Ian Hislop; the ballerina

Did we dutifully watch Ian Hislop’s piece about Fake Noos? I did but unfortunately kept dozing off -  partly due to the previous night’s insomnia. 

I hope you’ve got access to The Times’s (£)  review by Carol Midgley because this is going to be a review of a review. Ms Midgley usually comes out with fairly perceptive analyses of programmes I’ve watched. 

While her take on “Motherland’ is spot on, in my humble opinion the Hislop review lacks a certain something. 

Yes, the example of the false-flag fake story planted merely to hook a rival’s plagiarism was entertaining and informative, as was the tale about the child sex-ring fake noos linked to Hillary Clinton and the near-fatal consequences of the hatred engendered by it - but did Hislop allude to the fall-out from the equally apposite ‘credible and true’ business? If so, I missed it due to one of my unconscious phases. 

Then Ms Midgley says:

“Hislop was variously playful, concerned, droll and exasperated in an intelligent film that treated viewers as if we have a brain, which makes a nice change. Donald Trump’s version of “fake news”, Hislop said, is “real news that he doesn’t like”. By denouncing real news as fake, he added, Trump and his supporters allow real fake news to flourish. “

Here we go. Trump. 

Hislop did indeed mention the alarming tendency we all have to believe what we want to believe regardless of ‘facts’, and I’m reliably informed that while I only was half-awake he cited ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ as an example of debunked, disproved and demonstrably fake news that still refuses to be put to sleep by those that ‘like’ it.  But he also cited that great authority on impartiality, Mark Thompson. It’s a wonder he didn’t bring in John Sweeney while he was at it.

The Times is veering further and further away from us. (me.) (eg., Caitlin Moran? She has a way with words, granted, but will she ever grow up? 

Does Carol Midgley treat readers as if we have a brain? Let’s assume she watches HIGNFY. Is the BBC  still regarded as impartial? Does The Times still pass for a right-of-centre paper? Does Carol Midgley really think Ian Hislop is a balanced and thorough adjudicator of purveyors of the truth?  A credible and true authority on Fake Noos? 

There are too many elephants silently squatting within Hislop’s world view. Maybe I should just have resigned myself to my slumbers.

Is it a dolphin in a bathtub?

There's been much talk hereabouts about the new series of Have I Got News For You.

For this new series Ian and Paul both have old-fashioned landline telephones on the desks in front of them and speak through them at all times. This is so they can dial it in each week, just as they've been doing for years now. (Boom! Boom!)

If you missed it, here's a sample of it at its funniest. (Spoiler: That's me being sarcastic - though the punchline at the end isn't bad).

Picture spin quiz

Ian Hislop: This is a physicist at CERN who said that the history of physics was largely created by men. He implied that women weren't very good at physics, but nowadays there are so many women getting jobs in physics that men couldn't get a job. I didn't really follow his argument. 

Alexander Armstrong: Do you remember what his name was, the professor? 

Naga Munchetty: Idiot. 

Alexander Armstrong: He was Professor Alessandro Strumia from the CERN laboratory project. That's part of the Large Hadron Collider, isn't it? He's upset female scientists and womenkind. One of his claims is that Oxford University has lengthened its science exams by 15 minutes specifically to help women. Why is this so shocking? 

Josh Widdecombe: Because it's not true?

Alexander Armstrong: No. Because it is true. According to the Telegraph: "Students taking maths and computer science examinations in the summer of 2017 were given an extra 15 minutes to complete their papers, after dons ruled that 'female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure.'" 

Naga Munchetty: Have we got much longer? I'm feeling a bit faint. 

Ian Hislop: I'm going up to get more paper. 

Alexander Armstrong: This is the Italian scientist who told a group of female physicists that physics was invented by men. Professor Anne-Christine Davis, a physicist at Cambridge University said, "I just don't know what planet he lives on." I'm afraid you've rather played right into his hands. 

The 'crimes' of that "idiot" professor, as BBC Breakfast's right-on, oh-so-impartial Naga so charmingly called him, were first exposed to the world by the BBC. He's now been censored, to the point that it's no wonder that Ian Hislop can't follow his original argument. (Wonder if Ian's bothered to look into that?).But is Professor Strumia actuially a very modern 'heretic' and more sinned against than sinning? (Links abound).

After all that, we probably need a laugh, so here's a funny joke:

I have a bumper sticker that says, "Honk if you think I'm sexy". I just sit at green lights until I feel good about myself.

Some sort of agenda

Don’t you just hate hearing people saying would when they “really meant” wouldn’t.
Ditto, people saying anti-Semitist when they “really meant” anti-anti-semitist  (or something). 

That’s pretty silly stuff, with a distinctly humorous tinge. Far less amusing is the BBC‘s crass insensitivity (!) in choosing to broadcast unadulterated pro-Palestinian propaganda in the form of the creepiest passive-aggressive grievance-mongering from: 

Raja Shehadeh, the award winning Palestinian writer, lawyer, and founder of the human rights organisation, Al Haq recollects a humiliating experience on his way home to Ramallah. Read by Peter Polycarpou.

What timing. Why, anyone would think whoever commissioned this virtually unlistenable drivel for this week's  Book of the Week (BBC Radio 4) had some sort of agenda.

********

The only reason I subscribe to the Times these days is that I can see the comments below articles such as  Daniel Finkelstein’s. (£)

Jeremy Corbyn is blind to the racism in his party. Here’s a taster:

Complacently, I had always assumed that what happened to my parents couldn’t happen to me or my children. There were too many liberal, progressive people who wouldn’t allow it. I no longer believe this with the same confidence. (I found it really painful to write those words. I deleted the last sentence twice, but I left it in because, sadly, it’s true.)
It’s less the antisemitism itself that has induced this fear. It is the denial of it. The reaction I expect on the left to the rise of antisemitism — concern, determination to combat it, sympathy — is not the one I’ve encountered, at least not from supporters of the leadership. Instead there is aggression, anger at the accusation, suggestions that the Jews and zionists are plotting against Jeremy Corbyn.

Even though a few notable Jewish figures have started expressing similar concerns to the ones outlined above, their ambivalence vis-à-vis “the case for Israel” shines through. Maybe it’s partly a fear of falling foul of ‘rule 1a’, (dual loyalty) but I think it’s much more likely that it's down to pure ignorance, or (in other words) a lifetime of being under/ill-informed by biased reporting.

Looking quickly through the comments, I spotted Ian Hislop’s name. Not that the views of smug arbiters of moral righteousness through the medium of satire particularly interest me, but Hislop leaps straight to the Nation-State law, and cites Daniel Barenboim’s dodgy Guardian op ed, to boot.

One ambivalent asaJew refers to “incessant land-grabs by Israeli settlers.”  Incessant land grabs? Now, there’s a typical example of the effect of absorbing a listening-lifetime of selective, misleading, partial and agenda-driven journalism.

Ian Hislop: Who should we let on our screens?

Due to recurrent insomnia I often nod off during a programme I’ve deliberately stayed awake to watch, if you’ll forgive the slight oxymoron.

That may have been the case with Ian Hislop's: “Despite all the racist scaremongering in Victorian times we ‘let the Jews in’, so despite the current racist scaremongering we must ‘let the Muslims’ in now” programme. (BBC 2, 22nd June) 

Just in case I missed the bit where Hislop pointed out the difference between the racist scaremongering apropos the Jews (which didn’t turn out quite as bad after all) and the racist scaremongering over current mass Muslim immigration, (over which the jury's still out but it's not looking good) I turned to the press reviews. 

Oddly enough, the only reviews I could find were in the lefty press, plus the Telegraph, a kind of honorary member.

Strange to tell, there was one thing in particular upon which they were all agreed. What got their goat above all else was Katie Hopkins, whose very presence defiled the programme. If twinkly Hislop insisted on having her there, he could at least have punched her in the face. Poor Rachel Cooke of the New Statesman almost threw up, but she gave Hislop a gold star.

Chitra Ramaswamy of the Guardian was full of praise for the programme, but had a caveat: 

“Hislop (granted, another posh, white, Oxbridge-educated man here to teach us about foreigners) is on razor-sharp, twinkly-eyed form, reminding us that it was not ever thus.”

 Oh yes, and another. She wasn’t keen on Katie either: 

“ it’s time to cease giving this preacher of hate a mainstream platform.”

The Telegraph’s Michael Hogan went straight for the jugular:

“Liberal-baiting battleaxe Katie Hopkins will doubtless steal headlines for her typically toxic appearance on Who Should We Let In? Ian Hislop on the First Great Immigration Row (BBC Two) – causing a stir is, after all, the tiresome professional troll’s job – but it would be a shame if Hopkins overshadowed what a thorough and thoughtful film this was. “

I’m pleased to report that the sufferers of ostrich parasitic syndrome who made the programme and wrote the reviews got a bit of a drubbing below the line.

Have I Got Tigers For You

Just to promote a point made in the comment fields of an earlier thread....

This week's Have I Got News For You saw (Establishment lackey) anti-Establishment hero Ian Hislop making a suggestive remark about BBC bias. 

The first segment had focused its satirical mockery on Labour - which, to my mind, is quite unusual for the programme. 

Of course, all of that mockery focused personally on Jeremy Corbyn (which surprised me a good deal less). 

There then followed a short burst of mockery for Tim Farron over the gay sex thing.

And then came the utterly charming mockery of an 84-year old UKIP lady...a "would-be councillor in Glasgow". 

When they mock UKIP, even an 84-year-old woman who isn't even a councillor (and who only wants to be) is obviously fair game. 

Oh, how the audience laughed at her!

(Makes you proud to pay the BBC licence fee, doesn't it?)

At this point Ian began chomping at the bit to have a pop at the Tories, saying:

Are there no questions about the Conservatives at all? Is that the new BBC policy?

The typical metropolitan BBC comedy audience burst into huge applause and cheers. (They must be the same kind of people who tweet about the BBC being 'Tory' on Twitter).

Ian was being very helpful to the BBC there. ('Complaints From Both Sides' and all that.)

Kirsty Young, however, said that the Tories would get their share of the mockery soon enough - and so they did,...

(And they kept a little more till the very end when they did a 'Jacob Rees-Mogg is posh' joke.)

....as indeed they did the previous week when mocking of those very Tories dominated the first few minutes of the programme (with Ian in his element) and mockery of Jeremy Corbyn (personally) was a mere passing whim.

Still, I laughed quite a bit at this week's HIGNFY - especially at the statue of the tiger mascot of the Siliwangi Military Command in Indonesia. The police there had commissioned a statue to represent the fierce and noble beast which they'd chose to represent everything they stand for...

and this was it: 

When asked why did the statue didn't end up looking like the ferocious beast it was supposed to resemble, the police spokesman said it was because "the artist was not that good".


Update (h/t a reader): Now, for a truly fierce beast from an artist who is good, here's Percy Metcalfe’s magnificent Lion sculpted for the Palace of Industry at the British Empire Exhibition in 1924:

Private Eyes

This morning's Broadcasting House made for a pleasant listen, as ever.

This week's Slow Listen feature (minus any sighing) featured a minute's worth of the sound of a steam train in motion (along the magical Settle-to-Carlisle railway). I'd have happily scrapped The Archers for a full hour of it.

The paper review featured Britain's only Conservative-supporting comedian - his phrase! He was quite funny, and certainly much funnier than Vince Cable.

The big interview of the day was with Ian Hislop of Private Eye, in the wake of the apparent eruption of satire (mainly Saturday Night Live) since Donald Trump became president. 

Paddy kept telling us how well the magazine is doing, sales-wise - especially since Brexit and Trump. And Ian sounded as pleased as (Punch) punch about that.

Paddy did disagree with Ian a bit. Paddy (being Radio 4) suggested that satire is predominantly left-wing. (Listening to Radio 4 comedy, who could blame him for thinking that?). Ian said that's not actually true and that satire is, in fact, inherently conservative (with a small 'c'). 

Paddy also raised the following concern: 

If we come home, do you think that the Conservative Party have been given a free pass, in the sense that there's been a lot of focus on the Labour Party's divisions, but David Cameron has run off to the Cotswolds. He called the In-Out referendum. Boris Johnson was stabbed in the face by Michael Gove. And yet the attention of the media, pretty much, has been on the Labour Party. Is that fair?

All I can say is that Paddy mustn't have been watching Have I Got News For You very often!

Divided we fall

...But we can’t insulate ourselves from the outside world.  Someone posted this excerpt from Question Time on Facebook, with the comment:

“Ian Hislop says those who voted remain can still have their say, despite the UK voting to leave the EU.”

Many ‘shares’ and comments appear below the video, including:

“It is a ridiculous fuck-up. General election now - Corbyn for PM.”

 “We might end up with a socialist government out of this, Oh how I hope for that.”

“Or just ignore the results of the referendum”

“It wasn’t a mandate.”

Outside world?

Let me just say (forgive the repetition) I do not have a Facebook account. This was posted by adults on someone’s timeline. (That someone wisely chooses not to engage in political discussions on Facebook.)

There have been avalanches of posts of a similar nature (citing both Corbyn and Bernie Sanders) on Facebook for months. 

Does it make you wonder why so many people appear to be completely confident that continually sharing their opinions on Facebook is acceptable? 

Also, why do they assume that the extreme political left is the norm?

As they say on t’interweb, am I missing something?