The Daily Mail: an apology
That is, an apology for a newspaper. Yesterday's Mail (Aug 1) was bought randomly as my mother needed something to read, and lo and behold if there wasn't another slack and silly article by Sir Max Hastings. I guess I should take it as a slightly belated birthday present.
First, a quick mention for Paul Scott's attempted hatchet job on Mel Gibson. It's obviously too much to expect any lay reporter to have a decent grasp on soteriology, but the combination of pejorative language and inflated gossip is...well, crass, although it's patched together with the competence you'd expect from a professional.
But really: 'religious fanatic'? 'Dogmatic approach'? Or, as we know it in the real world, 'believing Catholic.' Gibson may be anti-semitic, but the Mail could be accused of covert anti-Catholicism (and even if he is, what he reportedly did is hardly on the radar of what celebrities impose upon us). And yes, The Passion of the Christ may be 'blood-soaked,' but it's about the crucifixion, what would you expect? And it was indeed 'condemned as being rabidly anti-Jewish,' but not by anyone who actually saw the film, or at least who saw the film without a rabid determination to find anti-semitism.
Enough of such silliness and back to a very smart guy whose own anti-Americanism is painfully obvious, the more so for the recurrent ejaculations of 'we owe [America] a huge amount' and 'no sensible person suggests we should quarrel with the United States' and so on, all of which has the painful ring of 'I'm not prejudiced, but...'
Try and make sense of 'it is not anti-American, merely decently British, to recoil from the notion that US bombs for Israel are being freighted through our airports.' I can't. Is Sir Max saying that it is decently British to be squeamish? Or does this only apply to US bombs? Or bombs for Israel? Can we supply our own bombs? Actually no, we can't - the tenor of the article is a revulsion at Israel's actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Sir Max 'fears' may lead to 'some ghastly atrocity in Britain.' Personally I think it's decently British to recoil from the notion that, should there be another suicide bomber on the Underground, the former editor of the Evening Standard will pin the blame on Tony Blair for supporting Israel.
Even apart from the shrill and wafer-thin argument, Sir Max's bold assertion that Tony Blair is pursuing a foreign policy because he 'heard tills ringing' and wants a pension from 'the rich Republicans whom he loves' is unfortunate. He must have had a very short deadline. And to throw in a hopeful jab at 'US corporations, which have waxed rich and fat' is the sort of lame idiocy that would look bad in the Yale Daily News.
Sir Max admits that most people supported action against the Taliban. The very next paragraph cites President Bush for 'pursuing an ideological agenda of his own which had nothing to do with crushing international terrorism.'
Apart from the hack-use of 'idelogical agenda' as negative words, as if the author was a free-floating mass of pragmatism (with which I won't tar Sir Max), what is this ideology? And what is the agenda, if not to crush terrorism?
We don't know, because Sir Max doesn't tell us. Oh, but it's got something to do with 'neo-conservatives.' But then, Sir Max probably doesn't know. He knows he's furious that Britain is being 'dragged ever deeper into a confrontation with radical Islam...which there was probably no avoiding. We must face it with resolution.'
Of course, that ellipsis covers two and a half paragraphs, and illustrates the splenetic inconsistency. Truly, the Sir Max doctrine suggests clear as day that we had to confront Islamism eventually, but it would have been so much better if we avoided it as long as possible. Presumably this would have been fine if we'd avoided it with resolution.
And if we hadn't gone into Iraq (not, as a sidenote, the 'chaos' Sir Max would like)? Whether you agree with the invasion or not, Saddam would now be funding suicide bombers in Palestine and Lebanon and Sir Max would be inveighing mightily against Israeli actions.
Heigh-ho. How Colonel Blimpish, or (as they say in America), how September 10. But how demeaning of Sir Max to write such a piece.
First, a quick mention for Paul Scott's attempted hatchet job on Mel Gibson. It's obviously too much to expect any lay reporter to have a decent grasp on soteriology, but the combination of pejorative language and inflated gossip is...well, crass, although it's patched together with the competence you'd expect from a professional.
But really: 'religious fanatic'? 'Dogmatic approach'? Or, as we know it in the real world, 'believing Catholic.' Gibson may be anti-semitic, but the Mail could be accused of covert anti-Catholicism (and even if he is, what he reportedly did is hardly on the radar of what celebrities impose upon us). And yes, The Passion of the Christ may be 'blood-soaked,' but it's about the crucifixion, what would you expect? And it was indeed 'condemned as being rabidly anti-Jewish,' but not by anyone who actually saw the film, or at least who saw the film without a rabid determination to find anti-semitism.
Enough of such silliness and back to a very smart guy whose own anti-Americanism is painfully obvious, the more so for the recurrent ejaculations of 'we owe [America] a huge amount' and 'no sensible person suggests we should quarrel with the United States' and so on, all of which has the painful ring of 'I'm not prejudiced, but...'
Try and make sense of 'it is not anti-American, merely decently British, to recoil from the notion that US bombs for Israel are being freighted through our airports.' I can't. Is Sir Max saying that it is decently British to be squeamish? Or does this only apply to US bombs? Or bombs for Israel? Can we supply our own bombs? Actually no, we can't - the tenor of the article is a revulsion at Israel's actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Sir Max 'fears' may lead to 'some ghastly atrocity in Britain.' Personally I think it's decently British to recoil from the notion that, should there be another suicide bomber on the Underground, the former editor of the Evening Standard will pin the blame on Tony Blair for supporting Israel.
Even apart from the shrill and wafer-thin argument, Sir Max's bold assertion that Tony Blair is pursuing a foreign policy because he 'heard tills ringing' and wants a pension from 'the rich Republicans whom he loves' is unfortunate. He must have had a very short deadline. And to throw in a hopeful jab at 'US corporations, which have waxed rich and fat' is the sort of lame idiocy that would look bad in the Yale Daily News.
Sir Max admits that most people supported action against the Taliban. The very next paragraph cites President Bush for 'pursuing an ideological agenda of his own which had nothing to do with crushing international terrorism.'
Apart from the hack-use of 'idelogical agenda' as negative words, as if the author was a free-floating mass of pragmatism (with which I won't tar Sir Max), what is this ideology? And what is the agenda, if not to crush terrorism?
We don't know, because Sir Max doesn't tell us. Oh, but it's got something to do with 'neo-conservatives.' But then, Sir Max probably doesn't know. He knows he's furious that Britain is being 'dragged ever deeper into a confrontation with radical Islam...which there was probably no avoiding. We must face it with resolution.'
Of course, that ellipsis covers two and a half paragraphs, and illustrates the splenetic inconsistency. Truly, the Sir Max doctrine suggests clear as day that we had to confront Islamism eventually, but it would have been so much better if we avoided it as long as possible. Presumably this would have been fine if we'd avoided it with resolution.
And if we hadn't gone into Iraq (not, as a sidenote, the 'chaos' Sir Max would like)? Whether you agree with the invasion or not, Saddam would now be funding suicide bombers in Palestine and Lebanon and Sir Max would be inveighing mightily against Israeli actions.
Heigh-ho. How Colonel Blimpish, or (as they say in America), how September 10. But how demeaning of Sir Max to write such a piece.
posted by BoB at 2:28 PM
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