Party Politics Part 3: Appleyard With A Vengeance

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is the New Statesman. Again.

Today the sun was out, and so were the idiots. There's something about a nice warm day that makes them bash their laptops with their flip-flops in the hope that some semi-coherent Facebook status falls out which points at the sky and notices that "it's sunnyyyyyyyyyyy!"

This is a similar kind of response to those that lazy journalists have whenever secularism comes up in the news. They instantly churn out tired, knee-jerk articles about "militant atheism", with the unfailing, unthinking reaction of Pavlov's dog, complete with salivation.

The worst of these in the wake of Baroness Warsi's recent spewings came from the Telegraph, which argued that Dawkins' ancestors owned slaves and he is therefore EVIL. But even the Independent couldn't resist some Dawkins-dumping, calling him "puffed-up, self-regarding, vain, prickly and militant", before adding, "and that's not a lazy cliché," despite that being exactly what it is.

So, my bleeding brain in hand, I turned to my beloved New Statesman. "The NS is sensible," I thought, "they never fall back on boring hack material." Clearly I'm the biggest idiot of all. This was the front cover:

I didn't realise it was Make Your Respectable Current Affairs Magazine Look Like A Sensationalist Tabloid Day, nor that the new editor was Michael Bay.

Now held in a mental headlock, Bryan Appleyard repeatedly punched me in the face with this article.

He starts by casually mentioning that he was having dinner with three of the foremost writers of our time, and continues to smugly refer back to this Greek meal.

Let's look at some quotes from Appleyard's artidull:

"The talk is genial, friendly and then, suddenly, intense when neo-atheism comes up. Three of us, including both atheists, have suffered abuse at the hands of this cult."

Calling neo-atheism a cult may be superbly clever, particularly when in the dining company of these intellectual giants, but it's not accurate. "Cult" according to Dictionary.com:

A particular system of religious worship, especially with reference to its rites and ceremonies.

OK, so does neo-atheism fit this definition? No, quite the opposite in fact; it's a lack of religious worship. And there are no rites or ceremonies, unless you include the annual ritual slaughtering of a Christian, obviously.

"Dawkins, the supreme prophet of neo-atheism..."

Do you see what he did there? He called Dawkins (famous for his lack of religion) a prophet (a religious leader). THIS IS WHAT I FUCKING MEAN.

“Immediately [Dawkins] was out of control, he said, 'Oh, God!'" Warsi recalls, "so even the most self-confessed secular fundamentalist at this moment of need needed to turn to the Almighty. It kind of defeats his own argument that only people who go to church have a faith."

It's hard to know where to start with this drooling piece of cluelessness from everyone's favourite unelected idiot. Using the expression "Oh, God!" is not an admission of religious belief. That's like if Baroness Warsi said "Shit!" and I went, "Ah! So you admit that you need a shit!" Although, she probably does have to vocalise each time she has a bowel movement.

She ploughs on: "Even the most self-confessed secular fundamentalist at this moment of need needed to turn to the Almighty." But a "secular fundamentalist" might well "turn to the Almighty." Obviously Dawkins isn't, but secularists can be religious. What Warsi has done is to confuse secularism with atheism. Appleyard warned against this earlier in the article, but he claimed that, "Neo-atheists often assume that the two are the same thing." Clearly a greater problem is journalists and politicians making this mistake.

But the main point is, "Oh, God!" is an expression, that needn't have philosophical implications. I'm genuinely angry that I have to explain that.

De Botton: "[Dawkins] stands at the head of what can really be called a cult."

It really can't.

"There had always been an anti-religious strain in science..."

One which makes sense if you stop and think about it for just one second between smashing plates.

Fodor now chuckles at the memory. "I said we should write back saying we had no intention of reading his review but we thought it was all wrong anyway."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Fodor: "If you found something with two heads and a horn in the middle you could cook up some story from evolution saying it was just dandy to have two heads with a horn in the middle. It's just sloppy thinking."

...What?

"Religion is not going to go away."

I'm with Appleyard on this one, but all this means is that I have no sympathy for claims that "religion is under attack." Religious privilege is under attack, and rightly so, but religious belief can stop acting the victim.

Then Appleyard mentions that they all laughed at a question that Dawkins had asked Hitchens, which brings to mind the thought of them all sitting round their moussakas and pretensiously cackling away at the desperately unfunny like the worst type of dinner party guests.

I know it was Bayswater and not Montreal but considering I just grafted four of the smuggest faces ever onto a picture apparently taken in hell itself, you could give me a break.

Thanks for reading, if I do many more of these sequels I'm going to seriously struggle with puns on fourth and fifth parts of film franchises. This blog is named after a Catch-It Kebabs song, again, and I'll leave you with a different song of theirs, again. Enjoy!

Party Politics Part 2: Mehdi's Revenge

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is the New Statesman magazine.

About a year ago I wrote a blog about the New Statesman, so now I'm doing the inevitable: Ruining it with a sequel. And as with most sequels, the audience are bored, the writing's getting lazy and the idea was never that good in the first place. Here are 3 things that have annoyed me in the New Statesman recently:

3. This interview with Abi Morgan, writer of Thatcherite creepfest The Iron Lady and just about everything currently on British TV. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that she was secretly writing the news. Firstly, I hadn't heard that the director Phyllida Lloyd had called The Iron Lady a "Shakespearean" film, but as the self-inflicted staple-wound on my face shows, I have now. I'll go through some of Abi Morgan's quotes:

"I think there's a vividness to Phyllida's work" - I assume she's using vivid in its meaning of "brightly coloured". In which case, a fair comment. If anything can be said for Mamma Mia! and The Iron Lady, it's that they're brightly coloured. You know, like Shakespeare.

"It was always my intention to interrogate Thatcher's political life" - Well in terms of interrogation, it was more a Rural Affairs Select Committee than Guantanamo Bay.

"This is a very small film" - No it isn't.

"I saw it as a small film" - IT FUCKING ISN'T.

"A kind of King Lear for girls" - Presumably because girls don't understand Shakespeare, the idiots.

2. This article by Mehdi Hasan. I love him, but this is a staggeringly punchable piece of non-debate. He starts by posing an interesting question: "Can you believe in God and science?" And then he argues that yes you can, because look at all of these people that do! Case closed, right? WRONG. Simply pointing out that there are people who believe in both God and science completely evades the issue. Yes people do believe in both, but the debate is about whether that set of beliefs is coherent.

It's like the argument about religion and morality; when the religious just reel off the same list again and again (Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Bono) to prove that religious people are "good" people, the real debate is neatly sidestepped, and kicked in the groin.

The question Mehdi Hasan initially asks isn't, "Are there people who believe in God and science?" But that is the question he chooses to answer. And a very boring question it is too, because of course there are. The question is "Can you believe in God and science?" That's the interesting question, and that's where the debate lies.

Then right at the end, "The biggest threat to science and scientific progress is not religion or religious believers, with our superstitious or supernatural beliefs, but the arrogance of those atheist fundamentalists..." Firstly, surely the "arrogance" lies with those claiming to be watched over by an all-powerful God, and secondly, if anything is a "threat to science" then it's "superstitious" fucking beliefs.

1. This political cartoon, which are things I've complained about on here before, but this one is just so brain-meltingly lazy and dreadful that as I was scanning it in, I had to repeatedly slam the lid of the scanner shut on my fingers just to render myself physically unable to phone the police and report the New Statesman for crimes against humanity.

And people say the New Statesman lacks the academic clout of The Economist...

Thanks for reading, this blog is named after a Catch-It Kebabs song which obviously I've used before, so I'll use their song 5 Years because it's also political, enjoy! Oh, also I'm willing to bet that the title of this blog has the best New Statesman/A Nightmare On Elm Street crossover joke in the world.

I Got Pictures On My Mind

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is political cartoons.

The stupidity of political cartoons has been observed by the brilliant The Trap in one of their brilliant Sodcasts, as a Hate. So go find and listen to that particular Sodcast and they'll explain what's wrong with political cartoons better than I can. Seriously, stop reading this and go listen. Stop! Now!

Fine. So today I went to visit my great-uncle in hospital (after the fun of cleaning his toilet.) and we eventually got to see him, after the receptionist insisted that he wasn't in the ward we'd been told. He was. As was an empty bed, which definitely and unequivocally disproves all this nonsense about overcrowded hospitals. While my mum talked to him I flicked through the New Statesman and all the fun and elation of being in a hospital cancer ward left me.

Tim Kirby's political cartoon was awful as usual. It isn't online, but here's one of his that is:

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEre's why it's shit:

1. It isn't funny or clever. A good political cartoon is funny and clever, or at least just clever.

2. It's mostly words. A good political cartoon does not rely on too many words. The joke or point should be contained in the picture. Contrived labels to create visual metaphors are unacceptable.

3. It's not even a good drawing. A good political cartoon is well drawn.

Oh and here's what I mean by using contrived labels to create visual metaphors:

Ah of course, it's the Privatisation wolf in the sheep's clothing of Reform. And Rowan Williams is... a shepherd? The speech bubble is just redundant. People tend to talk strangely in political cartoons. I agree with the argument, but it all just makes the picture confusing and annoying. If you need to label everything for it to make sense, then rethink it. The problem most of the time is that too much is crammed in, leaving us with unwieldily long captions and stupid labels. I can do that.

See? Oh yeah, fish puns were another of The Trap's Hates.

And then there's The Guardian's Steve Bell, who I generally just don't really understand.

...what?

All that said, I do love Chris Riddell, if just because he fulfils the 3rd condition of good political cartoons; his drawings are brilliant.

I will leave you with the System Of A Down song from which the title of this blog is taken; Pictures. Enjoy!

Deep Inside

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is this article from the New Statesman.

I've written about my love/hate relationship with the New Statesman before. When I open my copy, there are a few things I hope not to see. An article by A A Gill, for instance. Zac Goldsmith's face. Russell Brand talking about Transcendental Meditation. Last week's issue included all three of those things. What are the chances?

Having said that, Zac Goldsmith's piece on democracy was actually very good (if slightly undermined by the fact that he was a non-dom until about a year ago.) and A A Gill's piece didn't infuriate me. Probably because I didn't read it, I'm not an idiot. But while these two failed to make me annoyed enough to write a blog, Russell Brand succeeded.

I've read some of his articles in the New Statesman before, and I've been pleasantly surprised. Generally when I read stuff he's written, my opinion of him improves infinitely, as I'm not confronted by his voice and hair, so I can disassociate the text from the writer, and pretend it's written by someone else. But not this time; this time I could hear the words on the page being shouted in his voice, and there was no escape.

Russell Brand denounces Richard Dawkins' targeting of 'mental' creationists (which is actually not Dawkins' fault, and probably more to do with the platforms on to which he's invited by TV companies for the sake of entertainment) and explains that it's not just mental people who are religious; look at Gandhi, St Francis of Assisi, the Dalai Lama, Andrew Sachs. (I may have added one he didn't say.) They're all religious too, and it is them 'to which we should turn when questioning the existence of a power beyond man.' But why? Because they did good things? I never understand that argument, that religious do-gooders are somehow proof of the existence of God. A lot of atheists have done 'good' things too, Thomas Paine, Bob Geldof, Dexter. And a lot of religious people have done 'bad' things (over 99% of US prisoners are religious). But that's all utterly irrelevant. Everyone in the world could be religious and it wouldn't make them right.

He also tackles the argument that religion causes war, claiming that we would still fight without religion. Obviously that's true, but we would fight less. And fighting less seems appealing. 'My last serious argument was about a croissant,' writes Brand, which is amusing enough. But his argument here is that even if there was no religion, we'd fight over things like croissants. The problem with that argument is that fights over religion are a lot more bloody and devastating than fights over croissants. Unless you really like croissants. Maybe if you're... French, I guess? So if I had a choice between horrendous wars over religion and trivial arguments over croissants, I'd obviously go for the latter. Russell Brand's shot himself in the foot a bit there. Sort of like here. He's just so scandalous.

Then he says, 'through Transcendental Meditation,' and that's when I start to hear his voice. Vividly. That's when I should have stopped reading. That's when I should have skipped to the great article by Alain de Botton, or just closed the magazine, or thrown myself out of the window. But like a cunt, I carried on reading. 'Through Transcendental Meditation, twice daily I feel the bliss of the divine.' Katy Perry, presumably.

He continues, 'through the mental repetition of a mantra, eventually my chattering monkey mind recedes.' Now he seems to be confusing spiritualism with mental illness. He goes on, 'gently banishing concerns of the past and drawing the inner eye away from speculation and want.' And lets face it, it must be hard to cast aside your 'want' when you're worth three million pounds and living here:

What a spiritual, immaterial man he is.

Brand doesn't need me to tell him that his enlightenment is not proof of God. Because he then points towards some kind of design argument; there was nothing, now there's something, it looks designed. This is a line of argument that I cannot stand. It starts by following a logical enough style of reasoning (things can't just randomly appear, that makes no sense!) and then leaps to the conclusion that God done it. I thought we were following some basic standard of logic? Apparently I was wrong. It seems that while it's just silly to think that a universe can emerge from nothing, it's perfectly justifiable to then point to a magic being. Either follow some sort of scientific reasoning or don't. If God's just going to be used to plug gaps in science, then, to quote the genius biologist-comedian-rapper Baba Brinkman, 'I say banish God into the gaps.' (And I implore you to listen to that Baba Brinkman song. It's 'the best of the best of the best of the best...')

Finally, Russell Brand asks: 'Could a witless miasma of molecules and dust ever have created anything as ingenious and incredible as Richard Dawkins?' Yes! It fucking did! Well, it wasn't 'a witless miasma', it was natural selection. Earlier Brand claimed: 'I have Dawkins to thank for my own understanding of the fantastic discovery that is evolution.' I hate to break it to you Russell Brand, but that thing you have of evolution is not an understanding. People who dismiss evolution tend to say things like 'look how complex we are as a species, how can that be chance?' It isn't chance, it's a rigorous process of selection! To put it into terms you'll understand, it's more Project Runway than Britain's Got Talent.

But still, that Gene Simmons joke was good.

I'll leave you with the Incubus song that this blog is named after, enjoy!

Party Politics

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is the New Statesman magazine.

I have a subscription to it, because it's great, particularly Laurie Penny, Mehdi Hasan and of course Mark Watson. But occasionally there are articles in there that piss me off. Or just make me go 'what?'. Here are 4 things that this week's issue have made me think about.

1. This article by Lord Falconer annoyed me. He argues that we should vote No to AV because this defeat will cause the Lib Dems to leave the coalition. Now, I'd be very happy to see an end to the coalition government, but I'd be much happier to see the introduction of a better voting system. In fact, what Falconer is doing here is, at best, misunderstanding the significance of electoral reform. However this seems unlikely, considering he was Lord Chancellor/Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs for 4 years. This leads me to believe that what he's actually doing is putting the interest of his party before the interest of the people. To Charles Falconer, party politics is more important than democracy. We all know that AV is far from perfect, but it's a step in the right direction and it's better than what we're stuck with at the moment. Falconer wants to deny us this democratic enhancement, which we've been waiting for since long before his government reneged on such a promise about 15 years ago, just so he can see the Lib Dems defeated. This is a weird, selfish, short-term attitude. Don't get me wrong, I hate the coalition, I just think that people's votes actually meaning something is more important than Lib Dem baiting, which I'm getting bored of. Remember that it was the current electoral system that gave us this government in the first place. If you want to change it, you need to change the system.

2. Eek, that was a bit too much political-grandstanding for my liking. Let's turn the page in the New Statesman to the interview with comedian Frank Skinner which I can't show you because it isn't online, hence why I buy the magazine. Frank Skinner talks about being catholic, and mentions that when he was on tour with transvestite comedian Eddie Izzard, Izzard said to him, 'let's make a pact - I'll talk about being a transvestite and you talk about catholicism,' to which Skinner replied, 'no, because people in the modern world are much more accepting of transvestism than any kind of religious belief.' It's important to say that Frank Skinner is not saying that this is a bad thing. But the thing is, I don't think it's true. It should be the case though. Because transvestism is a tolerant practice, unlike a lot of religion. Skinner goes on to answer this question: 'How do you feel about the catholic church's hostility to gay and woman priests?' He replies, 'it's like it is with friends - often, there are things about them that you don't like but all the good stuff about them keeps them back...Catholics should be ahead of the game in liberating oppressed groups, not 500 years late.' Personally, I don't think it's 'like it is with friends' at all. Of course our friends do things that might annoy us (mine don't, mine are all perfect), but these are tiny things. So we might say, 'yeah he supports West Ham, but you know what? He's my friend, and we all have our foibles, and I still accept him.' We do not go, 'yeah he oppresses minorities and halts social progress and contributes massively to the spreading of aids and defends the abuse of children, but you know what? He's my friend, and we all have our foibles, and I still accept him. Ruined my wedding though.' At least he acknowledges that catholicism is '500 years late' in liberating oppressed groups, but it seems that being '500 years late' in liberating oppressed groups is an integral part of catholicism, built right into its foundations. I struggle to work out what this 'good stuff' is.

3. Oops, that turned into more ranting. Let's turn the page again... ooh, a bit about the Japanese earthquake. The thing that confused me about this was the phrase, 'the Japanese are an extraordinarily resilient people.' What, like, all of them? Generalisations like this confuse me. Of course, it's a great compliment to the Japanese people, and my thoughts are obviously with them. But I'm sure there's at least one Japanese person who isn't extraordinarily resilient. They might be more, I don't know, whatever the opposite of resilient is. I'll look it up. Apparently it's 'inflexible.' Yes, I can imagine there are at least a handful of inflexible Japanese people. But seriously, it's just that kind of hyperbole that journalists tend to use that makes me go, 'what?'. It's a very broad generalisation, and seems to be acceptable because its a positive thing to say. About an entire nation. If it was negative, it would not be acceptable. A journalist wouldn't write, 'the Japanese are an extraordinarily angry people', or, 'those French, what a bunch of cunts.' Well, unless they wrote for The Daily Mail obviously. (Which reminds me, read this.) It got me thinking about offensiveness, which is something I think about all the time. I'm not easily offended at all; my view is that people should be able to say what they want, as long as they're making a valid point. I'm a massive comedy geek and some of my favourite comedians use material that some may find offensive, but they use it to actually say something, to actually put across a valid idea. Some of my least favourite comedians use material that some may find offensive, but for no purpose, other than to be offensive, and that isn't enough. But anyway, occasionally I'll go on Facebook (that's always my first mistake) and see status updates cheering on the Yids, the affectionate nickname given to Tottenham Hotspur FC. I'm jewish, but only by race, not by belief, I hate religion, blah blah blah. And while this doesn't offend me, it does make me uncomfortable to see what is essentially a derogatory term for a people being thrown about by football fans who (hopefully) don't know what it means. I'm not saying this should stop, it's just interesting that it's acceptable in the mainstream, when equivalent words such as paki and nigger are, quite rightly, not.

4. Sorry, that also turned into more lefty blathering. I genuinely don't mean to do that. This blogs all gone a bit wrong. To reward you for your patience, here is a fantastic photo from the New Statesman:

I love the way it looks like Obama was mid-speech when Clinton burst in doing a Fonzie-style 'aaay!'

Anyway, thanks for reading this blog. It was named after a song by the brilliantly genred swing-core band Catch-it Kebabs. I will leave you with that song, enjoy!