Sunday 23 September 2018

Oh!


Obviously, the topic of the moment is Theresa ‘not-for-turning’ May. But I’m not going to write about that. I haven’t been dwelling on it. To be honest (always am) I’m a bit bored with Brexit now. I feel helpless and fatalistic about it and as far as I can tell (maybe not far) the BBC hasn’t performed much more one-sidedly over unfolding Brexit news than other news organs have. Let’s see how the Sunday programmes handle it. 

cruelty

Instead, I’m going to write about something trivial and largely unconnected with the Beeb.  I can’t remember where I came across it - perhaps below-the-line on Biased-BBC - but it concerned one of the Deborahs. I always get my Deborahs confused. There’s Deborah Orr, a Guardian columnist with whom I fundamentally disagree about everything, particularly her choice of husband, albeit a relationship that seems to be unravelling, and the other one who writes in The Times. Orr and Ross; the similarities in those letter sequences add to the confusion. Deborah Ross is just one of a cavalry of amusing lady columnists whose multifarious and light-hearted pieces entertain even if they don’t especially inform or educate. 

chuffed

What has she gone and done now? Well, she’s written a vituperative piece about Katie Hopkins, and caused a small below-the-line uproar.

What’s disappointing is that someone like Deborah Ross should choose such an easy target. Katie Hopkins sets out to stir shit, so why bother berating her for that? That’s her MO. However, the excessive schadenfreude in Ross's uncharacteristic rant is unbecoming and also a bit stinky.

I’d say to Deborah, so I would (if I were Irish) “now that Hopkins has suffered the financial consequences of her outspokenness and stubbornness, your satisfaction and your all-out gloating negates any righteousness you might feel from Katie Hopkins ‘getting her just deserts’. “

The thing is, that Katie Hopkins is (marginally) my kinda gal. She says stuff that some of us ‘think’, at fleeting moments, in the privacy of our own heads. Rude thoughts; who doesn’t have them?
Also, Jack Monroe is insufferable, although she seems to have mellowed with the hairstyle, and as for Laurie Penny with her squeaky opinions, give me Katie Hopkins any day of the week.

Hopkins’s combative style and radical fundamentals are what makes her stand out. That’s it. She’s not a very good interviewer, especially with someone she agrees with. She needs an argument to raise her above the mediocre. I watched her ‘soft’ interview with Anne Marie Waters and it struck me she would never have got very far, career-wise, without being outrageous and obnoxious.
Deborah Ross even manages a passing swipe at Tommy Robinson. Good grief, say something original. That’s your job.

*******

If I hadn’t already binge-watched it, I’d have been tuning in to BBC One to see “Killing Eve” last night. I thought the adaptation was terrific and Jodie Comer’s performance as an engaging, nay, loveable murderous psychopath was mesmerising. I loved Sandra Oh, (great name) with those eyebrows that constantly shot up in consternation like the apex of a steeply pitched roof.  For once I agree with Hugo Rifkind.


5 comments:

  1. It seems that to point to a big pile of poo in your path and warn others now constitutes "shit-stirring"...

    I think of Katie Hopkins as a pointer and an alarm-bell ringer, not a shit stirrer.

    It is terrible the way anyone who steps slightly outside the magic PC circle is immediately set upon, hounded, shunned socially, vilified, prosecuted...It's a form of social control, no different from the Victorian era when the same thing would happen to anyone who denied the deity, talked about sex honestly or otherwise went beyonds the bounds of 19th century morality.

    Our commentators of the 4th estate are increasingly taking off the mask and declaring themselves opposed to free speech and democracy. Matthew Parris had an article in the Spectator recently explicitly arguing against democracy, not just on Brexit (obvious enough), but on a whole range of issues.

    And now we hear that the loudest cheer Corbyn got at his leader rally (translate into German - it sounds better) was when he sinisterly announced his intention to introduce "democracy" into the free press in the UK. We all know what that means: commissars checking the articles and cartoons for non-PC content.

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  2. I've never heard of Deborah Ross. Is she American? It doesn't constitute PC content but when did the favourite vulgar four-letter Americanism (“Massive dick” is more truthful, I think, as is “vile shit-stirrer”) become the language of the English press or public written media that like to keep it clean and clear of swear words and the like? It does now seem to be the preferred spoken language of the young and lazy or inarticulate here too. And on more informal social media.

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    1. She must be the film critic for the Spectator. She's pretty PC in a brain-dead sort of way. She didn't like the Crazy Rich Asians film but she couldn't just leave it at that...she had to spend half the review saying she was glad it was made...presumably for its upping of Asian portrayal quota. Fraser Nelson has let a lot of these PC types roam freely across the august journal's pages. :)

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  3. I am neither Deborah Ross nor Deborah Orr but with a name like mine I thought I better post something here. I am sorry if Katie is made bankrupt although I don’t agree with her on everything, she says what others dare not. The same for Milo. I assume that making them bankrupt is a way that the Left is silencing them. Neither gets recommended to me on YouTube and I have noticed that my recommendations these days are for recipes for cup cakes (and I hate cup cakes) rather than political debate. Free speech is being prohibited by the Left.
    Just to make this comment BBC relevant. Farmers Weekly reported that in areas where badgers are being culled, cases of TB in cows have fallen by over 50% (sorry I am away at the moment and FW is at home so figure not exact), do you think we will hear an item about the success of the cull on Countryfile?

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  4. Who should we really be frightered of? Katie Hopkins and Anne-Marie Waters? -

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wZufWaa3EM

    Or Corbyn, McDonnell, Butler, Cooper, Lammy, Creasy, Soubry, Grieve, Hammond, Clarke, Blair, Mandelson, Adonis, Campbell, Dick, Hall, Davis, Wark, Maitlis, and 1000 others?

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