Playing your cards right.

You know when you’ve made a bit of an arse of yourself and later you go over it in your head thinking up clever things you should have said? Well most of us just have to ‘get over it’. But if you’ve got a column in the Times, (£) you can have a go at a spot of retrospective self justification for real. Or dig yourself deeper into your hole.

Wealthy, plutocratic, Jewish villain

I’m talking Question Time - David Aaronovitch and The Homeless Man in particular. Fortunately for David, he can fill half a page of the Times with his rationalisation, a heartfelt plea that ‘I have been unfairly ‘embroiled’ in the Case of the Callous Hack and the Homeless man.’

But was it more a case of self-embroiling than having had embroilment thrust upon him? 

He kicks off with some annoying tactics, which involve playing a few of those virtual cards I keep hearing about.

Number one.  Mentioning the BNP. A King, perhaps. So the BNP did rather well in Barking, did it? Hmm. I wonder what he’s getting at. Nothing subtle, anyway. 

Next up, let’s call it a Jack. Self-pitying. “I was only doing me job - David Dimbleby made me do it, sir, honest.  Could I help it if the Homeless Man took the audience’s hostility to heart and made a dramatic exit?  I only said the Homeless Man had confused ‘his perception’ with reality.(Or did I mean I had confused my perception with reality?)” Hmm.

Using  caps for ‘The Homeless Man’, thereby making him seem less ‘man’ and more caricature. I know this because I did it myself, as a joke. That’s another card by the way. The ace.

“And then I became the wealthy, plutocratic Jewish (oh yes, that too) villain who did him in.”

Several cards all at once. Half a deck.

The Jewish thing -  the race card -  “Oh yes, that too” . Who was it, may I enquire, who actually brought that up? Oh yes, it was you. You were the one that implied that antisemitism had reared its ugly head in the past, ergo present-day anti-immigration sentiment was racist. 

You rightly implied that in the early 1900s the indigenous British were initially suspicious and resentful of Jewish immigration, but you ignored the undeniable fact that a great many of the immigrants that people currently fear and loathe are inherently antisemitic Muslims from the third world, especially when they appear unwilling to assimilate. 

You did not become those things - ( wealthy, plutocratic Jewish and villain) then though, did you? You started off as them; you were them all along. You came across as them and the audience thought of you as them. If it looks like a duck, quacks etc etc.

In other words you looked just like someone who hadn’t been particularly inconvenienced by suddenly finding yourself a stranger in your own town. 

You did become something though!  (to me at least) You became Nancy Dell’olio on the Great Immigration Row.  “Could you imagine Britain withou’me?” (Yes)

The problem was that you actually said you loved immigration.The more, the better. 

No no. You can only afford the luxury of saying such a thing if you’re well educated, financially secure, and have lifestyle choices. Not so much if you grew up in relative poverty in an area that has lost ‘social cohesion’. Not if you’re a stranger in your home town with no sense of security, little familiarity with, or understanding of your neighbours. Not if you’re dealt a crap hand.