....the media, the parlous state of political reporting with its focus on manufactured "scandals" and "gaffes" in place of analysis of policy, lazy and stupid journalism, the centre-left bias, cosy lunches between reporters and MPs, opinion polls (a device for manipulating public opinion, not measuring it), the vicious media bullying of Gordon Brown when he was prime minister, the backroom deals which decided the Tories were now "electable", our new permanent centre-left UK government.....
....communism, western apologists for communism, the TUC's decision not to support striking Polish dockworkers in the 80s, former communists in positions of power (John Reid, Peter Mandelson), the singing of communist anthem The Internationale at Donald Dewar's funeral, P Hitchens' own past as a Trotskyist agitator....
...Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech, the switch from the idea of "racialism" to the more nebulous "racism", the concept of "institutional racism", mass immigration, the impossibility of discussing mass immigration because of accusations of racism, the BNP, laws against homosexuals, laws in favour of homosexuals, laws in general which pertain to your private life, the lowering of the age of consent, civil partnerships, the oppression of women, Mick Jagger's misogynist lyrics, the pressure on women to become "wage slaves" aka having a career instead of having children...
..the decline of standards in British education, the abolition of grammar schools, the hypocrisy of the elite who move to expensive areas to get their kids into a good school but who decry any selection on the basis of academic merit, the consequent decline in social mobility...
...Doctor Beeching and the dismantling of Britain's rail network, generous public subsidies for the road network, the increase in traffic, the detrimental effect on small towns and villages...
...the war in Iraq, left wing commentators making common cause with US neo-conservatives (both heavily influenced by Marxist utopianism), "strong" foreign policy being used as a distraction from left-wing and undemocratic agendas on the home front....
......the Labour Party, the Conservative Party, the outmoded conceit that there's such a thing as "left" and "right" in our political system, the decline of the adverserial nature of British politics, the widening gap between the public and the parties who hold them in such disdain..
And I've actually found a list in the last chapter of people Hitchens blames for much of today's problems...Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Herbert Marcuse, Margaret Mead, Alfred Kinsey, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Antonio Gramsci, R.D. Laing, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Marie Stopes, Monty Python (?), John Lennon and Mick Jagger. But I've already mentioned him.
THINGS PETER HITCHENS LIKES
ummmm....nope, I'm out. Changing your mind, I suppose. He was going to write a book with that title, but thought nobody would buy it. Who likes to admit they're wrong?
I've got one - a good index! This has got more than 30 pages of entries for a book which is under two hundred pages long. Includes the classics "Wolstonecraft, Mary - eloquent pleas reduced to grunts and squeals of 'Girl Power'" and "G, Ali - author smells rat when asked for interview by"
4 comments:
I have a real hatred for Peter Hitchens that rises up whenever I see him on Question Time (or any other show where he's a pundit for that matter.)
It's the way he looks at everyone with simmering disdain, as if inside he's congratulating himself for being so noble in managing to refrain from actually voicing his superiority. A man who seems to take it for granted that he knows better than everyone else with regard to every possible subject.
Should play Peter Cushing in the Star Wars remake.
Perhaps it should have been called The Broken Record.
Oh yeah, all very droll about Grand Moff Hitchens. I like him - a crotchety Cassandra for the 21st century; Cato the Even Younger. I like the fact that he hates everything and holds everyone in such disdain. I'm pretty sure he'd detest me. But why read pleasant, fair-mnded commentators you always agree with? Boring!
I've got nothing against Hitchens personally. Like Self (another self-important, opionated disdainer of men), he's guaranteed to enliven any debate.
As a matter of fact, I don't read commentators of any ilk - strictly a fiction man, me.
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