Excuse me but….I’m…I’m just a little groggy right now. I’ve stopped seeing double but my hands are still shaking. I just managed to avoid hitting my head on the desk as I went down but I hit the floor with a thud. I only hope I haven’t broken anything.
I think I have recovered just about enough of my constitution to link to this editorial in the Daily Mirror:
“The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world’s only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.”
“But don’t blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand – assuming you haven’t had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.
I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush’s poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be – rich, free, strong, open, optimistic.”
Wait a minute, did I say that was in the Daily Mirror? Let me just check [Pause]. Yes, it was the Daily frigging Mirror!! John Pilger’s dead-tree mouthpiece; Britain’s most popular left-wing tabloid. These are the people who have been running a TV ad campaign inviting the public to regard George Bush as a more dangerous tyrant than Saddam Hussein. Have the proprietors been locked in a cellar somewhere?
And what about the author, Tony Parsons? Not in the Pilger league for sure but still a long-standing, card-carrying member of the sneering leftie ‘intellectual’ classes. Well, at least he was until now. Has someone implanted a chip in his brain?
Would some functional adult please go and read the whole editorial and tell me that I wasn’t just hallucinating, because the world isn’t supposed to be like this. In truth, I am sort of hoping that I am just seeing things because if I am not then we at the Samizdata have to face the thorny problem of there being no more idiots left to denounce. What are we going to do then, for chrissakes??!!
Nope, not hallucinating – and neither was I when I wrote about it on Sept. 19. 😉
Sorry, shameless self-promotion and all – I actually think I’d read it before that somewhere else.
It does leave one a bit shocked, doesn’t it? Maybe the Mirror got hacked much like Blogger…
David, I blogged this myself on Sept. 13! when it was run in the Daily Mirror… here:http://www.greatestjeneration.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?tb_id=378
Wake up, hon! There are some good Brits around like you, Tony Blair (sometimes) and Tony Parsons.
Now put your head between your legs and get some air: we need you!
There’s lot more work to do in the West’s War on Islamist terrorism!
Wait a minute, wait a minute, WAIT A MINUTE!! Am I trapped in some Kafka-esque netherworld here?
Are you people trying to tell me that this has been published before? And I missed it!!!!????
No, wait, I know what this is: it’s a conspiracy to drive me out of my mind, isn’t it. Yes, you’re all in on it. Aaaaaaaargghghhhh……
Moreover, Parsons wrote the phrase “dust encrusted nutjobs” – a lift from Rantburg?
There were a couple of other phrases that held a bloggish ring.
You couldn’t tell but perhaps he lurks …even now
Philip
Yes, you’re right, it does have a bloggish tang to it, doesn’t it; the same punchy, pithy style that has become the leitmotif of bloggers everywhere.
Well, well, well….
“What are we going to do then, for chrissakes??!”
Have a lot of parties? Have a Samizdata plinking party out in the country and see who can drink the most beers and still shoot the bottle off the fence? Open a coffee and weed cafe in Chelsea?
I dunno. We’ll think of something. Free people usually do.
Come on, chaps, Tony Parsons has long been my favorite lefty. He had the good sense to divorce Julie Burchill, after all…
Do brace up there, old chap. Surely Dale could devise some kind of protective gear for you to don in future before attempting to read such a rag. In today’s clime, one must be prepared for anything and everything. We can’t have you risking life and limb like that again.
Yeah, I nearly spat my tea over the paper when I saw that. The world went topsy turvy!
Julie Burchill, what a waste of a waist. If she’d just lose 3 stone, I’d give her the serious spanking she so clearly needs to smack some sense in back into her.
Parsons is kinda cute though.
Do calm down. Stiff upper lip and all that.
The piece was originally published 11 Sept. 2002. I suspect he was temporarily driven sane by media-induced sentimentality, and will return to normal shortly.
Pedants’ korner: it’s ‘The Mirror’ now not the ‘The Daily Mirror’ and it’s not an editorial. Piers ‘Moron’ Morgan is Mirror edtor these days, not Tony Parsons. And yes – the item really has been around for time, not least at Instapundit, which is where I found the (disbelieving) link. You feeling OK, David? I know it’s windy and everything, but…
Sometimes Mr Parsons remembers that he is a man.
Paul Marks.