Helmintholog

Hunter Thompson is back from the grave, and writing¹ something fun to read for the first time in — what? — fifteen years. Still, all his years lying in a vodka-soaked crypt, drifts of cocaine crunching everytime he twitched in his coma, seem like a bad dream now:

Kerry came into October as a five-point underdog with almost no chance of winning three out of three rigged confrontations with a treacherous little freak like George Bush. But the debates are over now, and the victor was clearly John Kerry every time. He steamrollered Bush and left him for roadkill.

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him “Mister President,” and then I felt ashamed.

¹ Of course, he might just have acquired a decent editor; but I’d rather have faith in miracles.

The Times obit of Glenda Lee Slagge was clearly written by a disciple, as these extracts show:

TO ACHIEVE the title of First Lady of Fleet Street, which Lynda Lee-Potter was not alone in having bestowed upon her, a woman journalist in the late 20th century required little more than the willingness of her bosses to promote her as such — and to pay her and the people she interviewed lavish sums of money …

Her easy, formless readability and her ability to fill acres of space — often a whole series of articles, not a mere double-page spread — were legendary. As the rest of Fleet Street knew, the Daily Mail’s ever-open chequebook — rather than her skills in tracking down the necessary victim — could pave the way for these tell-all confessions. Lee-Potter ensured that they got their money’s worth …

Though she could not be said to have a writing style, other than getting it all down, transcribing every single quote, and stirring up the results in no particular order, she did this with commendable efficiency and managed to extract some telling soundbites from her subjects …

Now why do I think this was written by a middle-aged woman who has been a star interviewer for a less successful paper?

I believe that Cory Doctorow lives in London now. But he doesn’t seem to have picked up much English: “These LED-illuminated, battery-powered, motion triggered toilet seats are bad-ass” he writes today.

Guardian readers in this country obviously get a kick out of watching Richard Dawkins, Antonia Fraser, and so on pleasuring themselves about the barbarity of Republicans. We have had a further kick from the Usenet-quality abuse which greeted this from parts of the USA. But I don’t think any minds have been changed, and the operation has now been shut down.

I suspect that the ‘”overwhelming response” they have received came once Fox News and CNN encouraged the wingers to pump their views into every Guardian email address they can find. As everyone knows, they have got HUGE willies, and lots of time.

A friend inside the building writes It’s appalling. They’re writing in their thousands, expatiating on the desirability of us keeping our butts out of their affairs, how they beat us in 1776, how they saved our asses in two world wars, how they’re stopping us being beheaded in our beds by towel heads, how we’re fucking commie-loving liberals who should eat our own shit. Oh and how we’ve all got bad teeth on account of our dentistry…All was well until the story appeared on CNN …

Ths interesting thing about this story is that it isn’t got up by the media. The Guardian didn’t need to incite a fear and horror of Bush among British readers. It takes an effort to write and post (snail) a letter, yet 14,000 readers wrote to Clark County voters. They have been counter-productive. They may well, in fact, have made more likely the thing they fear. But their fear and distrust was there before the paper tapped it.

Similarly, there’s nothing much phoney about the outrage this has provoked. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Americans really do seem to loathe and despise the British. Email is easier and infinitely cheaper than snail mail. So we can perhaps expect a lot more than 14,000 replies. But they don’t hate us because of the Guardian’s intervention, or because Fox News tells them to. It’s just part of their culture.

It’s a pity that ths should coincide with the row over the Black Watch being moved into Sunni areas. I think it’s absolutely disgraceful of Labour back-benchers to demand that our troops be kept out of danger. This war is wrong and immoral, but if we are fighting it at all, we should be at the front, and sharing the danger — possibly even doing a better job than the Marines we relieve. But then I’m a Guardian writer.

However, the alliance which this war was meant to cement gets weaker and weaker. Both stories show that, in their different ways.

Sometimes, to tell a story, an editor just needs to step out of the way. The Guardian’s op-ed page made a great catch with this rant, originally printed by David Horowitz, and warmly endorsed by Melanie Phillips. Among the key points:

• “I am aware that many Americans are leaving their homes abroad and returning home after decades in Europe because they can no longer endure the daily abuse.”
• “Where will it all end? I know many expat Americans – including non-Jews – who have received dressing-downs at social and professional gatherings.”
• ” I cannot conduct business or even take a taxi ride in Britain without a scathing tirade about the scurrilous Yanks.”
• “It is impossible to convey to Americans inside the US, or to American Jews, the open loathing of both groups that dominates daily life outside the US today.”

I’d say it was impossible to convey it to people in this country, too.

She includes some frankly incredible anecdotes of Americans being screamed at by complete strangers on buses or in shops for twenty minutes for being American and/or Jewish. Her explanation — but you’ve guessed — is that “Europe has always been a seething hotbed of anti-semitism. England, sadly, has the distinction of being the very first country to expel its Jews and initiate the blood libel.”

It is an important piece because a lot of Americans are going to believe it, and it will contribute to a gradually increasing misunderstanding and distrust on both sides. For the American readers here I should say that what she writes will strike an English audience as quite deranged: not just wrong but coming from a divergent universe.

I have a particular, personal reason for regarding her as a loony: this is that she worships at the St John’s Wood synagogue, which I slightly know. I have given a talk there (on anti-semitism, as it happens) and greatly like and esteem the senior rabbi, David Goldberg.

If daily life in this country really were “dominated by open loathing” of Americans and Jews — or even if this loathing didn’t dominate daily life, but was accepted as a legitimate feeling among a significant minority of good citizens — you wouldn’t get Jews running for election to high office. Their parties wouldn’t choose them, any more than an American party would choose a Muslim, gay or atheist candidate for president. “Nothing personal, old man. Some of my best friends … But the voters won’t have it.”

If Ms Gould looked round the congregation in her own St John’s Wood synagogue, she might notice one proiminent member is Michael Howard, currently leader of Her Majesty’s opposition. The Conservative Party has many faults. It even has a residual trace of anti-semitism. But it wants power more badly than anything else in the world. It chose Michael Howard last year because he was — quite rightly — thought more electable than his ridiculous Catholic predecessor Iain Duncan Smith. If anti-semitism were a serious factor in British national life, let alone a dominating passion, this simply could not have happened.