As a person from the traditionally conservative with small-c end of the cultural spectrum, perhaps the single most disturbing feature of the way our civilisation is being thrown onto the fire by Mammon’s Sturm Abteilung in the West is the tendency of hitherto respected commentators to go along with it….as some kind of “necessary consequence” of survival.
In recent weeks, I have read in dismay as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Benedict Brogan practised a sort of journalistic human origami on economic and political subjects respectively. But the most disappointing example of this appeared in last Friday’s Daily Telegraph, in a column by Charles Moore headed The big BBC bully has had his day. It’s time for polite women. For a chap of the profound intellectual discernment of Charles (admittedly my junior, but only by eight years) to glibly conclude that Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman should go – because ‘the viewing figures for Newsnight are low’ and thus his style ‘no longer works’ – had even an old realistic pragmatist like me gasping for breath.
The idea that those charged with (and enjoying a deserved reputation for) cross-examining dishonest, lard-arsed and self-satisfied blimps like Yeo, Johnson, Prescott, Brittan and Jowell should be put out to grass on the grounds of public preference is of course based on the silly idea that the British public can tell sh*t from sugar any more. But worse than this, for Charles Moore to dub the well-paid Paxo “a big BBC bully” for giving crooked big fat Westminster bullies a hard time suggests that this respected columnist might be rapidly losing the tiles on his roof. On the basis chosen by Mr Moore for Jeremy being past it, we should give that grinning jerk Simon Cowell the Newsnight job.
I surely cannot be the only decent Englishman left who loathes watching mediocrity lauded, and indefensibly crooked greed applauded. Am I the only one left, for instance, who thinks David Cameron should be hounded out of society (polite or otherwise) for one minute saying he didn’t “want tax avoiders in his personal circle”, but then the next defending the serial tax avoider Jeremy Hunt’s place in the Cabinet? Am I the last surviving defender of public decency prepared to notice that Rupert Murdoch and his equally depraved son James have been, in succession, destroyers of media standards, escapees from British justice, and corrupters of our police?
No, I’m not. Throughout Britain, there are I am sure millions who would like to see all those ghastly moral vandals in the last two paragraphs banished from our shores forever.
But in the bureaucratic, media and political classes, there are almost none holding such a view. Peter Oborne maybe on some issues, the better end of Guardian journalists, one or two at the Mirror, and a half dozen in the Independent Group – notably James Hanning. Er, that’s it.
I’m rarely surprised by the ability of sociopathic pols like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson (crossover hacks both) to enjoy a degree of admiration for the size of Murdoch’s load of old cock. But it is disappointing to say the least when one comes across those at the top end of the philosophical Premiership happily waving goodbye to the Fourth Estate’s duty to hold the powerful to account with such insouciant glee.
Less is Moore, perhaps.
The Slog 