Allison Pearson: Hypocrite or Man-Hater?

Allison Pearson is currently a Daily Telegraph columnist. Before that, she was a Daily Mail columnist, having taken over from the late Lynda Lee-Potter, a highly regarded writer. Somehow, I can’t imagine Pearson ever commanding the respect Lee-Potter enjoyed. This is not just because Lee-Potter did not fritter away her time by writing lucrative but pisspoor chick-lit fiction such as I Don't Know How She Does It (latterly a Sarah Jessica Parker film vehicle) and I Think I Love You.

No, it’s also because Pearson is responsible for one of the nastiest, most callous pieces of ‘journalism’ I’ve seen for a while. In her Telegraph column recently she wrote on the subject of Tony Nicklinson [NOTE: Ms Pearson's employers have, happily for her, removed her article from their website. Even more happily for her readers, however, they can still read it thanks to the Wayback Machine]. Mr Nicklinson suffers from ‘locked-in syndrome’, a truly grim condition brought on by a stroke whilst holidaying in Athens in which his body is utterly paralysed from the neck down whilst his mind remains as sharp as ever. He is totally incapable of looking after himself, every physical need from feeding, going to the toilet to something as minor yet maddening as scratching an itch must be attended to by carers. So miserable is his life that he craves cancer and even wishes that he had not been saved from his stroke:

“Am I grateful that the Athens doctors saved my life?” Tony Nicklinson asks. “No, I am not. If I had my time again I would not have called the ambulance but let nature take its course.”

Mr Nicklinson is currently trying to persuade the High Court to allow people such as himself, who are fully alert and able to make rational decisions, the right to die by requesting that a doctor assist their suicide or even to actively kill them painlessly.

Allison Pearson is opposed to this. Fair enough, it is an incredibly sensitive and controversial issue, cutting right to the heart of what human dignity means and how far the rights of the individual should extend in relation to wider societal concerns about life and death. I can respect somebody’s view on a matter as sensitive as this even if opposed to mine if they express it with the respect such a serious subject demands. Unfortunately, Allison Pearson chooses, for some inexplicable reason, to trivialise and belittle both Mr Nicklinson’s life and his concerns.

First, she writes in a startlingly offhand pull-yourself-together tone:

Others suffer as he does – Professor Stephen Hawking comes to mind – but they make the best of the dreadful hand that fate has dealt them.

What is the relevance of this comparison? She may as well say that because some athletes can run a mile in under four minutes, why can’t we all? But she surpasses that with this statement, which is astonishing in its repulsive callousness:

Tony Nicklinson could refuse food, but his wife objects that starvation is a horrible way to die. Yet isn’t Tony Nicklinson’s argument that his life is too horrible to live? Legally, he already has the right to refuse medical intervention. He can sign a binding “advance decision” setting out the treatments he won’t consent to… If Mr Nicklinson gets a serious infection, highly likely for someone in his condition, then, without antibiotics, he will soon get the merciful release he seeks.

How compassionate, Allison! So it’s merely a choice between starvation and disease, is it? I’m only glad she didn’t write it in the run up to Guy Fawkes Night, otherwise she’d be recommending he could always flick the switch on his powered wheelchair and propel himself into the nearest bonfire.

By itself, this column would be depressing enough, the mark of a dead-hearted moralist posing as someone who cares about the dignity of life. But then Allison’s past comes back to haunt her in the form of a column she wrote for The Daily Mail in 2010 in which she movingly defends a mother, Kay Gilderdale, who killed her disabled daughter, Lynn, who was suffering irretrievably from ME:

Lynn Gilderdale was a 21st-century Lady of Shallot. The heroine of Tennyson's poem was under a curse that meant she was confined inside a castle and forbidden to look directly at the world… Lynn's utterly devoted mother, Kay, felt she had no choice but to help her daughter take her life. The life that she, Kay, had given her… In the end, the only dignity and independence left to the 31-year-old, who was in constant pain, was making the decision to die… I can hardly begin to imagine how Kay, a former nurse, steeled herself to give her daughter double her normal morphine dose… Then her mounting horror and panic when Lynn awoke in distress and Kay had to try again, first with crushed-up pills and finally with injections of air, in the hope of sending a fatal air bubble into her heart.

Suddenly, Allison Pearson is revealed as a hypocrite! Far be it for me to note that many people suffer as Lynn Gilderdale did, but they make the best of the dreadful hand that fate has dealt them. In Pearson’s eyes, Lynn Gilderdale is permitted her dignity by allowing her mother to kill her. But for Allison Pearson, Tony Nicklinson is not permitted any dignity, he must ‘…make the best of the dreadful hand that fate has dealt [him]’. At best, as far as Pearson is concerned, for Mr Nicklinson only the agonies of disease or starvation can release him because, after all, his life is already agony and bereft of dignity, so extending the pain and shame to the end doesn’t really matter, does it?

The cruelty, maliciousness and inconsistency of Allison Pearson’s positions would be amusing, were it not for the fact that what Mr Nicklinson advocates – the medically controlled ending of someone’s life – would have spared Lynn Gilderdale the thoroughly unedifying spectacle of her mother making a complete balls-up of killing her, and having to resort, in mounting panic, to three different methods to despatch her daughter! In what sense was Lynn Gilderdale’s death, all panic and horror and pain at the last, ‘dignified’?

And why is Mrs Gilderdale a heroine, but Mr Nicklinson a heretic? Is it because mothers are inherently good, saints in female guise, whereas men are evil and not to be permitted a moral choice? In short, is Allison Pearson a Hypocrite or a Man Hater? Repeated requests to her by twitter to justify her position have failed to elicit a response, so I must leave the reader to decide what she is. Either way, it ain’t pretty…

Happily, the reaction of Telegraph readers to Pearson’s article has been almost wholly negative. Indulge me while I quote one of my favourite comments in full:

Copingmechanism
Allison, I don't make it a habit to wish harm on a person; but in your case I think the desire is wholly justified. We can only hope that you end suffering an appalling quality of life in the same vein as poor Mr. Nicklinson. Suffice it to say, it is likely the only way in which bottom-feeding scum such as yourself might be compelled to feel a twinkling of empathy to him and many others in his circumstances; dreary, narcissistic personality-disordered as you are.
How a fellow human being can muster such a repulsive mind-set as yours really is beyond rational comprehension. There is no Hell (we'll leave the god-bothering to addled individuals such as yourself), but if there was one based on moral consequentialism, you'd be at the front of the queue.

Finally, and most amusingly, the coruscating American comic commentator Doug Stanhope has been accused of bullying Pearson by Twitter! As if the fetid rancid harpy that is Allison Pearson could ever be bullied – surely it is she who does the bullying? Though only of the most helpless…

UPDATE
William Peck (who commented below) has written an excellent article on his blog in which he details not merely the grotesque ironies in Pearson's original piece but also the response of the Catholic Herald, the latter of which makes potentially libellous and (not at all potentially but actually) ill-supported accusations against the Belgian Health Service. And Mr Peck also includes quotes from more of Pearson's witless supporters and defenders, accompanied by pithy commentary. Well worth a read, though the sheer idiocy, hypocrisy and mendacity he reveals may cause symptoms of extreme irritation...

Is Ex-Archbishop Carey a complete cunt?

Yes.

The evidence I present is as follows:

Lord Carey said the welfare system was "stoking social division" and that the scale of the UK's debt is the "greatest moral scandal" facing the country.

Not millionaire bosses' salaries rising by an average of 50% per year whilst both their companies' performance and their workers' wages stagnate or even diminish.

Not being ruled by millionaires in government who try to force cancer sufferers to justify why they're on welfare.

Not obscenely profitable companies such as Vodafone and Goldman Sachs which cheat the exchequer (ultimately that means you and me) out of billions of pounds in tax revenue by sharp practises and wining and dining the utterly corrupt criminal in charge of HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs), Dave Hartnett.

Not a banking sector which lined its own pockets whilst destroying the world's economic system and then got the state to bail it out, the ultimate in the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of loss.

Not a word on those, from which it follows with elegant inevitability that the snaggle-toothed fucktard ex-Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey (who was a fuckwit when he was Archbishop and continues to be a fuckwit as an ex-Archbishop) is nothing but a cunt of the first order.

Archbishop Cunt

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.