Adam Boulton is a Fat Cunt

Not, of course, news to anyone who has actually watched Adam Boulton but, nevertheless, worth repeating on a regular basis. Boulton's latest exhibition of Fat Cuntery was on Sky News several days ago, on 25 October 2011, when he interviewed one of the Occupy London protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral, Phil McKeenan.

Apart from making the usual Daily Telegraph accusations against the protesters, of which more later, Boulton made a fantastically crass and spurious analogy between Occupy London's ad hoc campsite near St Paul’s and the Nazi occupation of France.

Yes, you read correctly. Adam Boulton, a professional (and highly-paid) television news anchor, compared the St Paul’s protesters (peaceful, if woolly, hippies sitting in tents) to the Nazis (you know, that lot who invaded Europe and Russia, kicked off World War Two and murdered six million Jews in cold blood). You can see it at 1m18s in this video clip:



Now, apart from the fact that Boulton immediately lost the argument pace Godwin’s Law (not that the knuckle-dragging morons watching Sky News will have ever heard of Godwin or his Law), the sheer spuriousness of the analogy should have been an easy target.

Unfortunately, for all his well-meaning idealism, Phil McKeenan utterly failed to capitalise on Boulton’s blunder and instead merely floundered with feeble antipodean platitudes.

Thus, for what it’s worth, McTodd will now present some easy to follow lessons in how to deal with Fat Cunts like Adam Boulton, using the above video clip as a framework, in...

The McTodd Guide to News Management

1. The “Protesters Don’t Always Stay Overnight” Rhetorical Ploy
Adam Boulton and his blonde cock-washer both attacked McKeenan with the tired Daily Telegraph canard about protesters not sleeping over at night and nipping off home for a nice kip. The natural response should have been:

So what? The Arab Spring protesters didn’t all stay overnight in places such as Tahrir Square, does that make their protests any less valid or meaningful? You and your assistant don’t sleep in the studio overnight, does that make your reportage any less valid?* I don’t know, are we allowed to go off-site to the toilet, or do you expect us to shit in our tents as well?

It doesn’t matter if all your points are 100% valid or reasonable, they just have to sound logical and – crucially – through them you need to attack the interviewer.
*No, it’s the fact that it’s for Sky News that completely invalidates it.

2. “When the Nazis occupied France they didn’t go home [to Germany] at night”
Actually, McKeenan dealt with this stunningly weird Boultonism as best as anyone could by simply looking gobsmacked and saying that Adam was overstating things a little, which leads us to the Fat Cunt’s next point…

3. “You are imposing your will on everyone else like the Nazis did”
A brilliantly attackable point, but one which McKeenan sadly utterly fails to deal with. This is what he should have argued:

In shaping, some would say manipulating, the direction of this interview with all your rhetorical tools, Adam, it could be said that you are imposing your will on your millions of viewers, just like Hitler’s speechmaking. Would you agree that that is a fair analogy? If you don’t think that you can be compared with Hitler, then you can only agree that your crass comparison of our peaceful protest with Nazi atrocities in Europe is grotesquely unfair.

Again, go on the attack. It doesn’t matter that you’ve stretched Boulton’s point, the important thing is to make him look a fool by exposing – through exaggeration – just how grotesque his argument is. However, don’t over-exaggerate. Note that in the above I refer to ‘Nazi atrocities in Europe’, I do not refer to the Holocaust. Had I done so, that would be over-exaggeration because of its specificity to a particular enormity (one with colossal emotional resonance at that), but a vague reference to ‘Nazi atrocities in Europe’ is sufficiently hard-hitting, conjuring up images of the Holocaust without explicitly saying so, whilst at the same time being vague enough to avoid outright offence and accusations of over-reacting.

4. “You’re stopping people going about their everyday business, as if their rights don’t matter”
This is the Boris Johnson Argument, the patronizing, “You’ve made your point, now go home like the compliant little boys and girls we want you to be.” It’s also dead easy to refute because most journalists, being lazy and/or too busy, have already made similar points before, so it’s easy to do a bit of research ahead of the interview and prepare for it. Unfortunately, again, McKeenan merely flaps about like a limp lettuce leaf. What he should have said was something along these lines:

We are not getting in anyone’s way, we are not preventing anyone going about their lives, people can still go to work, use the cafes and restaurants around here, worship at the cathedral. We did not close the area around the cathedral, the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities did that using quoting Health & Safety issues. It’s a shame you don’t check your facts first, Adam, I’d advise you to ask the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities why they closed the area.

Yet another example of going on the attack and also blaming someone else, with a beneficial side helping of attacking Health & Safety, which will appeal to the prejudices of the average Sky News viewer. And I don’t know whether the protest camp is getting in people’s way or not. However, it’s not important if what you’re saying is 100% true or otherwise, because Adam and his blonde pink-oboe-player won’t know what the true facts are as they simply don’t have the time to get the full background behind every story they cover. You just need to sound plausible, blame someone else and go on the attack.

So what have we learned about how to deal with aggressive news interviewers?

1. Like the Scouts, Be Prepared
Journalists are lazy, they will generally merely parrot the points other reporters have made previously (see Point 4 above). Check in advance what the most common points they make are and prepare your response.

2. Exaggerate
Reporters are vain creatures and will therefore attempt to stamp their mark on an issue by making one or two points unique to them. Adam Boulton’s Nazi Analogy is a classic example of this. Exaggerate what they say and go on the attack, but be careful not to over-exaggerate, as this leaves you wide open to the counter-attack of being over-sensitive or sensationalising (or trivialising) the issue. Seeing where the boundaries of over-exaggeration lie can be difficult, and they’re different in each case. Check out Point 3 again for a concrete example.

3. Don’t be over-scrupulous about The Truth
As mentioned before, reporters are either too lazy or too busy to get the full background of a subject. Use this. Attack their argument if necessary with a borderline spurious point of your own (for example, I don’t know if the protesters really are getting in people’s way or not). They won’t be able to argue against this, and if it turns out you stretched the truth (don’t ever outright lie, though) this will only become apparent much later. The important thing is to score your points and win the argument on the spot, that is what viewers will remember. They won’t remember a later report which shows you over-egged your case.

4. Shift the blame
News stories are rarely back-and-white issues, there’s usually someone else who can be blamed, so blame them! Divert the interviewer’s ire! Point 4 above is a classic example – put on your best wounded more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger voice and say don’t blame us for closing the area, ask the Corporation of London and the cathedral authorities, Adam… Not only do you shift the blame but you sound dead reasonable by giving the reporter some friendly advice.

It's a service, this.

Will solar energy be the new oil?

That bastion of liberal-thinking eco-friendliness The Grauniad reports that Germany is backing a €400bn renewables network designed to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050, with Morocco chosen as the first venue for solar energy farms. The Grauniad then goes on to say

Discussions are already underway with the Tunisian government about building a solar farm ...and Algeria is the next "obvious" country, due to its close proximity to western Europe's grid. Countries such as Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia are predicted to start joining the network from 2020.

Bloody marvellous, let's build the foundations for Europe's future electricity generation in some of the most volatile regions of the world. Does this sound familiar? Back in 2003, when McTodd and a friend (Fwengebola) were running a spoof news website (now deceased) called worldwidewebshite, I wrote a piece which now looks somewhat prescient...

Legal Inconsistencies

The BBC reports that seven of ten challenges to harsh sentences handed down by courts relating to the riots in England in August have been rejected. Disturbingly, among the seven were two four-year jail sentences for 'incitement to riot' made by a couple of jokers on Facebook (riots which, incidentally, never occurred):

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, of Northwich, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Warrington, Cheshire, jailed for four years after admitting encouraging a riot on Facebook, which never happened

It appears that the two cases are quite different, as detailed by Index on Censorship:

Blackshaw, who will serve his sentence at a young offenders’ institution, called upon his virtual friends to meet for a “lootin’”. He created a Facebook page entitled “Smash Dwn in Northwich Town”. Only nine of his 147 friends responded to the event and Blackshaw arrived alone at the designated meeting place. He was met by police officers rather than fellow looters and was immediately arrested.

On 9 August, Sutcliffe-Keenan created a page called “Let’s Have a Riot in Latchford”. A few hours later, he took down the post. According to his lawyer, Rebecca Tanner, Sutcliffe-Keenan was drunk while posting the messages and quickly removed the event after “a phone call from a friend prompted him to remember his action”. Once he “realised the gravity” of his actions, Sutcliffe-Keenan removed the page and made a public apology. No one turned up for the event, but 47 individuals confirmed their attendance on the page. According to prosecutors, the Facebook post still caused panic in the town.

Even if you accept that Blackshaw should have been jailed, as he appears to have been quite serious about trying to start a riot, four years is nevertheless excessive, and Sutcliffe-Keenan's sentence is utterly ludicrous. It was clearly a drunken prank, and a short-lived one at that which he regretted and apologised for at the time. And for both, four years for something that never happened is disproportionate and clearly a case of vindictiveness in sentencing.

It is in marked contrast to the rugby player Greg Johnson who sexually assaulted a bride-to-be in a pub and glassed her in the face when she spurned his advances, almost costing her the sight in her right eye and leaving her vision permanently damaged. He received a pathetic two years jail sentence.

And we can also usefully compare the cases of Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan with the evangelical churches in London which are telling HIV sufferers in their congregations that their medication doesn't work and that the Lord will cure them (presumably helped with generous donations to their churches - that's usually the way of things with the evangelicals).

People have died because of this, and yet the most the government can say is:

"Over 60 recommendations were made [in the House of Lords committee report into HIV awareness] and we will be responding to Parliament in the next few months."

Pretty feeble stuff, considering evangelical Christian pastors are, in effect, inciting members of their congregations to kill themselves. These deaths have actually occurred, they are not notional or hypothetical events in the sense that the riots-that-never-happened were. And yet I see nothing about arresting the pastors concerned for conspiracy to murder, or perhaps collusion in manslaughter or maybe incitement to commit suicide.

Fox run to earth at last...

Accident-prone portly Secretary of State for Defence Little Liam Fox has finally fallen on his sword.

How typical of the Tories in their reaction, however - they bleated on and on about the ban on fox-hunting in 2005, but when that most noble of bloodsports is finally revived, all they can do is condemn it!

Come on Tories - make your minds up about what you want!

Charlie Brooker Loves Grandaddy!

I am not - as the title of this entry might imply - accusing Charlie Brooker of incestuous gerontophilia (and possibly necrophilia, as I have no knowledge of the metabolic status of his grandfathers).

No, for the first time ever, McTodd dips his toe into the uncertain waters of - wait for it - Popular Culture. Not only that, McTodd goes on to paddle off to the entirely alien (but very tiny and substantially deserted) island of Not Slagging Something Off!

Yes, you read right - it's not McTodd Hates! it's McTodd Likes! I think I'll have a lie-down first...

Right, having recovered, let the rambling commence.

Listening to Charlie Brooker's new(ish) Radio 4 show So Wrong It's Right, I couldn't help noticing that the feme choon is a track by the magnificent American alt-rock-country-indie-electronica popular beat combo Grandaddy. To be specific, it is Summer Here Kids from the sublime album Under The Western Freeway, which you can listen to on YouTube:
Summer Here Kids Videographic Motion Picture & Song

And because I can't be arsed to link to the official BBC webulous page for So Wrong It's Right, because they keep fucking around with their Listen Again feature so by the time you've found, and read, this page it will probably have pissed off again, here's a link to some sad bastard's upload of a radio show (an entirely audio medium) onto YouTube (an entirely video medium, as implied by the 'tube' part of YouTube, in honour of the term 'tube' being derived from the fact that television was made practical by the advent of the cathode ray tube, thus superseding the pisspoor electro-mechanical scanning-disc system of the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird):
So Wrong It's Right (a radio show) on YouTube (a video site)

Still, (s)he* might be a sad bastard, but it's done me a favour.

Brooker has form with Grandaddy, as he used another track from Under The Western Freeway (the fabulously plinky plonky A.M. 180) for his Screenwipe series.

I have now dug out all my old Grandaddy albums (on CD no less!) and am wallowing in the gorgeousness of them. That is because I am a man, and therefore terminally sad.

*Though I'd wager it's a man because only a man could be that sad.

It's HAVE you cunts, not OF!

What is fucking wrong with people these days?

What simple, utterly elementary part of the English language can people increasingly not understand that compels them to write could of - would of - might of instead of could have - would have - might have?

I'll tell you what - fucking CRETINISM!!!

It is now creeping into every part of the internet like some hideous linguistic cancer. For all I know it may be infecting the written word outside of the worldwidewank, but as I am fortunate enough not to have to ever read anything written by a pleb offline, and as standards are (just) high enough for it not to have affected books, periodicals and newspapers (broadsheets anyway, I can't vouch for the tabloid mindrot read by proles), I cannot say.

I can understand the mechanics of the error - when spoken, especially given the slovenly inability of most people to open and close their fucking mouths properly and work their tongues with some vestigial memory of care and attention to detail, the h is usually dropped from have, and the word is further corrupted to sound like of.

But it's NOT actually of, is it? As even the most peripheral encounter with the English language should underscore, as even the most moronic braindamaged dribbling cabbage of twenty years ago would surely have appreciated, have is not fucking of!!!

Are teachers not addressing this in schools? And if not, why not? If I taught in a school and caught some hideous greasy pimply little shit writing of instead of have I would beat the ignorant fucker to within an inch of his life. Never mind bringing back corporal punishment in schools, I'd bring in capital punishment for that particular crime.

Honestly, it makes me so angry I feel the day Western Anglophone civilisation falls and the Chinese take over the world can't come soon enough.

That'd learn us.

Bremner’s Brown Blag Bust!

Roy Ters: Tuesday 12 July 2011, 13:01 BST

IN A twist bizarre even by the standards of the ongoing News International phone hacking scandal, satirical impressionist Rory Bremner has been arrested by police investigating the ‘blagging’ of former PM Gordon Brown’s financial affairs.

Concealed beneath a blanket, Bremner was bundled into the back of a police van in the small hours of this morning and driven to Lewisham police station, where he was questioned for eight hours before being released on bail.

‘Blagging’ is the practice of impersonating someone’s voice in order to obtain information over the phone under false pretences. It is a technique more often used by private investigators working for shady newspapers, such as Barry Arsehole who, working for the not-as-good-as-it-used-to-be Sunday Times, impersonated nobody in particular and tricked gullible solicitors Gonad & Overy into giving away details of a property purchase made by dour Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

But in this instance it is thought that Bremner had been corrupted, or more likely blackmailed, by flame-haired temptress and erstwhile Sun editrix Rebekah Brooks who needed a very specific and well-known personality’s voice to be impersonated, none other than that of dour Prime-Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown himself. It is believed that Brooks forced Bremner to pretend to be Brown in order to phone controversial Prime Minister Tony Blair to tell him how much he hated him, though why she bothered seeing as Gordon Brown used to do that himself several times a day is anybody’s guess. A source close to the titian-haired homophobe said it was 'probably just force of habit'.

The police were tight-lipped about the exact nature of their questioning, but after being slipped a few quid a police source told us, "We got him to do his Gordon Brown, you know, where he makes his cheeks look all jowly and lets his lower jaw hang lifelessly when he pauses speaking, but to be honest I thought he sounded more like that bloke out of Dr Finlay’s Casebook, what’s his name, Doctor Something-or-other wasn’t it? Anyway, the Super backed me up and said there was no way anyone would be fooled into thinking he was Gordon Brown so we let him go with a caution and a bit of a friendly slap around the head."

Tony Blair was not available for comment as he is too busy whoring himself around the lucrative US lecture circuit to earn enough to keep his missus in baubles and furs.

Napoleon Gaddafi

Way back in February, just as the situation in Libya went completely tits-up and Mad Dog Gaddafi went for the rebels' collective jugular, your's truly emailed the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki Moon, and wrote a letter (yes, a letter!*) to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Mr David 'Call Me Dave' Cameron, outlining a completely brilliant plan for resolving the imminent collapse of dodgy regimes.

*Only because the No 10 website won't let you email a message much longer than a twitter thing, whatever one of those is.

Said letter ran as follows (bear with it, it's bloody long):

24 February 2011

Dear Prime Minister

Re: A Plan for Minimising the Violent Transition of Power When Autocratic Regimes Collapse

I write to you concerning a plan that I have lately presented to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, for defusing tensions as autocratic regimes begin to collapse, thus avoiding bloodshed of the kind currently seen in Libya. As a respected international statesman, I am confident that you have the qualities to lobby on my behalf and persuade Mr Ban to adopt my proposal. Also, the rules of the United Nations preclude their being able to adopt any proposal not made by an Official Representative of a Member State, which you are (or at least the Ambassador to the UN is, and as his boss I have the fullest confidence that you can persuade him to present this proposal). As a further incentive to lobby for my plan, I am convinced that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee would look upon the proposal most favourably, and I feel that Mr Ban would, like myself, be happy to share the prize (which I understand is perfectly permissible within the rules of the Nobel Foundation) with a third party – I am sure I need not spell out who I have in mind, Prime Minister...

My proposal is simple, though not necessarily just. It is simply this: that a remote tropical island, perhaps in the Indian Ocean, be mandated under United Nations governance and protection and set aside as a sort of superannuated retirement home for ex-dictators. Luxury accommodation could be built for the ex-dictators and their families (if need be), with entertainment facilities provided, and enough of the money they stole could be kept by them to keep them in comfort until they die (the rest of their ill-gotten gains would be repatriated to their countries). The ex-dictators would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution, but only if they agreed to be exiled there for the rest of their lives.

How would this prevent violence such as that unleashed in Libya by Colonel Gaddafi? It seems to me that part of the reason for his clinging on to power with such desperation is because he feels he has nowhere else to go. Mubarak was able to retire to the seaside because his rule, while repressive, was never as nakedly brutal as Gaddafi’s. Even Idi Amin was able to retire to Saudi Arabia. But Gaddafi has no such option, and having got on the wrong side of so many national leaders it is incredible to think that any state would grant him asylum. And when numerous international organisations call – justly, it must be said – for Gaddafi to be prosecuted for war crimes, the man himself probably believes that unless he fights he will only end up on the end of a rope, like Saddam, so it is easy to see why we are in the situation we find ourselves in.

But what if my proposed retirement island existed now? Imagine the scenario: popular sentiment in Libya grows against Gaddafi, protests start, his forces try but fail to quell the uprising. At this point, with the situation on the brink of spiralling out of control, the United Nations steps in and tells Gaddafi: “The writing is on the wall, now is the time to go. If you step down now, avoiding bloodshed, you can retire in luxurious exile, immune from prosecution. Refuse, and face the consequences.” Chances are he – or any other dictator in his position – would opt to retire.

Okay, it isn’t just; he won’t pay the price for his crimes. But it would avoid a lot of bloodshed, senseless death and waste. And there is also the entertaining possibility that as the years rolled by and the island filled up with more and more ex-dictators, being such power-mad egomaniacs they might try to impose their power on each other in a sort of geriatric version of ‘The Lord of the Flies’.

I am sure that this plan will make a major contribution towards World Peace, and I have total confidence in your ability to ensure that my plan is presented to the United Nations and adopted by the entire world.

Yours sincerely

McTodd

Imagine my utter disgust when The Grauniad ran this editorial comment on Saturday 9 April.

The air was rendered several shades of blue in the McTodd household**, the phrase fucking thieving bastards being only the most printable quote...

Some weeks later I received a postcard from No 10 acknowledging receipt of the letter. However, to the best of my knowledge, no moves have yet been made to put this Guaranteed Nobel Peace Prize Winning Plan into practice***, and Mr Ban Ki Moon never even so much as emailed me back. So much for the UN.

**Saturday being the only day I will actually part with my hard-earned for The Grauniad. Any other day and the air in my place of work would have been similarly rendered.

***I am keeping a sharp eye on the situation - there's no way I'm letting anyone claim all the glory for themselves and thus screwing me out of my part of the Nobel Prize, no way at all.