Handy Dandy
Oh well. After my last post (immediately below, so no link), Nick is rather good and it's the CiF comments which are outrageous.
See Jack Straw, rightly, is refusing to let an unrepentent thief go. (Life imprisonment for theft; let's just cut off their hands as well, then!) If the young Ronnie Biggs hadn't decided to become a thief rather than work for a living then the elderly Ronnie Biggs wouldn't be in prison now. (Gosh, it's all so simple isn't it?)
Nick at least sees that the issue is Jack Straw's vindictiveness, rather than the morals of Ronnie Biggs. I don't think a great deal of Mr Biggs, for the record, but he's not an elected official and he doesn't lecture other people about principles.
It's taken some time, but Nick's found a new article to write. Friendly criticism does work.
See Jack Straw, rightly, is refusing to let an unrepentent thief go. (Life imprisonment for theft; let's just cut off their hands as well, then!) If the young Ronnie Biggs hadn't decided to become a thief rather than work for a living then the elderly Ronnie Biggs wouldn't be in prison now. (Gosh, it's all so simple isn't it?)
Nick at least sees that the issue is Jack Straw's vindictiveness, rather than the morals of Ronnie Biggs. I don't think a great deal of Mr Biggs, for the record, but he's not an elected official and he doesn't lecture other people about principles.
It's taken some time, but Nick's found a new article to write. Friendly criticism does work.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 7/05/2009 09:17:00 AM
56 Comments:
Agreed - although there's an awful lot of padding in it - three fairly unenlightening quotes from Lear and a tangential, not-especially-funny bit of a fairly unknown book?
also this sticks in the throat:
the patriotic decision of a homesick exile to return to England in 2001
that's not really the whole story, is it?
It's not a wonderful article but it is something new and it is better than the average column from Nick. There is none of the snarling at the liberal-left, for example. The heading and the sub-heading are also good and clear, though somebody else probably wrote those.
There is a slight contradiction in Nick's argument. If the train robbers have some of the aura of folk-heroes, Straw isn't necessarily playing at cheap populism by keeping Biggs locked up.
Guano
Straw isn't necessarily playing at cheap populism by keeping Biggs locked up.
?? Kettles boil, dogs' tails wag, classes struggle, Jack Straw plays at cheap populism.
BTW, this actually provides an opportunity to assess the limits of tab-service populism. Given the (wankerish) fan base, and the Sun's record of glamorising Biggs, it's very true that he could have come down on either side of the fence - either lay off Biggsy, always nice to his mum, etc, or else MAKE THE BASTARD GROVEL.
You see the one he picked, though; when in doubt, it's the state violence that wins.
Nick has a new column, and thank God for that. It's not an issue I have any really strong feelings on, but at least it's an improvement.
OT, but see this:
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/07/us-and-them-2.html
Good old Professor Normblog is musing on teh librul left's silence (!) on Iran and Zimbabwe. He still hasn't written a word on Honduras. Norm of course leaves himself an out by saying that it's people's free choice whether to speak out on issue x or issue y, but then comes back to say that it's the trend of people criticising Israel rather than Burma or Korea that he finds suspicious...
What a sneaky bastard. You can see why he was so good at dialectics.
Sorry, that link should be here.
Apologies from the html-challenged.
Reminds me of Chomsky on the liberal press, actually.
Oh God, don't tell Norm that. The comparison wouldn't sit well with him I fear.
But all the same, the left's silence on Iran? When it's been the main topic of conversation for weeks? Or maybe it isn't at Islington dinner parties...
"the left's silence on Iran"
The term silence here has quite a special meaning.
Essentially, it has been determined in advance of any actual silence that a corrupted left will always be silent about the atrocities of Enemy N.
Even if we are not silent, even if we are very loud, even in fact, if we are the only people making any noise on the subject, nonetheless when we turn to certain pundits, we will discover that we were silent and that our silence conveyed approval.
The non-existent silence will then be used against us when a Decent-approved atrocity is committed.
Silence about atrocities is just one of those things that war opponents on the left do. Like longing for mass death to vindicate our arguments, supporting fascists and justifying attacks on our public transport system when not actively cheering for them.
How we live with ourselves, I don't know. Let's not blame Norm, he is just the messenger.
Not a bad Nick column,as they go. It does, come, however, with the Tory talking-points now usual with him. Eg. condemnation of pointy-headed academics with their "sociological jargon" (and post-modernism, no doubt). Similarly, the state 'throwing money' at problems only to the benefit of bureaucracy and limp-wristed do-gooders, who in turn are incapable of doling out the needful to "serious criminals"
The idea that experienced staff might be re-deployed rather than fired is, of course, anathema.
He'll come out as a Tory yet.
It's the 'i had harry fletcher in the back of my cab' article. (How come Fletcher gets such such an easy ride in the press, by the way?)
Thatcher heavily contaminated the Tory brand and this makes it very difficult for someone like nick to turn. However, beer goggles could conceivably attract him to Red Toryism.
There's nothing red about it, its "Tug the Forelock" toryism.
Even if we are not silent, even if we are very loud, even in fact, if we are the only people making any noise on the subject, nonetheless when we turn to certain pundits, we will discover that we were silent and that our silence conveyed approval.
This is especially annoying when you have a genuine 1980s photocopier-smuggling project on. Want to get satellite phone airtime into Iran? Not a whiff of interest. I must be a premature whatever.
OT, events in West China are potentially tricky for those who urge must take sides with one of two sets of combatants in the GISOOT.
Communist tyranny or Islamic rebels?
My money's on Communists getting the Decent backing, but there could be a split.
My money's on them ignoring it completely, frankly.
Aaro today is pretty scattergun, wanking on about conspiracy theories again. I guess the book isn't selling well; all the same, the column is really tedious, nutpicking in excelsis, and there's no coherent theme other than 'conspiracy theories are bad'. I'd have more time for Aaro's defence of the BBC if it wasn't treated like a racist, conspiracy-obsessed pariah on 'my favourite political website'.
Decent batsignal about Press TV appears to have been shone in recent days - Bright and Cohen for example, it's extended to Dominic Lawson today. I can't quite work out why it's taken them so long to realise that Saint Andrew Gilligan (formerly evil, of course, but anti-Ken thus Decents love him) working for an Iranian propaganda station is a bit problematic.
Martin Bright says Gilly will 'presumably resign soon'. So that's ok then. Meanwhile, anyone Decents disapprove of who works for Press TV gets it in the neck and Cohen, free speech enthusiast that he is, suggestes the station should be taken off the air.
Incidentally, if one wanted to see a genuine example of the metropolitan liberal-left betraying democracy, one could go to the Independent editorial on the Honduran coup. I expect it has already gained a Decent notoriety right up there with Caryl Churchill and Seumas Milne's "gilded youth".
Mind you I'm a bit out of touch here in the mountains.
That Independent editorial was awful. What were they thinking?
The response to the death of Macnamara has been interesting. Most of the obituaries have been, if not respectful, then at least a little coy in discussing his full involvement in Vietnam. Few mention the Vietamese death toll. I imagine the Decents will give this one a body swerve since it fits so uneasily with central narrative.
Which editorial?
30th June editorial.
Linked to the Cohen above. His most recent blog post praises David Cameron in an incoherent but sincere manner...
Bonus point for his really very hard to understand question about Iraq which he seems to think is a masterstroke.
"Drunk again, I admired David Cameron. Then went to some rich lawyers party, bleating about Brits torturing terrorist-suspects. I bet you love Saddam, I mumbled into my drink . The snooty snob lawyers ignored me , but they won't ignore my new hero Cameron when he deports one of their terror-suspect friends to somewhere he can be properly tortured"
It takes an unusually obtuse character to go to a party at a fucking law firm and be surprised to discover lawyers there.
Nick's piece isn't quite as bad as that. I think he's right about Cameron - he does look beyond the base, and poverty and global warming are real issues which most Tories wouldn't recognise.
And Nick, accidentally I think, even deconstructs himself. An academic pointed me towards the star guest of the evening, a lawyer who was prosecuting British soldiers for torturing Iraqis. "Did he oppose torture and genocide in Saddam's Iraq?" I asked. This was not so much the wrong question as an incomprehensible question.
It is an incomprehensible question. In a sense, Nick seems to think that everyone should have a blog and write regular entries of the form "Down with ..." This seems to be what Harry's Place mean by opposing for example. And I suspect that Nick wouldn't take the answer "He's a member of Amnesty" as evidence of opposition to various oppressive regimes. Very strange.
BTW, didn't Nick used to be an admirer of one of Matrix Chambers' better known silks? And not known just for "human rights cases" (which I think Nick uses here as code for 'librul ambulance chasing') but "employment and discrimination work". This is the old Nick in 2004, for example.
Is Denis MacShane on topic here? His use of Ecclestone's Hitler-loving loonery to promote his made-up Institute and his trope about 'anti-democracy becoming fashionable' (='just cos I claimed for 8 laptops doesn't mean you should think I'm a crook') surely counts as at least honorary Decency.
Dennis Macshane, Euston signatory, member of both LFI and the HJS. What do you think?
also, to judge from recent columns, nick cohen's sole Westminster source...
"I always admire a man who tells his audience what it does not want to hear", and thus I tell you, readers of Standpoint magazine, that David Cameron is an excellent leader of the Conservative Party.
Wow, the Independent. Rentoul, presumably?
"Did he oppose torture and genocide in Saddam's Iraq?" I asked. This was not so much the wrong question as an incomprehensible question.
As andrew adams says in the comments over there, the question is irrelevant, but it's also a pretty weird thing to ask, a whole six years after Saddam was deposed.
Also has that typically Decent idea of what 'opposition' might mean - as if voicing disapproval after the torture has stopped is the equivalent of actually, you know, prosecuting people for the crime in the here and now.
And if the Orwell prize performance is anything to go by, I imagine the question was genuinely near-incomprehensible in its delivery as well.
Cameron did not go the whole hog and say that the banking crisis had shattered the Thatcherite illusion that markets could be left regulate themselves,
well now that really is a surprise, isn't it, given that Cameron's party was lobbying for less regulation until shortly before Lehman went under...
I guess we don't need to look for any more evidence that Nick is going to lobby for the Tories. I thought the whole point of 'Etonians' was how awful and evil Cameron etc were, and how terrible Labour is for letting them back in?
My guess is that he's halfway to "we deserve a Tory government", which will be followed by "we need a Tory government" (as shock therapy) and finally "we want a Tory government" (we all know deep down that the only politician showing any consistent commitment to liberal principle is, paradoxically, most of the Lib Dems, various individual Tories (not including Cameron) and a good half of the Labour back benches... erm, I mean, David Cameron).
These days Nick's politics basically consist of
1. Leftistsss, we hates 'em
2. Vote for a donkey with a Labour rosette
and 2. is becoming less imperative over time - the Brown premiership has had a lot to do with that (although God knows it hasn't been that bad - to read Private Eye these days you'd think we were in the last days of Callaghan).
It's not even the 'donkey' thing any more, he endorsed Brian Paddick (ie the anti-Iraq-war, spectaculrarly underprepared candidate who had no chance of winning whatsoever and had previously sought the tory nomination) for London Mayor. and I guess the gist of the dull-as-fuck Etonians introduction is that we deserve a Tory govt.
I always thought the weird thing about Nick's adoption of the phrase 'liberal-left' is that he's never really been a liberal, the use of the word was a transparent attempt to appeal to US wingnuts.
I don't really think anyone sensible believes Brown's been as bad as Private Eye and Nick make out. The Eye have a tendency to berate whoever is in charge, and Nick unconvincingly blames Brown entirely for the financial mess the world's in, but then spends the rest of his time bigging up the most right-wing members of the Labour Party, at least in terms of their views on the economy.
It's really funny that Nick wanks on about speaking truth to power, when both he and bessie mate Maretin Bright now have the equivalent of leftie-bashing columns in right-wing magazines.
It's almost as if NC was always just another wino journo on the make, isn't it?
1 See niche
2 Occupy niche
3 Pay in cheque
Chris Williams
I think it was Matthew who first noticed that hatred of liberals has been the one constant of Nick Cohen's otherwise somewhat scattershot political career - first he hated them from the left, now he hates them from the right - and that this was somewhat unfortunate for him in that on nearly every important political question of the last twenty years, liberals have been right and he has been wrong.
give or take the usual slippage between UK and US meaning of "liberal", i think this also applies to hitch -- though he also despised old labour pretty comprehensively
i was hunting for something in a.cockburn's "the golden age is in us" (which i totally recommend incidentally; even when he's saying something appalling, alex c. is twenty times the sentence-maker m.amis has ever been) and i found a sour little entry on the new statesman feat.one dennis macshane, addled clinton-booster
'hatred of liberals has been the one constant of Nick Cohen's otherwise somewhat scattershot political career - first he hated them from the left, now he hates them from the right - and that this was somewhat unfortunate for him in that on nearly every important political question of the last twenty years, liberals have been right and he has been wrong.'
The problem with this statement is that 'liberal' can mean almost everything. Even Andrew 'progressive taxation is an abuse of government powers, whilst dropping bombs on foreigners is all good' Sullivan is known as a liberal.
' i think this also applies to hitch -- though he also despised old labour pretty comprehensively '
I don't know that much about the history and development of Hitchens' thought (though he would probably fudge it in retrospect). However, I've noticed that one leitmotif (as he would probably call it) is a desperation to be on the winning team.
I remember reading him saying that he sort-of voted for Thatcher by not voting for Callaghan because he admired her 'moral courage'. I was also impressed by how suddenly the 'fighting words' author went from thinking that Obama was 'a pussy' to supporting him, when the opinion polls showed that McCain was out of it.
He's been writing for years that the conservatives are finished but I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote something in favour of Cameron now.
"The problem with this statement is that 'liberal' can mean almost everything. Even Andrew 'progressive taxation is an abuse of government powers, whilst dropping bombs on foreigners is all good' Sullivan is known as a liberal."
I think the L word is inherently disabled in any realistic transatlantic discourse because of its "lost in translation" usage.
His association with Republicanism and the right was more on the libertarian side of things.
The facts are that Sullivan said words to the effect that "I was wrong about post 9-11 and associating myself with neocons".
At least he did this. Nick would probably have loved to done a similar confessional mea culpa (and I've misused mea culpa there but fuck it) but because he has been fighting a war on so many fronts for so long than he can't appear to backtrack.
So I think DD's statement is correct.
"I think it was Matthew who first noticed that hatred of liberals has been the one constant of Nick Cohen's otherwise somewhat scattershot political career - first he hated them from the left, now he hates them from the right - and that this was somewhat unfortunate for him in that on nearly every important political question of the last twenty years, liberals have been right and he has been wrong."
Nothing much has been out of that radar. Which is why he comes across as the thinking man's Jeremy Clarkson.
And the only thing that separates NC from Aaro in trot bashing is that Aaro is more calculated and, hence, one to watch.
on nearly every important political question of the last twenty years, liberals have been right and he has been wrong.
Not sure I'd agree with this at all, you know. And as Gregor observes, there's going to be some definition problems.
Have to say, Nick is pisspoor in the latest Eye. From the opener, you would assume that he'd nailed Derek Wyatt MP as shilling for Ahmadinejad.
On closer examination, this boils down to a complaint that Press TV (funded by the Iranian government) doesn't describe the Iranian government as Islamofascist thugs. As incisive criticism goes, it's a bit like complaining that the Sun doesn't call Rupert Murdoch a bastard.
And Wyatt? He sometimes goes on Press TV as a talking head, which obviously means he agrees with everything Ahmadinejad says and does. You know, the same way Nick obviously agrees with all the Bat Ye'or gobbledegook that appears in Decentiya.
In many ways, the Iranian government is ideologically neoconservative. Is PressTV, then, Decent?
"Not sure I'd agree with this at all, you know. And as Gregor observes, there's going to be some definition problems."
Well,in the strict terms of the debate or thread - in this case. Of course "liberals have been right and he has been wrong" is strong and I can't presume to know what DD meant. But, if I understood it correctly, it was an attempt to look at Nick's geographic political landscape rather than a blast. Especially with regard to Matthew's arguments in positioning NC politically and psychologically as liberal - baiter. In those terms it fits the bill.
looks like my new Eye is the victim of the postal strike. But on Press TV - Oliver Kamm's appeared on it several times, only to then showboat that he'd stopped, to the collective praise of Decents (some would ask, why go on it in the first place, but hey, judging by their collective love-in for the bigot Nick Ferrari who left his show, looks like leaving is more important than not sppearing at all); and friend of the Eye Andrew Gilligan has a show on it too.
As I've said before, this is decent batsignal stuff - they've given up showing solidarity with Iranians (which in any case they did by, er, blogging about how certain fringe left groups aren't doing so on internal mailing lists, and, well, that's about it), and have decided that whingeing about press TV is the new GISOOT.
this 'agreement by association' thing is really odd. I mean if you go to Nick's Standpoint blog, and lok to the right of the screen, you find a link to an article called 'power to the spokespeople', written by Douglas Murray, someone a lot closer to the standpoint editors than Wyatt is to Ahmedinejad. and it's really quite breathtaking - and is praised effusively in the comments section.
By Nick's logic, he must agree with all of it...
Re: Cohen, I've said a few times before that it's very far from clear what his views actually were fifteen or twenty years ago, and I'd want to know rather than, say, assume they were those expressed in the Labour Party General Election Manifesto of 1983. But the one thing I do remember about Cohen's early prominence as a columnist was that his one big theme, week afer week, was the moral turpitude of the Blair coterie. I think he was right about this, and I think he was right when liberals (which is of course a difficult group to pin down in a number of ways) were much slower to see how loathsome they were.
I personally think this may be because I reckon liberals very much supported Blair's rise in the Labour Party, because he was against the Left, against the unions and against Old Labour, all of which were groups they viewed with varying amounts of disfavour. Fair enough, but as I've also said more than once on here, to understand that process you need to look at more than the policies, you need to look at the process - which involved the deliberate and systematic destruction of Labour Party democracy and accountability and its replacement with autocratic rule from headquarters.
So some people thught they were getting a liberal moderniser: what in fact thy were getting was a small, illiberal, cynical, undemocratic and corrupt clique. I think Cohen knew this and said this when liberals, by and large, did not.
"it's very far from clear what his views actually were fifteen or twenty years ago, and I'd want to know rather than, say, assume they were those expressed in the Labour Party General Election Manifesto of 1983. But the one thing I do remember about Cohen's early prominence as a columnist was that his one big theme, week afer week, was the moral turpitude of the Blair coterie."
Precisely. And therein is the problem.
That he correctly perceived the entire entourage for what it was and saw the inevitable shift to the right coming a mile away. Makes his latter opinions so odd - and his real beliefs elusive.
Does he just despise the bandwagon jumpers? It certainly would explain all of his au contraire posturing.
Yeah, and he was right on specific issues such as PFI and the government's treatment of asylum seekers. He now seems to dismiss his old writings as knee-jerk anti-Blairism. He's a bit like those commenters at HP who boast of how they initially opposed the invasion of Iraq but have now seen the error of their ways.
Jesus, that Private Eye piece is even weaker than Splintered Sunrise made it out to be. A lot of it is a whinge about the channel, only tangentially connected to the MP in question, and the discussion of the coverage of the shooting is almost certainly cribbed from you know where.
Expenses stuff seems tacked on, since according to pretty much everyone, 'commenters' on Pres TV are not paid. Cohen takes the Sky dollar to do paper reviews etc, he should surely know this is a poor quality line of inquiry. I mean Oliver Kamm has appeared on Press TV numerous times, does this mean he agrees with the Iranian regime? etc etc.
Incidentally, you can tell when Cohen is on rant-as-opposed-to-reasoned-article mode, because he throws the kitchen sink at stuff to make it look relevant, when in fact it's only really relevant if you're a HP Sauce type obsessive with all their pre-existing prejudices. The idea that it's Press TV which is the burning issue of today, even if you have a genuine interest in Iran, is pretty laughable.
some people thught they were getting a liberal moderniser: what in fact thy were getting was a small, illiberal, cynical, undemocratic and corrupt clique. I think Cohen knew this and said this when liberals, by and large, did not.
I think this is right - though this makes it all the stranger to see Cohen lining up behind people like Purnell now. He seems to have shifted the blame for every right-wing New Labour policy onto Brown. No doubt Brown is responsible for a lot, but he's hardly on his own, and he's not even the most extreme Labour Party member when it comes to things like deregulation and PFI.
I think that the 'bandwagon jumpers' thing has legs, in a sense - he seems to dislike what he considers 'mainstream liberal opinion per se, and you can trace a lot of the more boneheaded stuff he's come out with recently back to that - in a way, the support for the Iraq war stemmed from that as much as anything else. and I guess you can also trace that back to his early New Labour stuff, since they enjoyed huge popularity with the middle classes, though probably not as much as Nick wants to pretend. It's pretty funny that his Obs page used to be called 'without prejudice', since his opinions now seem to be motivated almost entirely by prejudices, and he is less and less able to conceal his prejudices behind ostensible appeals to reason.
But this certainly doesn't explain everything - his genuine opinions now are incredibly elusive, which is not really a good thing for a political columnist.
There was a kind of blindness about Blairism among the liberal-left (if you take this to mean middle-class people who don't usually vote Conservative). During 2002 it was difficult to get this kind of person to see that Blair was talking rubbish about Iraq, even though they should have been intelligent enough to see that Blair wasn't actually "making a case" but was making unproven assertions and using very doubtful logic.
There was a shift among this group in December 2002 when weapons' inspections began but the UK government fairly clearly started preparing the ground for rejecting the result. Thousands of people wrote to their MP and to the press over the 2002/2003 Xmas/Hogmanay holidays. The liberal-left had woken up. Nick however had at about the same time received the INC press-pack and had gone off on a different tack.
Guano
DA did a report on the week in politics for last night's ,This Week, nothing that memorable, though I thought it was usual for such commentators to be invited into the studio for further discussion, perhaps he couldn't find the time in his busy schedule.
and if we're still watching cohen, he's on the guardian weekly politics podcast. I can't listen where i am, but according to the summary, his thoughts on the NoTW story are... that it will make it harder to relax libel laws. or something.
[from spanish campsite on old nokia so forgive typos] thanks to dan for reminding me of my old quote. I wouldnt say liberals were always right, its more that when someone attacks you from the left then right on often the same issue its best to leave them alone.
Apologies for being completely OT, but as quite a few of you chaps wasted precious life minutes listening to our latest "dire" Aaro interview, I thought it only fair to point you in the direction of this week's interview with Kathy Olmsted, which with any luck you might find a tiny bit less dire.
http://www.littleatoms.com/sounds/kathyolmsted.mp3
I should also admit that I hadn't heard of Kathy's book Real Enemies until I read about it on this blog, so thanks for that. If anyone reading this didn't get the book after Daniel mentioned it, you really should, it's brilliant.
Good interview LA. But doesn't bring much to the table in terms of relativism v empiricism in the context of conspiracy theories. The book looks sound though, thanks for that. And my line of thinking is of a similar construct. Conspiracy theories post 63 are largely structured around the same anatomy of an event. But that is an aside in a sense.
Massively massively OT but this is getting fucking ridiculous
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8145603.stm
Wham bang thank you Nam...
"Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded to the news of the first two deaths from Italy, where he is attending the G8 summit.
"This is a very hard summer, it's not over but it's vital that the international community sees through its commitment [to Afghanistan],"
I'm currently in late 60's counter-culture mode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdeCxJmcAo&feature=related
So excuse the anger and pass the splif.
Thanks very much Atoms! And in gratitude for this, I will not do the sarcastic post I had planned linking to your interview with James Delingpole, who comes out this week in the Spectator as a fully-fledged global warming denier!
Clearly anyone who appears on PressTV is a jewhatingantisemite and/or an apologist for islamonazifascism.
So who do we see on PressTV having a cosy chat with the Gallloway monster?
http://www.presstv.ir/programs/player/?id=98760
Step forward David Cesarani plugging his latest book, 'Major Farran's Hat'.
Be warned Cesarani, Nick Cohen has you in his sights!
DD, We'd hardly have reason to complain if you did. It's the least we'd deserve for that one!
I think I'll do a post on PressTV on the front page.
The Delingpole piece might have been fun, I mean he's basing his whole anti-AGW argument on that discredited nonsense by Ian Plimer FFS.
(Aaro trivia - Dave stuffed Delingpole on the way to his mighty triumph in the book quiz last series).
Blimey, that's two of us on Spanish campsites. Anyway, just seeing as the Eye has been mentioned....nothing to do with Decency, but that is the Brian Glanville in Pedantry Corner, isn't it?
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