Nick Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize
Thanks to Dan Hind in the comments to a previous post, we learn that "Libruls? We hatez em" has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. I usually think prizes are a lot of navel-gazing bollocks and I doubt that this one is any different.
I think everyone knows that David Aaronovitch won the journalism award in 2001. Other winners include HP and Normblog favourite Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (2002); Dave's colleague at the Times, Matthew Parris (2005); Timothy Garton-Ash (2006) - for being mean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali?; and my personal favourite, Brian Sewell (no, I can't see how he is a political writer either).
Unlike Dan, I can't see Nick's book as a favourite - the judges are quite impressive for one thing, for another, Ed Hussain's "The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left" looks like a natural compromise vote to me. Nick bashes liberals, which will upset liberals (and rightly). Bashing terrorists after having met them is going to be acceptable to everyone though.
I think everyone knows that David Aaronovitch won the journalism award in 2001. Other winners include HP and Normblog favourite Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (2002); Dave's colleague at the Times, Matthew Parris (2005); Timothy Garton-Ash (2006) - for being mean to Ayaan Hirsi Ali?; and my personal favourite, Brian Sewell (no, I can't see how he is a political writer either).
Unlike Dan, I can't see Nick's book as a favourite - the judges are quite impressive for one thing, for another, Ed Hussain's "The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left" looks like a natural compromise vote to me. Nick bashes liberals, which will upset liberals (and rightly). Bashing terrorists after having met them is going to be acceptable to everyone though.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 3/30/2008 05:45:00 PM
6 Comments:
I can't for the life of me work out why 'Two Caravans' is included.
For light relief, Mark Steel has put his unpublished review of What's left commissioned by (but not printed in) the Observer on his website
http://www.marksteelinfo.com/writing/default.asp?id=27
For even lighter relief, see Marko's bizarre organogram egg of politics on the Harry's place website. He has "muscular liberals" and Neocons together as jointly higher species of life than mere "Blairites". He has very unfairly put the "Rifkind tories" as low as the "Guardianistas", evne tho ' Rifkind actually runs a mercenary firm fighting in Iraq - which surely puts him on a par with Marko, who is merely doing crazy-science drawings against the islamonazis in London.
Marko is unhinged, but I suspect Nick will actually go this far - after all, Nick is quite firmly arguing that socialism is "dead" and that it is impossible to imagine a society more left wing than the UK today
That's the strangest post-facto justification for an individual shift to the Right I've ever seen. The egg shape, in particular, screams special pleading - yes, there is a left-right dimension, but it's a very small one!
The fun thing about it is that "supporting western values" correlates extremely well to "supporting military adventures in other countries" given that the neo-cons and the decents are the only ones not sliding ineluctably down the Easter Egg of Decency towards fascism.
as far as i know:
i) noam chomsky has never sold arms to saudi nor made excuses for their torture of dissidents.
ii) john pilger has never trained or armed colombian military units commonly believed to be closely associated with death squads
iii) the readership of the guardian has never sacked the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan for speaking out against human rights abuses.
ahhh but note that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is only potentially facist - Russia has apparently "already made its choice".
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