Rod’s clumsy play for publicity
Young Rod – in cap, lower middle – enjoys some clean sporting fun with his pater at Millwall, 1935
In a shameless attempt to win some readers for his little known Spectator blog, Rod Liddle has thrown together a desperate post with the highly offensive and almost certainly libellous headline The Politically Correct James Delingpole. It’s about my reaction to Richard Curtis’s ecofascist snuff movie No Pressure, which Rod reckons was overdone.
But there is something which does not quite ring true in his attacks upon a film made by Richard Curtis for the 10:10 climate change movement, exemplified by his piece in this week’s magazine. He has been ranting and raving about this film for ages and I cannot tell if his outrage and lack of humour is real, or post-modern ironic.
It’s puzzling that Rod should be puzzled because I did in fact spell the whole thing out on my You Know It Makes Sense column this week.
So let me explain for those die-hard defenders of ‘No Pressure’ why it wasn’t funny on any level whatsoever. And no, it isn’t because of the exploding children. Not per se. Sure, it’s a risky business, in the age of the suicide bomber, trying to extract comedy out of gruesomely atomised kids. But that doesn’t necessarily put such things beyond the pale. In comedy nothing ought to be beyond the pale, for that is part of its purpose, as the safety valve which allows us to say the unsayable. What matters is its context and its satirical point. Only then are we in a position to judge whether the sketch ‘works’ or whether it has failed horribly.
The reason Curtis’s joke failed horribly, I went on, is because it worked neither as effective satire nor as comedy of observation.
The joke would only work if all reasonable people thought ‘Christ, climate change deniers are a pain. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if we could just — tee hee — kill ’em rather than have to engage with their tedious, action-delaying arguments?’
What I didn’t mention in the piece for reasons of space, though I think it’s quite an interesting paradox is this: though the original No Pressure video was desperately unfunny, many of the pastiches were funny. The one where children were exploded, for example, for not submitting to the “Religion of Peace” had a readily comprehensible satirical point that Richard Curtis’s did not.
Anyway, of course I wasn’t really offended that Rod chose to embarrass himself by getting things so totally wrong and making everyone hate him and think he’s incredibly stupid and smelly. What I am, though, is disappointed.
Here’s the bit that really disappointed me:
You do not have to agree with Curtis, or 10:10 (though I don’t see what’s wrong with cutting carbon emissions, regardless of whether you sign up to AGW) to find it funny.
Do you see the bit I mean? It’s that trite bit in parenthesis where the normally well-informed, clear-sighted and acerbic Liddle ventures an opinion based on little more than WWF and Greenpeace press hand outs.
If Rod ever took me to a Millwall match – I’m not asking, you understand, this is just a theoretical scenario – I think I’d know better than to declare in a loud, fruity voice that the offside rule was silly, very silly, or that the game would be lot more enjoyable if the players weren’t so infernally competitive and the fans so foul-mouthed, and couldn’t someone teach them to sing the Eton Boating Song instead of all this four letter stuff?
I would expect Rod to show a similar degree of diligence in matters he clearly knows eff-all about, climate change being the most blindingly obvious one. And the same applies, though to a lesser extent, to my blog colleague – and Rod’s old mucker – Andrew Gilligan.
Gilligan has been doing some stormingly good exposes, of late, on the unutterable uselessness of wind farms. But blogging last month he went and ruined an intelligent, well-argued blog with this entirely unnecessary paragraph:
The problem with British greens is not that they’ve misdiagnosed the problem – I’ve very little doubt that climate change is real. Even in the unlikely event that the science is wrong, it’s not a gamble we can afford to take.
And your evidence for that statement is what, exactly, Andrew? Or, to put it another way, how would you feel if I were to write a blog astringently critiquing Lutfur Rahman and suddenly declare, en passant, that I’d walked past the East London Mosque the other day and that its calm, peaceful, delightfully mosquey appearance had left me in “very little doubt” that claims of its extremist tendencies were an outrageous calumny.
The sad thing here is that both Liddle and Gilligan are journalists I very much admire: proper, courageous, counterintuitive journalists who do their research, are never afraid to speak truth to power and write with verve and conviction. One day, I’m sure, they’ll come round to appreciate what many readers of this blog already do – that the Climate Change circus represents possibly the greatest outbreak of mass hysteria in history, that it’s probably the worst pseudoscientific scandal in history and that it’s being used as an excuse to impose on us the biggest bill in history. It’s a story that is worth proper investigation and the sooner the cause of truth and justice has the likes of Liddle and Gilligan fully onside, the better for us all.
Related posts:
- On Plimer, climate change and the ineffable barkingness of George Moonbat
- What the liberal elite feel you should know about ‘Climate Change’
- Climate change has nothing to do with the Holocaust or 9/11
- Why the BBC will always be wrong on Climate Change
If history has anything to teach us it is this, mass violence and oppression grows from small seeds like this.
These people are the ideological heirs of Pol Pot, in this case replace ” agricultural workers paradise “, with an ” aristocratic environmental paradise”. How many carbon remittances will you well meaning enviro – suckers buy, so Al Gore can buy another ocean front mansion in Malibu, California ?…. By the way Al ( Charlamegne ) Gore buys carbon credits from his own company. He is not offsetting the carbon foot print of his 20 bedroom mansions, he is buying stock in the latest and greatest pump and pump stock scam. Al Gore is the Bernie Madoff of the eco – fascist movement.
Aristocrats, fascists, communists, dictators of all stripes always come up with another reason why the bothersome”Great Unwashed” need to die in mass. This sickening trend has shown it’s ugly face once again. Once you are starving to death in a cave with no electricity, the global warming aristocracy will be flying to another conference on why you should starve, in private jets, commuting to their 5 star Hotels .
Do this math: 140 private jets, and 200 Limousines driven in from all over Europe for the Copenhagen Environmental Summit. 3 or 4 hybrid vehicle rentals for the whole city, during the summit. Do as they say, not as they do. Go live in cave, live on gruel, freeze in the dark slaves !!!….. And if you go live in this Eco fascist approved fashion, think of your hypocrital masters laying on their beds getting free blowjobs from environmentally friendly hookers. ( That last part was no exaggeration, look it up !!!.. ). Environmental hypocrits get free blow jobs in Copenhagen !!!…
Man made global warming is one of the biggest hoaxes and pump and dumps scams the world has ever seen. It is in their absolute desperation, that they are resorting to ads portraying 10 year olds being blown up as being a menacing , but hip – funny at the same time.
” The greatest way to defeat a dictator, is to make him (or her), is to make them act like one”. In this case we are seeing them show their true homicidal, genocidal face.
ps: Hey, psst – Third World, China, India, don’t develop your natural resources !!, don’t industrialize !!, don’t develop new technologies to drag your people out of poverty!!, Al Gore needs another 20 bedroom mansion. Climate change bureaucrats need free blow jobs, after a grueling flights on their private jets, and harsh commutes in Mercedes limousines.
pps: To the Greenpeace brainwashed yob threatening the adults for not going along with this eco – fascism bullshit: don’t come around my house spouting that crap. It’s disgusting that Greenpeace would get some stupid kid to threaten people, in their sick propaganda advert. Here’s a quote for all you brainwashed yobs, ” Humans are a virus, and we are the cure” – The Matrix, 1999. This is the philosophy of this human hating – pose of environmentalism.
Let’s not politicise this, as we do with everything, and face facts – we need to work out how to clothe, feed and house 9 billion people without turning the planet into a dull wasteland in the process.
As far as the video was concerned – it draws attention to the subject – there is no such thing as bad publicity IF it brings the debate back to the real issue – overuse of natural resources.
My chief concern is it won’t though – the BP disaster didn’t stimulate a lasting debate in the US, after all.
If something is and must be politised then it is this eco fascist insanity .WE , that means the developped world will be 5 % of the 9 billions in 2050 and I know very well how I and my family will clothe (buy on a market) and feed (cultivate fields) and house (construct a building) .
It doesn’t take a genius to do like our ancestors did for thousands of years , thank you very much .
And I can tell you that as WE are and will stay the biggest food exporters and have enough of concrete , wood and energy , WE have no special worries for the next thousands of years .
In the case that you referred to the OTHER 95 % of the 9 billions , then may I suggest that you spare your patronizing ideas about what they should or should not do ?
However as something is tellig me that you don’t belong to the mentally sane people , there is a solution for the 95 % .
What about stopping them to add 3 billions to the world’s population ?
There are surely some creative ideas how to do that .
Go to China , of course with a bicycle (think of your CO2 footprint) and explain them the wrong of their ways .
No pressure ….