, although I had to go and check. 2 Australians far from home find solace in each others arms innit.

Meanwhile back to british right wing pundits here's a Jon Gaunt fansite!

http://www.gauntyfansite.co.uk/

Well that's unsurprisingly rubbish...

Thank you for registering. The admin must approve your registration before you may begin to use your account, you will receive an email shortly advising you of the admins decision.

I hope I'm rejected.

On fantasy island
Johann Hari

Published 21 May 2007

Print version Listen RSS Littlejohn's Britain
Richard Littlejohn Hutchinson, 320pp, £12.99
ISBN 0091795680


Let's be open-minded. Let's be ready to laugh. According to the press release accompanying this cut-and-pasting of Richard Littlejohn's recent rants in the Sun and Daily Mail, he is a descendant of James Gillray, Daniel Defoe and the great English satirists, "the real, talented deal".

People who have only ever heard him on the radio, where his satire consists of witticisms such as calling for gay rights activists to be killed with flame-throwers (which drew a rare reprimand from the Radio Authority, now part of Ofcom), may be perplexed by this description.

But I carefully sewed up my sides, opened the book, and found Littlejohn's first gag. He told a pre-power Tony Blair, when asked for political advice, that he should "take on Liverpool". He should "put tanks on the East Lancs Road, submarines in the River Mersey and then surround the place with barbed wire. Then you send in the bombers and turn the place into a car park. When the dust settles, you invite the Hong Kong Chinese to take over. Job done."

Cherie Blair - a Liverpudlian - found this tedious and walked off, thus giving birth to Littlejohn's barrage of "satire" against her. He dubbed her "the Wicked Witch" with "saddlebag hips", "legs like Popeye's trousers" and "fat ankles".

I tried. I tried really hard to find the satire. I pored over every page. There are, after all, far right-wingers who are capable of being funny: Ann Coulter; Kelvin MacKenzie; even Jean-Marie Le Pen can raise a chuckle as he calls for monstrosities. But as you browse through this random collection, the stale air is almost choking. Littlejohn is dependent on the same catchphrases he created 20 years ago ("You couldn't make it up!" "Mind how you go!").

Here's a typical example of his comedy. He imagines Kimberly Quinn - David Blunkett's former lover - singing: "I haven't slept all night/I haven't slept all night/I don't know what to do./ I know I'm looking rough,/That's cos I'm up the duff./The baby's father's you." His observations about politicians (for example, saying that Gordon Brown has a "kiddie-fiddler grin") aren't satire; they are primary school playground abuse.

There is, however, a core to Littlejohn's humour, to which he returns on almost every page: homosexuality. He obsessively talks about cottaging, lubricants, 69ers - every tiny detail of gay sex is smeared across the pages. He quotes long exchanges from Gaydar involving the MP Chris Bryant ("I could do with a good f***"), and says Peter Mandelson lives on "the Rue Des Jeunes Hommes" (because gays like young boys - geddit?). I think about gay sex much less than Richard Littlejohn - and I am gay.

Every problem circles back to sodomy in his mind, as he panics: "Soon we'll have gay men going door to door, like Jehovah's Witnesses, trying to convince us to convert." This isn't bigotry. It's a psychiatric disorder. Yet he claims that "the fascist left" are "smearing" him as a bigot. His technique is to make an unambiguously bigoted statement, and then say it has "nothing to do" with bigotry. For instance, he says that in Britain, under "the Blair Terror", "Entire neighbourhoods have been ethnically cleansed - and it's the English who are getting out of town." Then he says - without missing a beat - "But as I keep stressing, this is not about race." I see . . . it's "ethnic cleansing", but it's "not about race". Perhaps somebody should send Littlejohn a dictionary.

If Littlejohn's work has little value as satire, how does it stand up as political commentary? Its main flaw is that he has a worrying tendency to get his facts wrong. To give just one example (I could fill an entire issue of the NS with them), he declares that asylum-seekers get cash benefits "starting at £180 a week". In reality, when the article containing this claim was written, in 2000, asylum-seekers received cash benefits of nothing as they were all given in vouchers. Today they receive £43, less than a quarter of the sum Littlejohn invented.

His arguments crumble even before the sentences end. He claims that two million people leave Britain every year because they are appalled by "mass immigration". So people are so appalled at being forced to live among foreigners that they are . . . going to live among foreigners.

Littlejohn's Britain doesn't exist. Literally. He spends much of the year writing from a gated mansion in Florida, and admitted in a recent column that, when he is in Britain, he rarely leaves the house. He is describing a country he sees only through the pages of the right-wing press and his self-reinforcing mailbag. The cumulative effect of poring through more than 300 pages of this isn't to make the reader feel angry, or indignant, or offended. It is to feel pity for a sad, lonely little man, howling at a world that exists only in his own pornographic imagination. You couldn't make it up? Richard Littlejohn does - every time he writes.

Unfortunately, Johann Hari.

yeh i know that's what made me laugh. the article is funny cos y know littlejohn but also cos i find hari's tone unintentionally amusing. like last week he was attacking ziziek and declaring postmodernism useless and evil.

I think about gay sex much less than Richard Littlejohn - and I am gay.

This is a pretty great zing, Hari or no.

otm, i find him quite irritating (hari that is - i try not to think about littlejohn) but that made me chuckle.

That article was published in the future. Did it have the racing results as well?

i dunno you go take a look at the stuff kingfish posts and littlejohn seems kinda risible. there's a sort of lack of real conviction, the american right wing pundits have scary evangelical zeal whilst british ones just have ugly middle english resentment.

I always think the British stuff has a sort of pathetic street corner ranting crazy guy aspect to it, whereas the American stuff comes from more of a dominant position and is thus scarier/more depressing.

well thats kinda what i was trying to get at before, theres a feeling that the british ones dont really believe what they are writing, other than in a kind of "pfft" middle aged white man 'its not even music' type feeling of being pecked at

actually thats kind of it, all brit rightwing journos all seem kind of, well, HENPECKED.

and that they are really writing displaced barbs about their wives

wives who probably have a spanish lover

littlejohn is kinda like an uncle who thinks it's funny to declare whn you mention that yr going to brighton: "you better watch out going there it's full of gay"
the american pundits are more like a lynch mob.
though the right wing press were a lot scarier a few years back when asylum seekers and peediefiles where all over the shop. i mean they were stirring up actual, real mobs back then.