Comments on Aaronovitch Watch: Falsetto

you're right about that being the most crazy idea ...

2008-06-28T17:58:00.000Z

you're right about that being the most crazy idea - allied with that really strange approach to the Afghan war, whereby asking why we're there is akin to denying terrorism iexists or something. As usual with people opposed to C4 news, what cohen seems to want is a more partisan and more
infantilised approach to reporting. Asking someone 'didn't you used to be a communist' ad

I saw 'Standpoint' in Smiths too. It was prominent...

2008-06-28T17:28:00.000Z

I saw 'Standpoint' in Smiths too. It was prominently displayed on little shelves behind the assistants. I imagine the publisher pays for that. If so, they ruined it by having such an unspeakably ugly cover.

I was joking about the book review, by the way. It's just that Snow's book seems to be Nick's only source, so what else to call it? What will he do next month? Ask why so many people

Incidentally am I the only one to find the use of ...

2008-06-28T15:04:00.000Z

Incidentally am I the only one to find the use of 'unmanly' as an insult staggering

I suspect he thinks he's channelling Orwell.

I've just been thinking about this a bit more: Con...

2008-06-28T14:58:00.000Z

I've just been thinking about this a bit more:

Conservatives should pity rather than condemn the liberal locked in the gilded cage of broadcast news. For these are lives half-lived.

There is a shift from the penultimate paragraph's 'politically engaged presenter' to the final paragraph's 'liberal'. This is hardly Orwellian plain style, in fact it is actively dishonest

I saw standpoint in WH Smith's the other day. A si...

2008-06-28T14:23:00.000Z

I saw standpoint in WH Smith's the other day. A single copy costs £4.50. I'm not entirely sure how getting Nick Cohen to review books which came out four years ago (even when the only time the book is mentioned is in a quotation from another review) is going to convince anyone to part with their hard-earned cash for such poor quality writing and editing - enlisting Melanie Phillips to repeat her

There also appears to be quite a bit of falsetto s...

2008-06-27T18:05:00.000Z

There also appears to be quite a bit of falsetto shrieking in some quarters whenever Jon Snow or the Sandanistas are mentioned.

Moussaka Man

Incidentally, I can remember Jon Snow carrying out...

2008-06-27T15:09:00.000Z

Incidentally, I can remember Jon Snow carrying out a will-you-condemn-a-thon on an animal rights activist (who personally had done, advocated or supported nothing that was violent or dangerous) on the occasion of the conviction of another, unconnected activist for endangering life.

As I remember it, she even condemned one thing and then instantly was asked to condemn another. And now

Nick seems to be turning into a weird hybrid of Hi...

2008-06-27T13:05:00.000Z

Nick seems to be turning into a weird hybrid of Hitchens and Mad Mel. He seem to have taken on Hitchen's penchant for attacking sacred cows, and they don't come more impeccably liberal than Snow. He also seems to have adopted Mad Mel's overwrought and very angry writing style. You can almost feel the venom in some of the passages.

Surely, the charge that a dull-witted and

* obviously i have excluded Afghanistan, as Macsha...

2008-06-27T12:55:00.000Z
* obviously i have excluded Afghanistan, as Macshane refered only to events in Europe.

James O

'But he did not report Daniel Ortega acting as an ...

2008-06-27T12:52:00.000Z
'But he did not report Daniel Ortega acting as an altar boy in Berlin in 1985 at a high mass of Stalinist reaction, where the Sandinista endorsed the repression of Solidarity in Poland'

As a trotskyist, I obviously carry no sympathy for the former Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe but it's worth putting in context the fact that by 1985 the deaths at the hands USSR and its allies could

May I just mention in passing that the opening of ...

2008-06-27T09:08:00.000Z
May I just mention in passing that the opening of the news report on the Saudi visit is just priceless. I'm still laughing.

[redpesto]

I get the feeling this was partly an off-cut from ...

2008-06-27T07:46:00.000Z
I get the feeling this was partly an off-cut from "What's left" - that's why he is reviewing a 2004 book in 2008. He's revived it because he needs to blame the meeja for the failure of everybody to line up behind decency and be less mean to neocons. Oddly enough, Nick is a personal example of where media bias lies. the old left wing Nick had one column in the Observer, and was paid peanuts to

But he did not report Daniel Ortega acting as an a...

2008-06-27T07:34:00.000Z
But he did not report Daniel Ortega acting as an altar boy in Berlin in 1985 at a high mass of Stalinist reaction, where the Sandinista endorsed the repression of Solidarity in Poland.

I recall this quite well and McShane's point is straight out of the Decent Tardis. The Sandinista government was in its seventh year, and for most of that time it had been under military attack by