The insensitivity in our pc society never ceases to leave me bewildered. The lack of insight in the press has the same effect. But whether it means to or not (I suspect not) much of it leaves me laughing involuntarily.
‘Thalidomide victims embrace the Olympics,’ announced a BBCNews website subhead at the weekend. Thalidomide isn’t at all funny, but insouciant reporters are. Even funnier are EU Presidents who, faced with a bond crisis + bank run banded-pack offer in Spain spend much of the morning claiming to have 4,078 followers on Twitter. Barroso’s pompous nonsense (it turned out to be almost certainly an overclaim) represented almost exactly 0.001% of the EU’s population base; and while it’s three times bigger than mine (fnar fnar) I’m the Chairman, Editor, Writer and Self-medicating Nurse at The Slog – which, let’s be fair here, is much lower profile.
Then we’re having a hilarious 48 hours in the US Election, called Wifey Time. Daniel Hannan hailed Mitt’s other half (she seems very nice, and a much smaller target than her husband) and this morning in the US, Mrs President will be explaining why we need Four More Years of Barack not being able to at all. Mr President would have been happy to explain, but his wife is an able translator. Tomorrow: Mrs Clinton breaks cover to explain why all Presidents are full of it.
Dan Hannan got completely into hailing people at the GOP Convention, but most of his hero-worship was focused on Boy Wonder Dan Ryan, cartographer extraordinaire. However, just three days later Dan is already mis-speaking in the very best traditions off Tony Blair going to watch soccer legend Jackie Milburn before he was born. “I did my last marathon in two hours fifty-something,” Ryan remarked on Sunday evening.
One or two real athletes pointed out that this made him Olympic quality. Some newspaper archives then revealed his first marathon had been his last. And he did it in 4hours ten. Stand by for Hannan’s next Telegraph blog absolving Dan Ryan. I’d imagine the headline will be in the region of, “Do you want to know how fast your candidate can run, or how well he’ll run the country?” Neither Dan, I just want the truth, just gimme some truth. Mr Hannan is rapidly turning into Britain’s best example of involuntary self-parody.
Meanwhile, Dodgy Dave finds himself yet again trying to please all those conflicting interests from whom he’s taken the shilling without thinking about the consequences. Having used the grubby offices of Jeremy Hunt to become a Newscorp subscriber some years back, Dave suddenly found himself on the wrong end of Her Maj’s tongue after Princess Beatrice was hacked while on holiday in Thailand. He returned to Downing Street afterwards, only to remember that the place was stuffed, sorry, staffed with former and existing Murdoch staffers.
Once Milly Dowler had made Rupert a sludge too far, Dave turned to defending his last Newscorp contact Culture Minister Hunt. This forced him to claim that Jeremy had been fair, not lied to Parliament, and done nothing wrong – none of which was true.
Now the Subprime Minister finds himself between two stools in British Tourism on the one hand (Tory Donor Debretts sporting personality JHJ Lewis) and those who wish to cover the green and pleasant land we have left in more houses…who donated £3.5m in 2010 to clear off Dave’s overdraft help the Conservatives fail to win the Election. So Mr Cameron has become a keen supporter of ecologically friendly tarmac.
Last but not least, a Slogger emails to tell me that Tesco Finest Cherry Piccolo Tomatoes 220g “any 2 for £3” have vines in the pack, but none of the tomatoes are actually connected to the vine, as such. She says this has happened more than once. It is a miracle, or something. And the fine people of Thailand are looking for a snappy slogan to persuade residents in one of its biggest cities that they don’t need a third Tesco hypermarket.
As the city is called Phuket, I really have no idea what’s holding them back.
The Slog 