Tweet dreams

The BBC is making such a meal of the latest Trump offence that the whole thing is beginning to look utterly ridiculous. Can’t they see how absurd it all is? For one thing, the way announcers and newsreaders are forced utter the word ‘Tweet’ with straight-faced, end-of-the-world solemnity.  As if that wasn’t daft enough, they have to wade through tittle-tattle that sounds as though it’s being relayed straight from the playground.  

As matters escalate from molehill to mountain, we are at the stage where campaigners against Islamophobia - the Islamophobia-phobes - are vigorously pushing for the government to disinvite The Donald from the pencilled-in state visit. 

Trump’s Tweet to Theresa May has been officially interpreted by the BBC as a “rebuke”, as has Theresa May’s response. Although on yesterday’s Daily Politics James Rubin refuted this while unsuccessfully trying to bring matters back down to earth. 

“It was not a rebuke,” said Rubin, “it’s just The Donald being The Donald, It’s what people from New York are like!” (as in: ‘He’s from Barcelona’ )

According to Rubin, no-one in the Trump administration takes “our lot’ seriously, and no wonder. Amber Rudd and co appear to be entirely in thrall to the media. If she was in a stronger position Theresa May should have risen above it. Maybe she, and ‘our lot’ would have, if only the media and the crazies in the Labour Party had allowed them to. 

Or maybe not. Conservatives everywhere are melting away. The paper formerly known as the Torygraph has gone soft left, and the Times, with over-promoted lefty columnists like Caitlin Moran,  appears to be following suit.    

“Donald Trump gave us boost in supporters, says far‑right group Britain First” screams the header on the front page of today’s Times (£)  “MPs criticise president for anti‑Muslim retweets” says the strap line.

Inside the headline goes further: “Halt ‘fascist’ Trump’s visit to UK next year demand MPs” and, sad to say, that is indeed what MPs actually said in a specially convened debate. Imagine that. A specially convened parliamentary debate about a Tweet on Twitter.

On p 35, the leading article titled ”Bitter Tweet”  the Times’s editorial concludes that “to disinvite the president would be counterproductive” qualified by a whole lot of other pointedly restrained outrage at Trump’s latest misjudgment.  

Aren’t we used to Trump’s misjudgments by now? Why get so apoplectic at this one? Because, Muslims.

By the way, I can sympathise with Sajid Javid when he said (about Britain First)

So POTUS has endorsed the views of a vile, hate-filled racist organisation that hates me and people like me. He is wrong and I refuse to let it go and say nothing.

“They hate me” is exactly how I feel when I see Jeremy Corbyn and his sycophants and flunkies being treated with respect and given credibility by the media.  You can’t help taking this as a personal slight, even when you are an atypical representative of the intended recipient of such a slight.

Last night’s Question Time spent the bulk of the programme discussing “Hate”, and if there’s anything in Roald Dahl’s theory that ‘hate’ manifests in the ugly countenance of the hater, there were a lot of haters present. (I can’t stand Dahl by the way. As well as being an antisemite,  his repressed childhood is behind all his literature)

"I have become antisemitic"

If you’ve seen Pat Condell’s video about hate crime (H/T Daphne Anson) you’ll be aware that we are blindly stumbling into a an Orwellian / Kafkaesque nightmare. I await the knock on the door with a loaded phial of whatever Slobodan Praljak took. (if only I could get hold of the recipe.)