Media

In Praise of Glenn Greenwald

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Glenn Greenwald, former blogger at Salon.com and now writing at The Guardian, is one of the best and most articulate people talking about civil liberties and pressing back against the intrusive power of the government today.

Exhibit 1, in which he tears apart the war criminal Dick Cheney for the casual way in which he celebrated his own lawbreaking and contempt for the US constitution on the eve of the publication of his memoirs:

 

Exhibit 2, in which he rips into CNN (both the network, the host and her former Bush administration talking head stooge) for their coverage of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks scandal:

 

And finally exhibit 3, in which he takes on Bill Maher and Andrew Sullivan in a roundtable discussion on the morality and constitutionality of extra-judicially ordered drone strikes on US citizens.

 

Keep fighting the good fight, Glenn.

“Margaret: Death Of A Revolutionary”

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A documentary is just starting on UK’s Channel 4 TV (Saturday 13th April, 7PM), entitled “Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary”.

My interest was piqued when I saw that Channel 4 was showing a documentary about Baroness Thatcher – their news channel is skewed so far to the left that it defies belief, so I was curious to see what they would have to say about Britain’s post-war saviour.

But it was the description of the programme in my Sky TV guide that really affronted me:

“Martin Durkin presents his radical thesis: that Margaret Thatcher was a working class revolutionary, and that she believed capitalism was in the interests of ordinary people, not the toffs.”

Everything wrong with the British left-wing encapsulated in one sentence.

Where to start?

Why is this a “radical thesis”? I think that we are supposed to take this line of nonsense as a piece of magnanimity from the left – that the holier-than-thou leftists among us are willing to grant that maybe Thatcher was (albeit misguidedly) trying to help the less fortunate in society, and not just the “toffs” (don’t get me started on that word) that we all assume were the only people she really cared about.

What nonsense.

Of course Thatcher believed that capitalism was in the interests of the ordinary people. Because it is. This isn’t a “radical thesis”. The ignorant left may have accepted the nonsensical trope that capitalism benefits only the wealthy Monopoly-men style captains of industry and the “toffs”, but the rest of us sure haven’t.

We of sound mind know that capitalism (as opposed to corporatism, which is entirely different, and which Thatcher promoted no more than any other British politician) inevitably helps the “ordinary people”.

And did the person who wrote the programme description lose their mind? Who does he think the Right-to-Buy scheme benefited? The “toffs” weren’t the ones living in state-owned council housing, who were suddenly given the opportunity to buy their houses and move into the ranks of the middle class. Who did the deregulation and privatisation of failing state-owned industries benefit? Yes, wealthy people who had money sloshing around and could afford to snap up shares did well, but so did many middle-class people, as did the whole population who no longer had to deal with fuel crises and substandard products.

Yes, of course Margaret Thatcher believed that capitalism benefits “ordinary people”. Because it does. Nationalised, state-owned industries sure didn’t benefit us. Three day working weeks didn’t benefit us. Power cuts, garbage piling up, dead bodies laying unburied, industrial unrest, the country being run by the unions, none of these things benefited us.

And Channel 4 has the nerve to present their quirky notion that maybe Thatcher had the interests of “ordinary people” at heart as a radical thesis. That in fact perhaps Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham, wasn’t actually in the pocket of the landed gentry and the “toffs” after all.

I despair of the left sometimes.

An Angry Return To Blogging

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I have been busy for the past several weeks, which when combined with my boredom with both the Republican and Democratic party conventions, and more recently my being struck down with appendicitis, has meant that Semi-Partisan Sam has not seen much new activity lately.

I remain confined to the couch and hopped up on painkillers, and though sitting up and typing on a laptop still causes considerable discomfort, I am doing it because would like to say the following to the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Fox News:

SHUT UP WITH ALL THIS STUFF ABOUT A “POLICY OF APPEASEMENT”. DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND THE FREAKING POINT OF HAVING A DIPLOMATIC SERVICE? AMERICAN EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES ARE NOT JUST THERE TO SERVE AS MASSIVE MEGAPHONES THROUGH WHICH THE UNITED STATES CAN GLOAT ABOUT ITS SUPERIORITY, OR CHIDE THEIR HOST NATIONS ABOUT THEIR VARIED SHORTCOMINGS. DIPLOMACY INVOLVES BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES AND FOSTERING PERSONAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL TIES, AND GOODWILL, IN SERVICE OF THE NATIONAL INTEREST. HOW DO YOU PROPOSE THAT THE AMERICAN NATIONAL INTEREST WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER SERVED IF THE LIBYAN CONSULATE AND EGYPTIAN EMBASSY HAD SENT OUT MESSAGES SAYING “FREE SPEECH RULES AND YES, WE DO THINK YOUR RELIGION IS A BIT DODGY. NOW BRING IT ON!!” ?

Aah, why am I bothering? You’re all ignorant at Fox, save the increasingly orange Shepard Smith, the hard-to-define Juan Williams and the curious case of Gretchen Carlson, who holds degrees from Stanford and Oxford and just pretends to be dumb sometimes (“I looked up the word ‘czar’ in the dictionary, and it said…”).

And to Mitt Romney:

WHEN AN EMBASSY SENDS OUT A MESSAGE CALLING FOR RESTRAINT IN UNNECESSARY VERBAL ATTACKS ON OTHER RELIGIONS, IT IS NOT TRYING TO SUPPRESS FREE SPEECH. NOR IS IT SYMPATHISING WITH “ATTACKERS” WHO WOULD NOT BESEIGE SAID EMBASSY FOR ANOTHER SEVERAL HOURS. TIME, FOR OUR PURPOSES, IS LINEAR.

There.

That is all.

On Cavorting Naked In Las Vegas

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Prince Harry Naked Las Vegas

 

Considering the fact that this blog has so far avoided any real mention of Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as a running mate, the huge success that was the London Olympic Games or the Todd Akin “legitimate rape” controversy in Missouri, to name just three recent trending stories, it might be considered a bit unseemly to come back from a brief break by writing about the bare buttocks of the third in line to the British throne.

But then again, one has to pick up somewhere.

Everyone seems to have a strongly held opinion about Prince Harry’s recent exploits in a Las Vegas hotel suite, but I have been surprised by how many of those views have been along the lines of “it was totally fine, he was just letting off steam”, “everyone is entitled to a private life” (well duh…) or “how ghastly that anyone would consider publishing these pictures, it should be made illegal”.

Here’s my take:

1. What on earth were the royal protection officers doing? I would think that it should be standard practice to confiscate mobile phones from strangers when they are invited up to a secured area to party with the prince, not simply to avoid the leaking of embarrassing pictures but so that security-related information cannot be sent in real-time to other people outside.

2. What Prince Harry decides to do behind closed doors among friends is his own business. However, he is also a member of the royal family and has public duties to perform. He represents the United Kingdom to the world. Picking up random girls from a bar and inviting them up to your hotel suite to play strip billiards is not classy and does not reflect well on the royal family, the Army (in which he serves as a Captain) or on his country. Again, if they were existing friends unlikely to leak pictures or stories, there’s no problem. But they were strangers. Even if the pictures had not emerged, stories would have done, which would have also embarrassed the country, albeit to a lesser extent. If Prince Harry wishes to behave in that way without attracting negative comment or approbation, he is of course free to relinquish his position in the royal family and in the line of succession. He would then join the massed ranks of other British celebrities who make fools of themselves in public, but it wouldn’t matter and I would not be writing this blog post.

3. The story, and the pictures, are absolutely in the public interest, because at all times, Prince Harry represents our country. Again, if he doesn’t wish to carry this burden and have to look over his shoulder all of the time whenever he decides to “let off steam”, he can renounce his place in the line of succession, and “quit” the royal family, so to speak. But since he does represent our country, the fact that he decided to pick up random girls in a hotel bar and take them to his suite to play strip billiards is very much in the public interest. He has public duties to perform. He represented the Queen at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games a matter of days ago. His role and level of responsibility in the royal family has been steadily increasing, and therefore there is an indisputable public interest in how he conducts himself, on and off duty. Louise Mensch MP was absolutely right to say that he ‘had no expectation of privacy‘.

4. Bravo to The Sun, for publishing the pictures in the face of bullying by the royal family, the Press Complaints Commission, and the ever-present, chilling shadow that is the Leveson enquiry. Shame on everyone else for being too prudish or too scared.

That is all.

Fox News Reaches A New Low

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Eagerly snatching another opportunity to paint American conservatives as more patriotic than their liberal brethren, Fox News decided to jump on American Gymnastics gold medallist Gabby Douglas for showing insufficient national pride by wearing a pink leotard whilst competing:

 

Because, of course, the best way to demonstrate pride in and commitment to one’s country at the Olympic Games is not to compete to the best of your ability and bring home a gold medal, but rather to display the colours of your flag over a sufficient percentage of the surface area of your body.

I just can’t with this nonsense. I know it’s a personality trait in a lot of conservative-leaning people that I should perhaps try to understand (though as a conservative-leaning person myself I don’t think I have this tendency), that they place a great deal of value in reverence for institutions and symbols. There is certainly a time and a place for that. However, this need for all aspiring American politicians to wear a US flag lapel pin, and now this snide attack on Gabby Douglas for failing to show enough of the red, white and blue, is just ridiculous.

You don’t need to wear the modern day equivalent of an Uncle Sam costume to prove that you love America, and are proud of your great nation’s astonishing heritage and unrivaled accomplishments.

You don’t need to chant “USA, USA!” all the time if you don’t want to.

America became the great land that it is precisely because the people who made it great didn’t feel the need to talk about it all the time. They quietly got on and did it.

When nationalistic bombast is all you have left to display, then your country is in a bad place. America is not in that bad place, and God willing, it never will be. Fox News should focus on who will win the next Olympic gold medal for Team USA, not the clothing choice of their most recent champion.