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Urban v's the Commentariat

The bit that gets my goat about Mehdi Hasan is that he says in his letter that he has 'castigated Muslims' for not condemning terrorism with sufficient speed and alacrity. He leaves that hanging. The implication is clearly 'I will castigate Muslims for you' (and I'm a Muslim, so I can do it without attracting too much criticism). Turn Uncle Tom for pay, in other words.

Of course I expect nothing from the commentariat - I think we all know that when the situation ultimately calls for a taking of sides, they won't be on ours. But the sheer venality is still disturbing.

But I guess that I find it disturbing is an index of my own naivety really, as an Oxbridge education just shows you how to make arguments (not good ones, just ones that will serve a purpose) but not arguments in the service of ethics or values, just arguments that can put a gloss on whatever atrocity is going down. That Oxford entrance thing where they had to write a speech justifying killing protesters would be an example.
 
The Pale King said:
The bit that gets my goat about Mehdi Hasan is that he says in his letter that he has 'castigated Muslims' for not condemning terrorism with sufficient speed and alacrity. He leaves that hanging. The implication is clearly 'I will castigate Muslims for you' (and I'm a Muslim, so I can do it without attracting too much criticism). Turn Uncle Tom for pay, in other words.
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He also presents himself as a person on the left willing to be used to attack the left.

It's a very interesting little window on to a world which I knew existed but I didn't think would be so nakedly obvious, I suppose I just would expect the willingness to be used like that for money would be dressed up in more flowery language.
 
Silas Loom said:
Paul Staines has published a letter purportedly from Mehdi Hasan to Paul Dacre. It has the ring of authenticity; if it's been mocked up, then it was done very well indeed.



Dear Mr Dacre,

My name is Mehdi Hasan and I’m the New Statesman’s senior political editor. My good friend Peter Oborne suggested I drop you a line as I’m very keen to write for the Daily Mail.
Although I am on the left of the political spectrum, and disagree with the Mail’s editorial line on a range of issues, I have always admired the paper’s passion, rigour, boldness and, of course, news values. I believe the Mail has a vitally important role to play in the national debate, and I admire your relentless focus on the need for integrity and morality in public life, and your outspoken defence of faith, and Christian culture, in the face of attacks from militant atheists and secularists. I also believe – as does Peter – that I could be a fresh and passionate, not to mention polemical and contrarian, voice on the comment and feature pages of your award-winning newspaper.
For the record, I am not a Labour tribalist and am often ultra-critical of the left – especially on social and moral issues, where my fellow leftists and liberals have lost touch with their own traditions and with the great British public. In my column in this week’s issue of the New Statesman, for example, I offered a critique of the five Labour leadership candidates, and their various inadequacies, accusing them all of lacking what George Bush Snr once called “the vision thing”.
I could therefore write pieces for the Mail critical of Labour and the left, from “inside” Labour and the left (as the senior political editor at the New Statesman).
I am also attracted by the Mail’s social conservatism on issues like marriage, the family, abortion and teenage pregnancies. I’d like to write a piece for the Mailmaking the left-wing case against abortion, or a piece on why marriage should be a Labour value, and not just a Conservative one. My own unabashed social conservatism on such issues derives from my Islamic faith. But as a British Muslim, I have also upset some of my more hardline co-religionists in the past by arguing, in print, for a change in Islam’s draconian apostasy laws to allow Muslims to convert to other faiths (like Christianity). Here is a New Statesman column I wrote on the subject in April.
In addition, I wrote a column last year condemning suicide bombings, from an Islamic and moral perspective, in which I also castigated Muslims for failing to unequivocally condemn such acts of terror wherever in the world they occur.
And, earlier this year, I wrote a piece for the Guardian belittling Muslim extremist Anjum Choudary and his crude, headline-grabbing attempt to carry “coffins” through Wootton Bassett.
A bit of background: I am 31, and was born and brought up in the United Kingdom, the son of Indian immigrants (an engineer and a doctor) who came here in the 1960s. I am an Oxfordgraduate. Prior to joining the New Statesman in June 2009, I spent a decade working in television as a news-and-current-affairs producer at ITN, the BBC, Sky News and Channel 4.
I do hope you’ll consider me for future columns and features in the Daily Mail on political, social, moral and/or religious issues. I believe you once told sports columnist Des Kelly that he should “make them laugh, make them cry, or make them angry”. That’s something I believe I could do for you, and for your readers, on the pages of the Mail.
Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Mehdi Hasan
Senior Editor (politics)
New Statesman
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I've tried to accept and rationalise this, the campaigner Sonia Poulton writes for the DM online, work is work and its easy for others to decry it, but its the DM, Mehdi sells himself as a leftist(of kinds) no, he is a hypocrite.
 
A bit of background: I am 31, and was born and brought up in the United Kingdom, the son of Indian immigrants (an engineer and a doctor) who came here in the 1960s. I am an Oxfordgraduate. Prior to joining the New Statesman in June 2009, I spent a decade working in television as a news-and-current-affairs producer at ITN, the BBC, Sky News and Channel 4.
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Came up the hard way then...
 
J Ed said:
He also presents himself as a person on the left willing to be used to attack the left.

It's a very interesting little window on to a world which I knew existed but I didn't think would be so nakedly obvious, I suppose I just would expect the willingness to be used like that for money would be dressed up in more flowery language.
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If he's gone to somewhere like Brighton college he wouldn't need to be scrabbling around on his knees looking for an arse to kiss. The contacts this would provide would act as a safety net if the oxford ones failed.
 
J Ed said:
He also presents himself as a person on the left willing to be used to attack the left.

It's a very interesting little window on to a world which I knew existed but I didn't think would be so nakedly obvious, I suppose I just would expect the willingness to be used like that for money would be dressed up in more flowery language.
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I know what you mean. It just seems so...transactional. It's obviously something that is understood in these oxbridge/media/elite circles (where I guess inflexible principles are looked at as quaint, old fashioned etc), but to normals like us it just looks depraved.
 
can we have Nick the tory strike smearing liar Robinsons vapid guff here? cos this was a) phoned in and b) total bollocks

All this was inspired in large part by a Labour leader who the week before at his conference had promised to bring back socialism and had defined himself as the man ready to stand up not just to the energy firms but any business which abused its power.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24374260
 
http://www.newstatesman.com/magazines/2013/10/how-i-became-lads-mag-feminist


"Lulu Le Vay used to physically balk at the sight of a young bloke flicking through the bosom-heavy pages of a lads’ mag. But once she started working for one, she became a lot less sure that these publications were as "degrading and harmful" as she had always assumed."

-----------------------------

i keep trying to type a suitable satirical response to this but nothing i can say that can sum up the massive facepalm.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Not just phoned in, but in his sleep too, the lazy cunt!
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the last bit is the best bit


For two men who grew up in the Thatcher era this must all be rather nostalgic. For some voters too. It certainly means that the divide between them is a great deal clearer than it was before.
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like fuck does certainly mean that. It's like Nick Robinson woke up and thought 'fuck, I'd better write some shit for the beeb website to justify my existence'

and managed to come up with some pure fucking tosh. It's actually angered me. We pay for this man to plate up his own faeces and offer it as political comment.

All rather nostalgic indeed. The thatcher era was nearly 20 years + ago and while there is a significant proportion of the electorate old enough to remember it nobody is nostalgic for it, nobody is buying this 'red' ed vs the evil tories shit and Nick Robinson has trousered another cheque from OUR POCKETS in order to offer up a scant few paragraphs of absolute bullshit. Why is he even allowed to walk and talk, let alone given space on a platform we pay for? This isn't even GCSE level analysis its fucking keystage two maquerading as grown up insights. I could write better and I'm politically illiterate in the scheme of things.

What does this ageing freak have that I don't that gets him platform and the concomitant pay? Nothing except contacts and the right schools. God he makes me so angry.
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-fall-victim-to-our-expectations-8864892.html
Archie Bland;

." The sense of public affection is so powerful that it may even carry this 16-year-old to the Nobel Peace Prize later this week. If so, she would be the youngest ever recipient. If anyone is worthy of such an honour, it’s her. But I hope she doesn’t get it."

"But Malala is already viewed with some cynicism by many in Pakistan, even seen in some quarters – quite unfairly – as a mouthpiece for Western ideas that are not her own"

Those would be the cunts who shot her.
 
She was rubbish on that show last night. Didn't lick any sledgehammers or nothing. The thing there is who Bland's contacts or who the Independent provide are. They are not the secular muslims, the left-wing muslims. They are stuck in a vicious circle of their views being seen as islamopobic so cut off from the left, and that isolation then being seen as being non-representative.
 
Spent yonks reading this post trying to understand why vapid, uninformed and hypocritical 'columnists' who the real WC never bother with, or read,should excite such froth amongst obviously politically aware posters, conclusion? I'm to thick, or busy, to have kept up with the fast moving discourse of today's left wing alternatives to the current Shyte set up.
 
On Facebook, the anti-champers campaigners — fans of hyperbole, the caps lock key and exclamation marks — wrote that they want to “DISTURB THE YUPPIE INFIDELS SO MUCH THAT THEY CHOKE ON THEIR RANCID FIZZ”. To stress their point — bubbly and Brie don’t belong in Brixton — they’ll be handing out Dairylea cheese slices and White Ace cider.
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On FB eh Rosamund? :hmm:
 
Verso Books ‏@VersoBooks
Dan Hancox launches his book @Foyles, introduced by dubstep expert @paulmasonnews #marinaleda pic.twitter.com/uqBePTEKIl




6:44 PM - 15 Oct 13
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zer0 books, the semi-vanity imprint of choice for Laurie Penny and various IoI/ex-RCP professional contrarians, retweets this message from Verso (set up by yesteryear's commentariat of the New Left Review) about Paul Mason (hip tame ex-trot ex-NewsNight economics editor-turned-C4News digital editor and preferred purveyor of above-ground forewords for edgy essay collections) introducing a new book - but not one on dubstep! - by Dan Hancox, editor of a book about student protests (and subject of a recent hatchet job by the work experience dude on Spiked for being, like, too old for grime, or something).
 
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