January 19th 2004 - January 25th 2004
Sunday Extremists
Saturday Goatish
Friday Down again
Thursday Colourful
Wednesday Deaned unsuitable
Tuesday Kindred
Monday Barclayed
Sunday 25th January 2004
Our US correspondent writes:
Dean's real problems in Iowa were:
1) relentless attacks from Gephardt;
2) responding to relentless attacks by attacking Gephardt back;
3) crazy off-the-cuff comments such as one calling for due-process-of-law in the event bin Laden was captured; and, most damaging,
4) the appearance of a four-year-old videotaped interview in which the governor said the Iowa caucuses were dominated by "extremists." The folks in Iowa don't like being called extremists.
Dean could have survived the third place showing in Iowa had he not looked completely deranged on TV later in the evening when he sought to energize the 3,000 kids in the room with him. He seems not to have fully realized that his remarks were being covered on live national television. The whole campaign, in my opinion, collapsed as he spoke.
It's a major tragedy and I'm still in a state of denial and shock. My partner is hoping that Dean can turn things around tonight in the New Hampshire debate, but I'm fairly confident the campaign is over...It's heartbreaking, because he had such promise.
If it can't be Dean, let's hope it's Edwards or Clark. Neither Kerry nor Lieberman can beat Bush, IMHO.
Saturday 24th January 2004
It could never happen here. Sadly.
As nasty as Britain's tabloids often are, they still have quite a way to go to match the level of invective displayed in other corners of the world. As witness reports of a recent headline in Kenya's Dispatch: Police Nab He-Goat Minister in Hot Sex with Greedy Slut
Friday 23rd January 2004
Newspapers thrive on cliché. It is their lingua franca, their common currency, the air that they breathe, the wind, as it were, beneath their wings.
So you might think that newspaper proprietors, more than most, learned to appreciate the wisdom of familiar sayings. Like: "Always be nice to people on the way up, because you never know whose help you might need on the way down."
None of that for Conrad Black who once openly voiced his scorn for the "ignorant, lazy, opinionated, intellectually dishonest and inadequately supervised" journalists who worked for him.
And so: the swifter his fall, the faster the knives go in - especially from those who have had the dubious pleasure of working under him.
Like Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post for instance: "After I resigned he wrote me a furious letter containing insults of the kind most people use in missives to their ex-wives, not their junior employees."
Or Mark Brown of the Chicago Sun-Times: "Oh, I knew I was working for some sleazeballs, but who doesn't feel that way sometimes?...I knew they were squeezing this place for every last dime they could wring out of it, but that's generally viewed as good business practices these days."
As Jay Bryan writes in the Montreal Gazette: "Former employees in the newspaper business have reason to take satisfaction in seeing an arrogant and sometimes-bullying owner receive a well-deserved comeuppance, particularly over the humiliatingly banal accusation that he had his hand in the till."
And all this in just the first few days of his fall from grace. The best, to coin a phrase, is yet to come.
Thursday 22nd January 2004
An 80-year-old Belgian, only recently plucked from total obscurity, has gone on record with his opinion that only 5 to 10 per cent of homosexuals are genuinely gay. "All the rest are sexual perverts," he explained.
Gustaaf Joos delivered his judgement in an interview with a soft-porn journal called P-magazine.
"Real homosexuals don't wander in the streets in colourful suits," he explained, before moving on to roundly condemn the whole concept of democracy and give his faltering thumbs-up to brothels as a means of sexual release.
Why, you might ask, have the views of this plainly ga-ga senior citizen made headlines around the world?
Because Gustaaf Joos was recently elevated to the rank of cardinal in the Roman Catholic church - by his old friend Karol Wojtyla (aka Pope John Paul II).
Is this the same Pope who last year described homosexuality as "objectively disordered" and "contrary to natural law", I hear you ask. Why yes.
The same Pope who has made a name for himself by parading through the streets in a succession of colourful clothes? Indeed.
Wednesday 21st January 2004
Oh dear; bit of a setback there for Dean-lovers (and those that love him) due, in no small part, to a surprisingly strong showing from John Edwards. (Suggestions that Edwards's success owes anything to an over-literal interpretation of his plea to be given "one shot at Bush" should not be discounted.)
Tuesday 20th January 2004
Speaking of the Telegraph...
I remember, as you probably do not, when the House of Lords found the Times guilty of 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals' for publishing gay contact advertisements (no, not that Times, silly, the International Times, aka IT).
But what's this we see, some thirty years later, on page five of yesterday's Daily Telegraph? Why, it's a section called 'Kindred Spirits' And what's that half down on the right? Why, it's a section headed 'Men seeking Men'. Here's a sample:
Gay chap, 37, masculine, creative, outdoor loving, enjoys long walks and talks seeks considerably older masculine chap for friendship, hopefully more. Ldn/anywhere. Call xxx xxxxx...
No section for 'Women seeking Women' that I can see - I don't know if that's where the Telegraph draws the line, or whether the lesbians that read the Telegraph simply don't go in for that sort of thing. (Lesbians who read the Telegraph: now there's a thought to conjure with.)
Monday 19th January 2004
Interesting new owners at the Telegraph (for the moment, at least - the SEC and various shareholders may yet insist on an auction of the titles, as opposed to last night's fairly closed-door deal).
The Barclay brothers fit rather neatly into the stereotypical Bond villain chair (secretive, right-wing, run empire from private island) and, even better, there's two of them - Doctors No and Not Really, perhaps? (There's also a son, so maybe Austin Powers is a better paradigm - Goldmember and Goldmemberer?)
I imagine the readers of the Telegraph will be fairly happy with the prospect: unlike Defendant Black, the Barclays appear to have a relatively hands-off approach to their existing papers - so no more mad pro-Israel rants from Barbara Amiel (aka Mrs Black) and considerably less their-country-right-or-wrong neo-con nonsense.
There's been a distinct dumbing-down at the Daily Telegraph since Martin Newland replaced Charles Moore as the editor last year - arguably a necessary evil given the high attrition rate amongst apoplectic ex-colonels in the Home Counties.
The pre-occupation with Elizabeth Hurley may or may not continue under the Barclays; the (c'mon: inevitable) switch to a tabloid format may or may not encourage the drift towards tabloid values.
Telegraph employees (the ones that actually do the work rather than sit in meetings all day) are a pretty case-hardened crew, inured to a massive management superstructure that seems to believe that internal communications are best managed via the occasional memo sellotaped to the lobby doors.
That may or may not change under the Barclays - their other non-newspaper ventures appear to work quite efficiently, after all - but even the most cynical journalist (and especially those of a female persuasion) will be heaving a sigh of relief to find themselves not working for Associated Newspapers, singing along to the same him-sheet as the misogynist Mail.
The same goes in spades as regards Richard Desmond - though his half-ownership of the Telegraph's printing plant has yet to be resolved so far as I can see.
The biggest question, internally, remains the issue of unionisation in general, and pay bargaining in particular.
The NUJ won a hard-fought battle for recognition at the Telegraphs last year, and ongoing wage negotiations have so far been characterised by an almost absurdly hard-nosed attitude from management - a posture that has appeared increasingly venal in the light of revelations as to the sheer size of the sums syphoned off by Lord Black and his colleagues in recent times.
The Barclay brothers may take this opportunity to call a truce in that damaging battle. But I wouldn't count on it.
I know it's a lot to ask from you first thing of a Monday morning, but take a quick look at the Conservative Party website - and at the left hand menu in particular.
Interesting distinction there, between the fifth item and the sixth.
Do they know something we don't?
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