Monday Moan 28

I-paper gets me mad again ....

In Moan 9 I questioned Amol Rajan’s approach to others as being aggressive and unnecessary.  He accused others of various character defects in sweeping assertions, themselves open to serious doubt.  Now, having read the I-paper again, I see he’s still at it – maybe he’s always like this?  Certainly he’s got a 100% record whenever I have read his pieces.

 

This time he takes to task those who oppose the legalisation of drugs in the most immoderate of language. A Government spokesman’s response to a Select Committee’s report on drugs policy is dismissed by Rajan as “possibly the stupidest thing said by any public servant this year”.  Not content with that offensive remark he continues that the spokesman’s next words were “belched” by a “historically illiterate and possibly teenage buffoon”. Nice.  The “buffoon’s” crime appears to have been to say that drugs destroy lives and blight communities.  Apparently, according to Rajan, this will “enrage any right thinking person”, since it is “utterly ignorant of the lessons of the past century”.  Rajan considers that the ‘War on drugs’ is “the most disastrous policy error in the history of mankind” and the spokesman’s statement “oozes the kind of base morality common in theocrats”.

 

Rajan is well into his stride now, and next asserts that “it is very, very clear to anyone who can open their eyes”, that whole nation states are dissolving because of “idiotic prohibition” and that any parent who thinks that criminalising drugs helps to protect their children has “absolutely no idea about the society, let alone the world, you live in.”

 

Apparently, we should all take note and our lead from Portugal, where decriminalisation has reduced drug consumption and crime.

I have no idea whether Portugal offers a good model for the future.  But I know that Rajan’s hectoring, dismissive, aggressive, patronising, and insulting form of writing is most definitely not a good model for others to follow when it comes to constructing a persuasive argument. Rather the opposite, since his style will surely, to borrow from his own invective, enrage any right thinking person since it is utterly ignorant of the rules of common courtesy and public behaviour.

Should we really beat ourselves up?

In the same copy of the I-paper as the one mentioned above, Simon Kelner writes a piece on some of the issues arising from the sad death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who took her own life after being taken in by the Australian radio station pranksters.

Mercifully, Kelner eschews the approach adopted by Amjol Rajan and instead writes a thoughtful article in which he suggests that you and I must take the blame for the suicide because we were all in the joke through our wicked, voyeuristic delight in people being exposed as stupid, cruel or eccentric.  He cites Big Brother as his only evidence for this sweeping assertion.

He then asserts that we are all to blame because of our insatiable appetite for royal news.  Moving swiftly along from this most suspect of statements, he then suggests that the public was culpable rather than the News of the World and its journalists for the whole phone-hacking scandal, because it revels in tales of scandal and misbehaviour, without thinking how those stories are unearthed.

 

Hang on a minute!  Simon Kelner was Editor of The Independent between 1998 and 2011. How typical of a journalist to try to absolve all of his profession and shift the blame elsewhere.  It’s all the public’s fault, and the journalists are merely writing what the public demands. I don’t know about you, but I find this analysis to be lacking in any kind substance - more like a child denying any responsibility for its actions, whatever the evidence there for all to see. 

 

As a member of the public that Kelner accuses, I deny any responsibility. I have never suffered from an insatiable appetite for royal news, I do not crave tittle-tattle about anyone, or demand that the human failings of high-profile people be exposed, and I have never delighted in anyone being exposed as stupid, cruel or eccentric. 

 

No, I want to read the news.  I would happily buy a publication that was able to provide that service free from any of the other things Kelner accuses us of 'forcing' journalists to do. 

Is that too much to ask of a newspaper?  Apparently it is.

  

Arsene Wenger – “I am not embarrassed”

After last week’s defeat by Division 2 Bradford City Arsene Wenger said that he was not embarrassed. 

Oh really?  Well he should have been.  True, it was only the second time his Arsenal side had been knocked out by lower division opposition in any cup competition in his 16 years in charge – a better record than that of any other team in England. But it came on the back of some really disappointing results in other competitions and when Arsenal were already beyond any serious hope of winning the Premier League title with considerably less than half of the season gone.

Yesterday’s 5-2 victory at Reading was probably a truer reflection of his team’s ability, but needs to be repeated if Arsene is to be able to continue to claim not to be embarrassed.

  

Bradley Wiggins  - Sports Personality Of The Year

Congratulations to Bradley – and congratulations also to all the other sporting stars of 2012 – the year that Britain lost its tag as a gallant loser.

 

I don't want to overplay my role in this sporting triumph, but can it really be just a coincidence that in Moan 8 I predicted that Wiggins would win SPOTY unless some Olympian did something exceptional this year?  Is it credible to believe that, having read this, Wiggins did not understand the message I was giving him?  No, much more likely is that he saw the wisdom of those words, recognised the danger, and decided that he would be the one to do something exceptional.  This was the cause of him adding an Olympic title of his own to his victory in the Tour de France, thus building his case for the SPOTY title. 

A true champion - no thanks necessary.