The Aged P

Rod Liddle at the Speccie has gone all Dan Brown and reckons he’s cracked the UKIP code….it’s a London thing…

 I suspect that the real pull of Ukip in England is that the party, and Mr Farage particularly, are seen as a corrective to the vapid, flaccid, spineless, politically correct and wholly London-centric mitherings of what, until May next year, we must call the main three parties.

I do love it when media hacks and TV pundits who know frack all about UKIP and its 40,000+ members pontificate about the motives of its supporters and why it is rising in the polls. Fact is these scribblers and prattlers have long lists of contacts in the lobby and among the bright young things at party HQ (whose parents they know from their own Oxbridge days)…they are all constantly networking, sharing gossip and swapping nannies.

UKIP leadership cadres simply do not move in these circles and, until a couple of years ago, were, at best, politely ignored or, more often, treated with contempt by these hacks. Even today, like their political contacts in the three main parties they cannot bring themselves to contemplate the possibility that the tectonic plates have shifted. Come “real politics” next May they are convinced that UKIP will fade away and once again North London dinner parties will be where it’s all happening. – so why bother to cultivate any UKIP contacts?

Hence the tendency to treat the party in a similar way to those newly discovered tribes from the depths of the Amazonian forest. There are a few photos published in the Daily Mail alongside a report big on hype and short on facts, a brief flurry of media interest that peters out after six days – and then the whole story just..evaporates.

I suppose it was a bit like that in St Petersburg in the last few months of 1916….

Interesting story from Guido Fawkes about how last December a journalist tried to get newspapers interested in an article about the BBC pulling the Savile exposure and highlighting some of the issues raised by it

I was told by several of the papers that taste was a factor in their decision but in at least one case the Leveson Inquiry, which was then at its height, was mentioned as being a problem as well. It’s common knowledge that at that time no paper wanted to take on what could turn out to be a controversial story, so they didn’t.”

Remember at the time the odious quartet of Steve Coogan, Max Mosley, Charlotte Church and Hugh Grant were swaggering from studio to studio being celebrated as heroes by fellow showbiz weasels. Who can doubt that in the febrile atmosphere of the moment, if he had been alive and some of his creepy antics reported he would have joined them in their well rehearsed performances of upright citizens hounded by malignant hacks. Indeed Charlotte Church was at it again a few days ago on the ITV chat show hosted by the oily Jonathon Ross, the man who has transformed insincerity into an art form.

Church, who was really there to push her seventh musical comeback, blathered on about being a timid and retiring soul deeply scarred by a vindictive media . But it all sounded a tad self serving in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

The fact is these showbiz types need the media to keep their names in the public eye. Hence they are circulating constantly using their latest book, film, play, therap, divorce, rape or arrest as a hook to get their faces in the camera lens. Their publicity drones flood the airwaves with their presence to “maintain the profile”. These dysfunctional , self centred parasites need the oxygen of the media to flourish and survive. Hence the hypocrisy of attitude – they want to control medium by exercising a personal veto on all publicity that is not to their liking.

The Savile /BBC scandal is a timely reminder that the media must not be hamstrung by legislation which restricts their ability to tell us something about the darker side of these glittering stars….

Obviously the BBC has not made much of this story…..I wonder why?

Oxford educated left wing Guardian hackette Marina Hyde (“one of the funniest and most admired journalists in the UK”) might be getting the smallest Oxfam charity Christmas card this year from her editor Alan Rusbridger who had to endure the humiliation of seeing his face spread over The Sun as the tabloid helpfully pointed out

The much hyped Ms Hyde, the daughter of Sir Alastair Edgcumbe James Dudley-Williams, 2nd Baronet, blends in perfectly with the well born radical chic crowd at The Guardian burnishing their NW1 dinner party credentials by bashing the “rich” and the Tories. But it’s perfectly clear that this was a story that fitted so neatly into the Guardian’s Murdoch manic obsession she didn’t even bother to check it out.

Epic fail.

But her career will not suffer. Socialist hacks live in a risk free environment when it comes to peddling untruths because the golden rule of left wing journalism is that truth = what ought to be true rather than what is true. There will be no explosion of indignation from media colleagues for this shoddy piece of gimcrack “journalism”. No thundering broadsides from the BBC for it is now open season on Murdoch, not because of the hacking and blagging that anyway was probably par for the course for all tabloids, including the left wing Mirror – but because Murdoch and The Sun switched their support from Labour to the Conservatives in the final months of Gordon Brown’s tenure at No. 10 – and the many years of Murdoch supporting Labour were immediately conveniently airbrushed out of history.

Hence the lack of BBC interest in this story.

But imagine the outburst from the BBC if it had been a Sun reporter inventing stuff up about The Guardian. …..

Aaaaahhhhh….the sweet sense of liberal left hypocrisy in the morning…..

Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.

warbles airhead hackette Rachel Quigley ( @rachelq82 ) at the UK Daily Mail, referring to the recently published “book” about Palin written by Joe McGinniss. Quigley proceeds to list several of the allegations mentioned in the book and also references articles from the “National Enquirer”, an American supermarket tabloid.

With McGinniss being spit roasted even by such Palin unfriendly sources as The New York Times and Michael Smerconish one might fairly ask of Ms Quigley why she wasn’t a little more curious about the author’s credibility and motivation.

But then elsewhere the Mail publishes a vomit inducing puff piece which essentially allows McGinniss to offer a weasel defence against the criticism of the unattributable nature of his “sources” and you then begin to realise why a third rate scribbler like Quigley was wheeled in to pen such unmitigated rubbish.

She was probably ordered to write it (most likely in crayon on a large sheet of drawing paper) by the mysoginistic editor Paul Dacre who believes that women are best suited to be in the Mail’s right hand side bar to be ogled or derided for their appearance while the chaps do the heavy lifting of running the world.

Unlike the Mail, which has ever been a rag, the UK Daily Telegraph has always claimed to be a serious paper of repute. But the DT has consistently and gleefully treated Palin with a degree of contempt and disdain that almost rivals that shown by the liberal left media of the USA. So they have put their own third rate scribbler, Nick Allen ( @nickallen789 ), on the McGinniss beat with instructions to keep the pot boiling.

A few days ago Mr Allen was as high on his McGinniss crack as Rachel Quigley, prophesying that the book would destroy Palin’s political career. But sadly even the myopic Allen had to weave an element of truth into his National Enquirer musings when he was forced to admit that there was some evidence that support for her was growing rather than crashing.

We now await with bated breath how ace reporters Quigley and Allen react to the latest evidence which tends to buttress the belief, widely held outside the medieval chambers of the Mail and Telegraph, that McGinniss is merely pimping the delusions, lies and unfounded rumours being constantly recycled along the wilder shores of the blogosphere by a group of dysfunctional misfits…..

Is that crickets I hear?

Martin Kettle, an associate editor of The Guardian, is deeply saddened by the fact that in the UK we align politicians with car salesmen and estate agents as the least trustworthy of all professions.

He blames – the satirists.

Today’s satire is deeply cynical, depicting British politics as a nest of fools. It may make us laugh, but its impact is not funny

Moreover he fingers the two faces who, he claims, are most to blame for this sorry state of affairs, “Private Eye” editor and HIGNFY panelist Ian Hislop and political blogger Guido Fawkes.

Without them, no doubt, we would be seeing our politicians in a different light – even on a par with doctors who are perceived as the most trusted of professionals ,regarded as truthful and public spirited.

Yeah, right…..naturally Kettle, as a journalist, makes the assumption that Joe and Jane Public are too dim to draw conclusions from their own observation and experience so they must have someone else to tell them what to think.

What is truly fascinating, however, are the names he did not include – Mark Thomas, Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle et al. Hear these and any other TV or radio comedy with a political edge and you soon discover that to a man or woman they are left wing, pseudo marxist, rainbow and unicorn preachers of political correctness. They were weaned on Thatcher hatred and transferred their bile towards Blair because he recognised that Labour could only gain power by suppressing the student union leftism that drives their “comedy”. Luckily for them their views were and are shared by those in the upper reaches of BBC programming – hence the absence of any right wing comedy on mainstream TV/radio.

Hislop and Guido are great mockers of Cameron, Osborne and the Tories, just like Thomas and co. But – and here is the key to Guardianista Kettle’s discomfort – they also mercilessly lampoon the left wing media/political/cultural elite. What is more, they regularly shine a light onto the cant, hypocrisy and mendacity displayed by many editors and journalists in the smug, self satisfied world of the media……Martin Kettle’s world. For what he forgets to tell us is that our regard for journalists is as low as our view of politicians and estate agents….

Crocodile tears, Mr Kettle, crocodile tears…..

That Robert Stacy McCain is a feisty young fellow and he lets us depraved and decadent Europeans have it with both barrels over sexualising young girls – and he has the pictures to ensure we know what he’s talking about.

With our vasectomies and birth control and taxpayer funded health services we are sooooooooo degenerate and Stacy never misses a chance to trawl through the UK tabloids to warn clean living Americans against the perils of the European primrose path to perdition.

After all you would never get this in America, or this…and no US retail outfit would do this.

And those Australians – they must be protesting against something seedy coming from Europe, not from Texas….

Meanwhile surely only European 14 yr old girls would ever be so blatant….

BTW JonBenét Ramsey would now be 21….

In answer to the current phone hacking accusations swirling around CNN’s Piers Morgan (aka Piers Moron in the UK) the old smoothie adopts his standard posture of injured innocence.

“Not me, guv – must be that other bloke”

Moron hopes that his cheeky chappy routine will once again provide the appropriate coating of Teflon to deflect all accusations so that any future employer will willingly decorate his court jester’s hat with even more golden bells.

And he might well be right for Piers sees himself as another Bill Clinton – someone who still walks high with the Cultural Elite despite seducing a young White House intern and ejaculating over her dress. He realises that the liberal/left media will give a pass to one of their own but cry havoc and release the dogs of war if any UK Tory or US Republican even thinks of placing his hand where it shouldn’t be.

Piers, you see, is a champagne Socialist, former editor of the left wing UK Tabloid (and circulation dropping) Daily Mirror – and ‘twas he who wrote that headline about Americans after W won his second term in 2004

How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?

The trouble is, however, that the BBC/Guardian/NYT left wing media nexus has made such a big thing of the Murdoch hacking story that they forgot it was part and parcel of UK press practice for years alongside blagging into someone’s personal details via identity fraud and paying off sundry police officers and public officials for information.

It’s also the third dark cloud to be swirling around our hero since the turn of the century.

The ramped shares.

The faked photo of British soldiers abusing Iraqis

Both times PM has slipped Houdini like from the black hole that often sucks in those who sail too close to the wind. But this is Morgan’s third little “difficulty”.

As Goldfinger famously observed to James bond
“Once is Happenstance. Twice is Coincidence. The third time it’s Enemy action”.

There are other pressures as well – to be beaten by Rachel Maddow must be particularly humiliating…

Has Piers been finally hit below the waterline?

I wouldn’t put too much store by this bit of mischief making from lefty hack Nicholas Watt at the UK Guardian

It would appear that the reasons go deeper than Thatcher’s frail health. Her allies believe that Palin is a frivolous figure who is unworthy of an audience with the Iron Lady. This is what one ally tells me:
“Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.”

Exhibit A: The Guardianistas have always loathed Thatcher so beware of an item which implies left wing praise for anything said in her name

Exhibit B: Their positions on US politics will always reflect the latest brain numbing outpourings of liberal/left WaPo hack E. J. Dionne

Exhibit C: Ergo their attitude towards Palin will mirror those of Daily Kos mountebank Markos Moulitsas – in other words imagine trying to get any sense from an earwig on speed

Exhibit D: Note that the anonymous “source” is alleged to be an “ally” of Thatcher – journalese for a friend of the cousin of the man who services her dentist’s lawnmower

Exhibit E:No professional staffer of Lady Thatcher’s would employ the word “nuts” but you will frequently hear it at Guardian get togethers while the coke is being pushed along the glass table top

Exhibit F:Lady Thatcher is so frail she might not be able to receive any visitor with whom she is unfamiliar therefore the cunning Mr Watt can always perform his nudge nudge wink wink routine and claim he knows the real reason and by the way he happens to know that Buckingham Palace is up for sale and would you like to buy, discount for cash…

Then, of course, we might ask which ally sent this invitation to Palin a few months ago?

In other words this little Guardian anecdote is probably about as truthful as Weiner’s first press conference.

Alex Spillius must have “do a monthly hit piece on Sarah Palin” written into his UK Daily Telegraph contract

Supporters of Sarah Palin have attempted to edit the Wikipedia page on Paul Revere, the War of Independence hero, after glaring historical errors the White House hopeful made during her tour to Boston last week.

Indeed he implies that it might have even been one of her aides who tried to tamper with Wikipedia.

The oddest thing about this piece, though, is not the fact that Spillius fell into the Palin Trap by relying on Longfellow rather than doing a bit of research (actually he probably didn’t even go to his poetry book, just took his usual cue from the US media) but his characterisation of the bus tour. You would never guess that even CNN was admitting that Palin scored a home run with this project or that the latest poll was putting her as joint front runner for the GOP nomination. Spillius paints it as a feeble attempt scuppered by her own “ignorance”

Do you know what annoys me the most? Not that this guy writes a hit piece on Palin’s “gaffe” which backfires on him.

Can a leopard change it’s spots?

Can a weasel change it’s teeth?

Of course not.

It’s the fact that he gets paid large dollops of gelt for doing it.

Pass the sick bag, Alice….

An odd thing is happening in the UK media and I doubt it’s anything to do with Killer Cucumbers. After nearly three years of dismissing Sarah Palin as airhead homophobic racist religious bigot with a brain the size of a pea and the political savvy of a semi literate ant she is suddenly being treated as a human being with a claim to be considered as a serious operator in the lead up to the 2012 election.

Websites like The UK Spectator Coffee House and ConservativeHomeUSA (run by former Bush staffer Ryan Streeter and thought to be financed by UK multi millionaire Lord Ashcroft) are no longer equating her with Britney Spears.

But the proverbial biscuit must be taken by the flagship of the liberal left, The Guardian, where Richard Adams manages to write a full length article on her sans snark or snigger – indeed it could well have come from the pen of Dan Riehl or Robert Stacy McCain who, though not Palinistas, have always treated her with respect and defended her against weasels and mountebanks.

With the bus tour and hagiographical documentary, I think at this point we can assume Palin is going to run for the Republican nomination, unless tourists at Gettysburg start pelting her with tomatoes (unlikely) or her bus runs over a cute kitten named Mr Mittens live on Fox News (improbable).
I’ve said it before: Palin would be crazy not to run for the Republican nomination. Just look at the rest of the field. Since evangelicals’ sweetheart Mike Huckabee declined to run, the path is clear for Palin on the Tea Party/Christian wing. The three identikit Republican ex-governors running – Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman – squabble among themselves and split the centre-moderate-establishment vote. Palin crushes them all in South Carolina, the traditional Republican bellwether. Game over?
That scenario was sketched out for me by a Virginia Republican who is tepidly backing Romney – “Because there’s no one else.” He, like a lot of Republicans, is still waiting for a knight on a white horse to sweep into the race, Rick Perry of Texas being the most common name given to the knight, although Jeb Bush is also wistfully mentioned. The trouble is, time is running out and knights are in short supply.

Who the hell cares what a bunch of pansy Brits think (as one C4P reader once wrote about a post I did centuries ago on Palin and the UK media)

My thoughts exactly when reading US comments on our own election last year.

But our UK hacks never waste shoe-leather on researching the American political scene themselves. They take their cue from their US counterparts in New York and Washington and the gossip at Tina Brown’s media elite bunfights – and the message coming out from the salons is it’s time to treat Sarah Palin seriously.

Welcome to the club, guys, better late than never, as Wyatt Earp said to the Clanton brothers at the OK Corral….