What's The Point?
If anyone can identify a point to Nick today, please tell us in the comments.
Is there a prize for most cliches in one sentence? I'd like to think that Nick was influenced by the late T.S. Eliot when he wrote
But I think a sub-editor nodded off several paragraphs earlier.
While I'm asking for help from readers, has anyone worked out yet why David T of Harry's Place (which is currently unavailable having exceeded its bandwidth yet again, so link goes to the cached version) thinks David Edgar libelled anyone? I can't see why Edgar is even responding to David Mamet. The man's a fool.
BTW, the Rant Review version of the David Mamet screed has many virtues - being intentionally funny (not in the bits Mamet wrote, obviously), having some grasp of history, etc.
Norman Geras took Mamet's claim "I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart" seriously. Has he not seen Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, or House of Games?
But speaking of David Toube, as I was, I see (via Mike Power) that he's in at number 71 in the JC Power 100: The people shaping Jewish life in Britain. Yes, that means there are 28 less influential Jews in Britain[1]. Maybe they should sue. The Jewish Chronicle does promise to give us the top 66 in the following two issues. Is it so wrong of me to hope that Michael Sophocles makes the top 10?
[1] Ken Livinstone is no 76, and he's not Jewish, so I can't claim to understand the criteria. I didn't know David T was Jewish (not that it matters), and perhaps he's not. The JC likes Livingstone. H'sP think he's an anti-Semite. It takes all sorts.
These were yet further examples of the union [National Union of Teachers] succumbing to its persistent fantasy that tweedy teachers can replace muscle-bound factory workers and become the new vanguard of the proletariat.
Is there a prize for most cliches in one sentence? I'd like to think that Nick was influenced by the late T.S. Eliot when he wrote
It's easy to be all things to all men when the economy is booming.
[Most of article before coming back to ...]
Although political writers have insisted for a decade that Labour had to decide which side it was on, it found it easy to be all things to all men when the economy was growing.
But I think a sub-editor nodded off several paragraphs earlier.
While I'm asking for help from readers, has anyone worked out yet why David T of Harry's Place (which is currently unavailable having exceeded its bandwidth yet again, so link goes to the cached version) thinks David Edgar libelled anyone? I can't see why Edgar is even responding to David Mamet. The man's a fool.
BTW, the Rant Review version of the David Mamet screed has many virtues - being intentionally funny (not in the bits Mamet wrote, obviously), having some grasp of history, etc.
Norman Geras took Mamet's claim "I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart" seriously. Has he not seen Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, or House of Games?
But speaking of David Toube, as I was, I see (via Mike Power) that he's in at number 71 in the JC Power 100: The people shaping Jewish life in Britain. Yes, that means there are 28 less influential Jews in Britain[1]. Maybe they should sue. The Jewish Chronicle does promise to give us the top 66 in the following two issues. Is it so wrong of me to hope that Michael Sophocles makes the top 10?
[1] Ken Livinstone is no 76, and he's not Jewish, so I can't claim to understand the criteria. I didn't know David T was Jewish (not that it matters), and perhaps he's not. The JC likes Livingstone. H'sP think he's an anti-Semite. It takes all sorts.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 4/27/2008 12:52:00 PM
42 Comments:
It's just those who shape Jewish life.
Although the bit about teachers seeing themselves as 'the new vanguard of the proletariat' was rather silly I thought this article made some fair points in the final paragraphs.
Even more so was the rescue of the banks. If there was money for them, why isn't there money for us? delegates asked. If bankers are relying on welfare payments from the state, will the state insist that bankers' pay rises are kept as low as ours?
These are good questions, which once again Labour has no experience of resolving. The party's dominance of modern politics began when the pound crashed out of the ERM in 1992 and the long boom started. Labour became so used to profits from the City providing the money for its vast programmes of public spending and redistribution of wealth that it forgot that when the authorities let financial bubbles grow to bursting point, the public is forced to redistribute its wealth to bankers.
Credit it where credit is due Nick was one of the few journos who didn't get carried away with all the 'Gordon's the most sucessful chancellor ever guff' that was so widespread 1997-2006. Like Larry Elliot and the economists at the New Economics Foundation he had conistently warned of the dangers of asset bubbles. The Britain population is groaning under a stupendous mountain of debt and the economy is utterly lopsided because of its reliance on housing and the financial sector as twin engines of growth. Both are now in major trouble. The asset and housing bubbles were allowed to grow so large because of lax fiscal regulation. Brown didn't want to do anything that might restrict the city's abilty to make money. Brown and especially Greenspan were serial bubble blowers.
So I think Nick has a fair point here.
As far as the libel thing goes, I've no idea and i said as much in the comments page to that post last week, for which i got called a 'twat' by David T, who ignored everything i said. I probably am a twat, but the libel idea still makes no sense - I think David T decided, via a clear misreading, that Edgar was suggeting Nick thinks al Muslims are fascists, or something. But the misreading required is so absolutely massive that even a 2000-word post by David T leaves it incredibly unclear, and he's so obviously biased against Edgar (calling him a 'twat' and disparaging his life's work to boot) that I don't think he had his legal hat on in making the libel suggestion.
It's based on exactly the same kind of misreading that saw the Decents universally criticise Edgar 'because he said Ed Husain had switched from left to right' when it's obvious that this wasn't Edgar's point at all.
And as for Nick in the obs today. Is he for or against the teachers' strike? I really can't work it out at all. Maybe he spent the whole week taking legal advice, and never made his mind up, or something.
I think Nick wants to be "for" a strike by muscular factory workers, who as well as demanding a reasonable pay rise, expressed muscular liberal ideas : "a modest pay rise now will help us stand together against the forces of islamofascism and polish-ness ! give us a few ha'pennies guv and restore them grammar schools while you are at it", they will chant . Unfortunately, only the NAtional Union of Tweedy Teachers have gone into action (Along with some workers in some sort of scottish oil thing that Nick didn't notice), who are no more than wannabe Bruschetta munchers , jizzing their liberal antiwar , pro "comprehensive" ideas all over helpless working class urchins who would otherwise be marching to Nick's tune.
Anyone else notice he blamed the Chinese (more specifically rising Chinese living standards) for rising food prices?
There is nothing libellous about Cohen in the Edgar piece, certainly nothing as libellous as the kind of filth which Toube regularly allows to pass in the HP comments section.
The point to get David T on surely is his hypocrisy. When Harry's Place said a serious smear about Johan Hari, they screamed that it was Censorship! Tyranny! Evil! But when somebody writes something far more mild, they shriek for libel writs.
71st most influential jew
I can't believe that the JC would say such a thing. Don't they realise that the 'influential jew' and 'Jewish power' are two of the oldest tropes of antisemitism.
Somebody call David Hirsh immediately!
The point about Harry's Place and Hari was that he threatened to sue them for pointing out that he makes stuff up, as he did in his piece about Cohen's already deranged-enough Magnum Opus.
Young Johann's getting a rep as a fabulist and a litigious one, to boot.
Young Johann's getting a rep as a fabulist
I don't think he is really. And given that Cohen's response to his review was to call him a 'Maoist' I'm not sure about the upper hand here. Maybe Hari would have been right to sue over that? Seems a lot clearer than David T's tortured logic.
I might be a bit out of date, but he was making loads of stuff up wasn't he? I thought the decent backlash after the Cohen thing was all a bit too close to the mark for him, hence the threats of legal action.
And he actually made stuff up about Cohen-which seems a bit silly, as there's so much true stuff to take him to task for.
That Cohen managed to hiss a barely comprehensible purple-faced "Maoist!" is hardly surprising, (and sadly) probably not libellous.
What bollocks. Anybody who knows Johann as I have for years knows he is more likely to be Pope than fabricate a story. After he criticised Private Eye's editor, literally the next week they made a lot of shit up about him (ironically, claiming he made shit up). Look at Hari's response to Cohen, it's really damning, giving quotes to show Cohen said everything he said he did. The Orwell thing is yet more proof that Private Eye were chatting shit.
The Orwell thing is yet more proof that Private Eye were chatting shit.
How is it "proof" of anything?
I don't think Hari makes things up. He is prone to factual errors, but no more so than any other opinion columnist (and much less so than Nick).
Also unlike Nick, Hari does actually take the trouble to visit the places he talks about, and has a much wider range of sources than Nick's, which these days amount to some crap weblogs and that guy from the probation service.
This is all very interesting, but could we have some facts please to eke out these assertions? What is Hari accused of having made up? When and where did Nick go purple and call Hari a Maoist? In which social circles do people call each other Maoists when they get annoyed?
Guano
I think the specific charge against Hari was that he wrote that Cohen "was raised to see Orwell in Catalonia as his moral archetype". There may have been other things. But that's the one his critics come back to again and again, and say is an example of him making things up.
He's supposed to have made some things up quite early in his career - either while he was still at Oxbridge or just after and relating to his time there.
I'm not a particular admirer of Hari but I've no reason to think that he's particularly guilty of inaccuracy as scribblers go, let alone of fabrication.
Hari was on dodgy ground with his legal action, and his specific claim was 'Cohen, ostentatious claimer of George Orwell's mantle'. It's the ostentatious that is wrong, I'd say. Hari answered this charge well, whlst none of these points are absolutely winners, they all suggest a man who at least didn't mind the comparisons:
Then he sadly obfuscates further by building a straw man about George Orwell. In conversations with me, Cohen has explicitly cited Orwell as a long-term inspiration since childhood. Here is a review in which he clearly claims Orwell as a major influence influence, and
here is an interview that Cohen linked to from his website that describes Orwell as his "intellectual hero and forerunner." I cannot understand why he now denies it; I assumed this was an uncontroversial point.
In fact the jacket of What's Left compares Cohen to Swift, which one would think was a harder comparison, although perhaps they meant that the Cohen's approach was something that would be written by Swift.
Cohen's the new Swift? In much the same sense as the Knack were the new Beatles?
The Private Eye case for 'fabrication' was something to do with his trip to Iraq - I forget the details - something like him claiming to have been there independently, but actually going on a package tour. It seemed pretty weak and not as worthy of a 'hackwatch' as, say, Nick Cohen's recent output, which they seemed to think was all well-researched and that Hari's (very good) review was entirely made up. But the Eye have had it in for Hari from the start.
I think Matthew was implying that Cohen might be the narrator of something written by Swift. Seems a little harsh on Swift, that.
But wasn't Hari caught fibbing by Znet or counterpunch in the run up to the invasion of Iraq as well? And wasn't there something about the G8 stuff in Genoa too?
Somebody says above that "The Private Eye case for 'fabrication' was something to do with his trip to Iraq - I forget the details - something like him claiming to have been there independently, but actually going on a package tour."
That's true. He hid the fact he went to Iraq on a package tour by.... writing a front page story about it for the Guardian immediately after. Private Eye acted like he lied because he didn't mention the package tour every time he later, in passing, mentioned having been in Iraq. It was staggeringly lame.
Re: Counterpunch. Hari repeated a story by a guy called Kenneth Joseph, who claimed to have been in Iraq, attributing it clearly to him. It was in loads of papers - the Washington Post and Le Monde and the rest. It later turned out the guy was a liar, and Hari printed a correction as soon as he knew.
Private Eye has hatcheted the guy because he criticised Ian Hislop and Richrad Ingrams for homophobia. If you look back, the attacks began literally the very week after he did it. They lump this shit together, threw in another lie, and try to make it look like something. And now the Harry's Placers bring it all up as proof he has "a reputation" for being "a fabulist". It's pretty pathetic really. The fact he keeps winning stuff like the Orwell Prize and journalist of the year from Amnesty shows how seriously these claims are taken by anyone who matters.
As basic AaroWatch comments etiquette, please could the anonymous posters on this thread at a minimum give themselves a comedy dinner-party -themed nickname, so we now how to distinguish between them.
Isn't Cohen's line that we shouldn't get too worked up about a Prime Minister who lied about his degree of certainty about another countries' nasty weapons? Personally I think that this is a lot more important than whether Hari went to Iraq on his own or on a package tour.
PS Do these tours leave from Luton or Stansted?
Guano
As opposed to Cohen and the Harry's Placers who went to Iraq with... um... err....
The accusations against Hari that I'm aware of are:
a) probably the most serious. He claimed to have been present in Genoa when the guy got shot, however other people saw him leave before then in a taxi.
b) His first ever article for the New Statesman, where he claimed to be a crazy, pill munching, Ecstacy taker. Private Eye claimed not so much, and to be honest if you read the article you could see their point.
c) An article where he claims to have seduced a BNP member. Don't think there's any proof either way, but the style of the article isn't terribly convincing.
There's also his attacks on Derrida, Negri and Chomsky - where he claims to have read stuff that he either obviously hasn't, or that they said stuff they haven't.
Like Justin I don't have much time for the man (still have my scars from my time at Cambridge, where there were far too many tossers like Hari) - but I have to respect the man for admitting he was wrong in such a public fashion. Harry's Place never seemed to have any problems with his truthiness prior to his Damascus moment, so fuck 'em.
Amen.
I call myself shake or mastershake on here cos that's my login on places like the guardian. but i will change for you lot cos i love the site so much. i don't have a blog.
Harry's Place never seemed to have any problems with his truthiness prior to his Damascus moment, so fuck 'em.
That's the problem with all of this isn't it? if HP disagree with someone they suddenly call their journalistic/academic qualifications into question. Ditto Private Eye whose own track record is not exactly that of a periodical which never gets anything wrong, and their taking Nick Cohen's side, when he has been guilty of many such errors (which Hari was pointing out), makes little sense with all that mind mind.
There's also his attacks on Derrida, Negri and Chomsky - where he claims to have read stuff that he either obviously hasn't, or that they said stuff they haven't.
Standard fare for British journalists generally, and especially for Decents / former Decents.
I have to respect the man for admitting he was wrong in such a public fashion
indeed - there aren't many British journos who would have done that.
"their taking Nick Cohen's side, when he has been guilty of many such errors (which Hari was pointing out), makes little sense with all that mind mind."
indeed that only makes sense because Private Eye's Francis Wheen is a mate of Nick Cohen. Wheen shares Cohen's decency, but does not have the guts to make such decent noises in public because I suppose he knows he'd look a tit, like he did on his weird demonstration of decency over Chomsky.
Ann On
Johann Hari is a bit fantastical in his approach. It tends to wind people up of all political view points.
Cian, you say
"a) probably the most serious. He claimed to have been present in Genoa when the guy got shot, however other people saw him leave before then in a taxi."
All i can say is this allegation appeared literally the week after Hari criticised Hislop and Ingrams for homophobia, (you can look it up), nobody had ever made it before, and as somebody who has know Johann for years, it's just obviously bollocks. He has flaws, sure, but he would never, never do that.
"b) His first ever article for the New Statesman, where he claimed to be a crazy, pill munching, Ecstacy taker. Private Eye claimed not so much, and to be honest if you read the article you could see their point."
I think I have seen him on ecstasy a few times but i wouldn't swear under oath to it. I know it was certainly actually was one of the triggers for quite serious clinical depression in him, he's written about it lots of times, I didn't know anyone had accused him of lying about that, I know he has been accused of the opposite (drug addiction) in print too.
"c) An article where he claims to have seduced a BNP member. Don't think there's any proof either way, but the style of the article isn't terribly convincing."
Again, I've never talked to him about this, I haven't actually spoken to him in a few years now, but I simply can't imagine ever doing that. I always knew him as somebody who had a strong conscience and was very careful about his work. I'd be absolutely amazed if it was true.
The question is do you believe Private Eye, the sole source of these accusations, who made them literally immediately after he criticised them, and have only ever revived them after he criticised Cohen? Does it fit with the integrity you yourself say you see in his admitting he was wrong about Iraq, or that obviously shows through in so much of his work, hence all these awards?
It's weird seeing somebody being so obviously misrepresented by fuckers like Private Eye. Cian, you say, "Like Justin I don't have much time for the man (still have my scars from my time at Cambridge, where there were far too many tossers like Hari)"
I too hated tossers at Cambridge but I can promise you Johann was the opposite of the pushy posh fuckers you are thinking of, he was always going back to London because he couldn't stand all those people. If you are looking for nasty public school fuckers, it's the Private Eye people who make up this bollocks about him.
Aaro Alert. On CiF, Jackie Ashley replying to Aaro because of Aaro criticising Guardian journalists and their disloyalty to Brown.
Moussaka Man
You really should do a post on Aaro's latest. Its truly dreadful especially the stuff about 'selfish' teachers. It reminds me why I think he's such a toad and an intellectual prostitute. I may have certain reservations about Hari but he's close to the money on many issues and he's a thousand times better than Aaro.
Talking of Hari claiming that Chomsky etc said stuff that they haven’t, Lenin accused Hari of blatantly and (“I must conclude”) intentionally distorting and misrepresenting Galloway in a review of his book I'm Not the Only One.
I haven’t read Galloway’s book but he (Lenin) appeared to make a strong case (IMO), whatever you might think of Galloway. For example Lenin quotes Hari:
How about the passage where Galloway defends Saddam's claim to Kuwait, describing the province as "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion"
Apparently Galloway makes it perfectly clear that he is simply describing the perception of Iraqis. Lenin points to the following passage as giving Galloway's own view:
“The sympathy I had for former colonies undoing the fake boundaries of colonialism could not support the naked aggression committed against Kuwait. That action copied elsewhere in the developing world would be a recipe for endless chaos and bloodshed." (Page 45)
According to Lenin, Hari omits this but quotes the very next sentence, so it is difficult to see how he could have innocently missed it. From memory (which may be faulty) Hari never responded to these specific criticisms although he was made aware of them on more than one occasion.
There is a theme here - J. Hari put a lot of puffed up fake stuff in his column when he was a decent (Misquoting Galloway, claiming Kenneth Joseph was an antiwar protestor converted to a prowar decent after a trip to Iraq when he was always a right wing loon, claiming that Iraqi's had implored him to support an invasion when he visited Iraq - a very unsupported claim ). Ironically, the Decents only got worried about these iffy stories after Hari abandoned Decency. Doubly ironically, the Decents are keen to use very similar distortions (the distortions in Nick's book, Harry's place's claims that the treasurer of Christain CND was publishing antisemitic propaganda when he wasn't & that Iran was going to make jews wear special clothes when they weren't).
Ann On
Hang on there... I just looked these claims up.
He didn't misquote Galloway. He said that Galloway says Kuwait is "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion". Lenin admits he did say that in his book. That does defend Saddam's claim to Kuwait, obviously. HIt's in the context of saying Galloway repeats a lot of Saddamist claims at face value, and Johann is right. He didn't say Galloway supported the invasion, just that he repeated the propaganda claims that were used by Saddam on all sorts of issues.
Ann, you say Johann "claiming Kenneth Joseph was an antiwar protestor converted to a prowar decent after a trip to Iraq when he was always a right wing loon".
Johann repeated what was reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post etc. No columnist could ever check every story that has been widely reported with its original sources, they wouldn't ever write anything. He assumed it was true because it had been so widely reported. That's no "fakery" or journalistic malpractice, it's absolutely standard. As soon as he knew it was wrong, he printed a full and blunt retraction, saying the guy was "a bullshitter."
These smears were offered by private Eye because he criticised their editors and former editor for their homophobia. I think it's a bit depressing to see people who actually would hate Private Eye's homophobia repeating them as if they were true.
He didn't say Galloway supported the invasion
But isn't that the point? Lots of people who didn't think Iraq should have invaded Kuwait are nevertheless well aware that Kuwait was founded in a certain form and for a certain purpose.
I am not sure that Hari is quite as scrupulous as he should be in presenting the opinions of his adversaries. Fair enough, that's a human trait and there are rather worse than Hari about: and I'm also aware that nobody gets their facts right all the time (the very fact that there's a term "fisking" - talk about picking on the wrong target - is testament to this) but nevertheless he has said some things about other people that I think they have a right to feel were unfair, and he has made some claims that don't quite survive scrutiny. And if it's Private Eye that has said these things then, well, some things are true even though the Telegraph*....
It's not a hanging offence. Clearly your friend is a journalist and writer of some capacity and courage. But he's made a few more mistakes than I think you're willing to accept.
(* ironically, Orwell never actually wrote this.)
I don't think Kenneth Joseph was the only "bullshitter" - read the article, and you'll see Hari was making a case that the IRaqi's were enthusiastic about being invaded, and Joseph's stupid lies were only part of that case
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=87
the other part of Hari's case rested on mind-reading on holiday , where no Iraqi actually told Hari they wanted to be invaded, but Hari claims all the same that that's what they were thinking, in his fatuous travel-to-Iraq piece
http://education.guardian.co.uk/staffroom/story/0,,854229,00.html
I think Hari did, like the other decents, engage in deception to promote the Iraq war (and there are many more articles he pumped out , all as bad as these). I just suspect in his case it was self-deception. He really convinced himself he was on a crusade for freedom, in temporary alliance with the neocons. a few hundred thousand dead seem to have shocked him out of his stupidity.
Ann On
Peter,
Kuwait was part of Iraq originally, and hived off by the UK for the usual dubious reasons (the same is also true of Syria and Lebannon). Its historical fact, so either Hari is ignorant of history, or he's relying upon his readership's ignornace to distort the (reasonable) point that Galloway's making. Given that Galloway goes on to say that this is not an excuse for the invasion, Galloway's point seems perfectly reasonable and sensible, and Hari deliberately omits this, Hari's piece is a hatchet job.
"He didn't say Galloway supported the invasion, just that he repeated the propaganda claims that were used by Saddam on all sorts of issues."
The most effective propoganda includes some truth. Quite a few of the things that Saddam said about Kuwait were true to some degree - should one pretend otherwise just because a "VERY BAD MAN" said them?
"No columnist could ever check every story that has been widely reported with its original sources, they wouldn't ever write anything."
Sure they can, its not particularly hard. Plenty of bloggers manage it, and George Monbiot does a pretty good job. I realise that quickly googling a name is a lot harder than trawling through academic journals, but Hari's supposed to be a bright lad, with a 1st an' all.
I know nothing about what Private Eye has and hasn't printed, I don't read it. The Genoa allegations surfaced in places like Indymedia shortly after the story appeared. There were apparently also inconsistencies in Hari's story that suggested he was making it up.
I don't know if Hari's a drug addict and neither do I particularly care. However his article for the NS was hillariously bad, being both several years late (apparently kids were taking ecstacy, except it had long since gone out of fashion by the time he wrote the piece), very odd (it was based upon what Cambridge students did at balls) and being written in a style which suggested that Hari was born middle aged.
The best one could say about the BNP article, if true, was so what. We could have had an article about the BNP and instead we got one about the (implausible) sexual exploits of Johan Hari, shag machine. The BNP guy was probably straight as well - he should have sent it into Arena.
What irritates about these articles is that they're all about him. He always has to be at the centre. He did this, he saw this, he's down with the kids (man) - even when it doesn't seriously affect the story.
I too hated tossers at Cambridge but I can promise you Johann was the opposite of the pushy posh fuckers you are thinking of, he was always going back to London because he couldn't stand all those people.
Actually I was thinking of the ambitious hacks, often doing SPS, who had a fashionably leftish pose (but without much substance). You know the type, wrote shallow, but controversial, articles for Varsity, or got involved in student politics. Had usually read the right people (or at least pretended to have done), but showed no sign of ever having read anything out of curiosity, or the sheer love of it.
Oh, and hey Peter, the crazy "Kenneth Joseph" story didn't (according to Lexis) appear in the New York Times, nor the Washington Post, nor any "etc." It appeared in the Washington Times (a paper run by the Moonies, I think) and was only picked up by Fox and the Daily Mail....and Johann Hari, so not "standard journalistic practice" - so whatever Private Eye's motives, a fair shot sureley
Ann On
Have I got this right? In his pro-war phase Hari told some fibs (or picked up some of the large number of fibs that were being tossed around at the time). But then he realised that he'd made a mistake, so the Decents are mad at him. Because of being mad at him some of the Decents are accusing him of being a fibber on the basis of the things he said in his pro-war phase. But Nick Cohen said that we shouldn't demonstrate against Blair when he was telling fibs.
Moussake Man
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