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Tuesday, December 19, 2006 

Littlejohn-watch: They were whores and it's all the liberals fault...

Fisking Littlejohn is even less rigorous than taking on a Sun-article, but by God if today's piece isn't the most despicable little rant from a little man that I've read in a long time:

Let's get the caveat out of the way from the off. The five women murdered in Ipswich were tragic, lost souls who met a grisly end. I sincerely hope whoever killed them is caught, charged and convicted.

That's nice of you. Why is this so reminiscent of the infamous: I'm not a racist, BUT..

And I know this might sound frightfully callous in the current hysterical, emotional climate, but we're not all guilty.

We do not share in the responsibility for either their grubby little existences or their murders. Society isn't to blame.

It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of "work'=", death by strangulation is an occupational hazard.

That doesn't make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.

In a sense, Littlejohn is right. For those of us who have never experienced drug addiction, or had to sell our bodies in order to obtain the money to feed that addiction, we can't even begin to enter into the mindset of those who do it every single day of the year. Instead, we block it out. These people aren't human. They don't exist. If the women had been murdered over a period of years, for instance, rather than in the space of one or two months, and in different ways than through apparent strangulation, then the national media wouldn't so much have touched the case. It might have merited a local TV news report, or the odd paragraph in the local paper. It's easier to pretend these things don't happen. As soon as the word "prostitute" is mentioned to describe the person who has gone missing, they're written off, especially when there are cases of young, attractive, white women who have been killed or gone missing to report instead, who might not so much have sucked a dick, let alone been paid to do so.

This is what Littlejohn is suggesting. Rather than every life being equal, the fact that these women were paying for their drug habits through sex work instantly lowers them below the tragedy of a "normal" person being killed by a serial killer. As some have suggested in recent days, it was only once Peter Sutcliffe had attacked "normal" women that the public really took notice. That this has changed is to be celebrated. Instead, comfortable right wing hacks like Littlejohn are given pages to try to turn back the tide.

They weren't going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur. The only kind of missionary position they undertook was in the back seat of a car.

No, and neither are the vast, vast majority of the population of this country. Is Littlejohn suggesting that their deaths would also be "no great loss"? No, this is just a conceit so that he can get a crude joke in.

Of course their friends and families are grieving. That's what friends and families do. But they should also be asking themselves if there was anything they could have done to prevent what happened.

If you discovered your daughter had gone on the game to feed her heroin habit, wouldn't you move heaven and earth to get her off it?

Well, surprise surprise, Tania Nichol's parents didn't know she was working on the streets, so whether they knew that she was also on drugs is doubtful. Neither did Gemma Adams', and they had tried to help her, but apparently failed. Anneli Alderton had been on drug treatment programmes but failed in her attempts to get off. Paula Clennell's father didn't know she was "on the game". Annette Nichols' cousin had tried to get her off prostitution and drugs, but had also failed.

All of which underlines just the kind of place which street prostitutes find themselves in. They end up there because there usually is nowhere else for them. Their parents may have disowned them, or have similar problems themselves. They may have tried to help but failed. For Littlejohn to just dismissively complain that they should have done more is insulting. By their own nature, most prostitutes are ashamed of what they are reduced to. They often don't want the people who are closest to them, especially relatives, to know what they do.

Frankly, I'm tired of the lame excuses about how they all fell victim to ruthless pimps who plied them with drugs. These women were on the streets because they wanted to be.

We are all capable of free will. At any time, one or all of them could have sought help from the police, or the church, or a charity, or a government agency specifically established to deal with heroin addicts. They chose not to.

As noted above, it looks as if some of them did have help, or attempted to get some. Any person who has battled nicotine addiction will know how difficult it is to give up. Crack cocaine addiction is almost certainly far worse. In a study on monkeys, even when starving and with food in the cage, they would instead use the drug.

Littlejohn is right though that they were on the streets because they wanted to be. As interviews by the media have made clear, they have almost no alternative to doing so. The sad fact is that unless any of those organisations that he mentions had been willing to get any of them straight away onto programmes, then they would have just walked back out. The funding is simply not there, and waiting lists are long, as they are in the prisons as well. Unless treatment becomes as plentiful as the drugs are, the situation will remain the same.

The tortuous twistings of the sisterhood over the past week have been a joy to behold. The 30-yearold Spare Rib T-shirts have been brought out of mothballs and we've been treated to the All Men Are Bastards/Rapists/Murderers mantra from assorted Glendas who ought to be old enough to know better.

As opposed to the Taxi Driver/White Van Man stereotype that Littlejohn lives up to. Besides, at least one Glenda, Carole Malone, has already been out following the line of Littlejohn, rather than the "sisterhood". It also may be something to do with the fact that male commentators, such as AN Wilson, Simon Heffer and Leo McKinstry have already been out blaming the liberals and political correctness.

We've heard the well-rehearsed arguments for legalised and regulated prostitution, as if we were living under the Taliban. The fact is, we've already got de facto legal brothels on every High Street.

They're call saunas or massage parlours.

As I remarked when the Labour MP Joe Ashton was once caught in a Siamese "sauna" in Northampton, he must have been the only man in Britain ever to go to a massage parlour for a massage. It doesn't get much more glamorous than that.

All of this depends on the local police force and local council. Some inevitably turn a blind eye, while others are a lot more hardline. Besides Mr Littlejohn, how is it you know so much about this?

The arguments for regulating and legalising prostitution also go a lot deeper than this, as he well knows. The Observer at the weekend reported that Blair vetoed the attempts by Blunkett, in one of his only sane moves, to introduce regulated "red light zones", which have worked in the Netherlands and Germany. No prostitute has been killed in such zones which have been introduced overseas. Such regulated zones could also be useful in cracking down on human trafficking, meaning that modern day sex slavery could be almost entirely avoided. Littlejohn dismisses all these various suggestions and plans in one swipe of his pen, or tap on his keyboard.

These five women were on the streets because even the filthiest, most disreputable back-alley "sauna" above a kebab shop wouldn't give them house room.

Again, not necessarily. As the pictures of the women have also shown, none of them were the stereotype of a hard-faced, drug-battered old prostitute which so many have of street girls. Diane Taylor has also reported that the police attitude towards prostitutes in Ipswich was not among the most liberal. Really though, this is just Littlejohn attacking the women for being the lowest of the low, an attempt to make the reader feel contempt for them rather than sympathy. They weren't even good enough to work in a mangy brothel, don't you get it?

The men who used them were either too mean to fork out whatever a massage parlour charges, or simply weren't fussy. Some men are actually turned on by disgusting, drug-addled street whores. Where there's demand, there'll always be supply.

Or that some would rather go to an area where it's less likely they'll be caught by someone they know. Most "saunas" are now in areas of high-level CCTV. Down by Ipswich's Portman Road stadium there was none, as the police have found to their disadvantage. Men will always go where they know the working girls are. For some, sex is just sex. It doesn't matter what the woman looks like. Men can also get stung in massage parlours, some of which resemble places like those in Soho where the naive get trapped. Those working on the street are often more honest. As above, this is just another swipe at the women involved. Notice how the men are only insulted for being mean, while the women themselves are "disgusting".

This wasn't a case of women going on the game to put bread on the table, or to look after their "babies". That's what the welfare state is for. They did it for drugs.

No shit? I thought you were meant to tell it like it is, not state the obvious.

The gormless Guardianistas simply refuse to confront this blindingly obvious reality. They would rather deify celebrity druggies such as Kate Moss and Will Self than face the truth that hard drugs wreck lives.

Ah, now we get down to insulting the liberals. It's the gormless Guardianistas that are responsible for these women being on smack. The tabloids which Littlejohn has worked for never so much as cover the lives of celebrity smackheads like Pete Doherty, do they? Besides, this is a false argument. What kind of person looks up to Doherty for being a drug addict? They might for his music, not for the way he's killing himself. How many young people would have even heard of Will Self? "Drug chic", if it does actually exist, which is far from proved, is more evident amongst the celebrity mags and gutter press than it is among the the liberal Guardian and Independent readers. The chattering classes that read the Daily Mail and love their dinner parties are similarly likely to regard cocaine use as aspirational rather than something to look down upon.

Contrary to Littlejohn's liberal insults, as has been noticed, it's been the attitudes of the tabloids towards both tolerance zones and towards treatment programmes that mean they often don't see the light of day, so we don't know whether they would work or not. When Howard Roberts, deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire police earlier in the year suggested giving heroin to addicts, he was jumped on by the same people who have now jumped to blaming liberals. They want to blame and decry at the same time, without offering any solution themselves other than the current one which is so evidently failing.

What I find most objectionable about all this is the attempt to make us all feel responsible for the murders. There is a nasty whiff of Lady Di about the enforced mood of mourning, with even the Old Bill coming across like hand-wringing archbishops.

This is nothing to do though with the women themselves, or the "liberal" media; it's been the tabloids and TV that have been driving it, as they always have and always did. It's a case of great public interest, and when five young women have been killed, everyone wants the perpetrator to be found, and quickly. The police have learned their mistakes from their past, in the way they dealt with Peter Sutcliffe, and the tone struck by them has been just the right one. This is nothing like the huge, mindless gnashing of teeth that followed Diana's death, which was genuinely enforced mourning on a grand scale.

At Ipswich Town's home game on Saturday, there was a minute's silence. We were supposed to believe that this was a true reflection of the community's sympathy.

I don't buy it. Most people went along with it in the spirit of emotional correctness and through fear of getting their heads kicked in if they didn't.

I'd agree if it had been at football grounds across the land, but this was at Ipswich Town's stadium, very close to the area from where the women disappeared. I heard the minute's silence on the radio, preceded by a moving prayer from a local minister, and it was observed impeccably, with everyone applauding when it was over. The population of Ipswich might know their mood better than a gor blimey hack who probably only read about the silence, rather than heard it.

There was only one thing missing, but don't bet against it.

When Blair gets back from saving the Middle East, don't be surprised if he turns up at the funeral of one of these unfortunate women to deliver a lip-trembling, tear-stained eulogy: "She was the People's Prostitute".

There we go, the obligatory Blair insult. The cherry on the cake of an offensive, heartless piece, a true reflection on the writer himself.

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There are loads of negative comments about this one, wich is unusual given how strictly the Mail censors negative comments. There must have been a deluge. Rather too many twats who agree too, but there you go.

But I like this one:

Of course the men who choose to use these "disgusting, drug-addled street whores" can be excused a moment of relief from their charity work and medical research.

You know how to press the most deeply unpleasant reactionary little buttons Mr Littlejohn, I'll say that for you.

Sadly your article on the Ipswich women merely outlines how prevalent grubby misogyny still is today. And ignoring this by aiming abuse at "bleeding hearts" or "feminazis" etc. only highlights how much growing up you need to do before you stop needing a regular "massage".

Like most easy victims, not many of us would have cared much for these women when they were alive -perhaps that's what has affected people at this time of year supposedly devoted to peace and goodwill - to all men at least.

- Hazel, Wivenhoe, Essex

Yes, I imagine the football fans observed the minute's silence out of Political Correctness. Yes, that's it. Leeds United fans are, as we all know, the most politically correct in the country.

Anonymous: There's a time and a place for jokes about everything, but the time is not now and the place is not here.

Great post- you've really got him to use tabloid language bang to rights.

Sounds like he's trying to get himself worked up enough to go and clean the streets himself with the aid of his trusty hammer.

Good post.

Great deconstruction of an odious yet predictable piece (and thanks FiveChineseCrackers for quoting my comment). A friend of mine has emailed Littlejohn a more eloquent response detailed on

http://customerservice.blog.co.uk/2006/12/19/customer_service_writes_to_richard_littl~1456771

as yet he awaits a reply from Littlejohn...

A fine deconstruction of an odious yet predictable article. Perhaps you'd appreciate my friends email sent to Littlejohn on the site

http://customerservice.blog.co.uk/2006/12/19/customer_service_writes_to_richard_littl~1456771

No reply as yet...

Hazel

p.s. Thanks for the quote crackers.

Oh.
My.
Oh.
My.
....
That the man is a small-minded offensively selfish bigot really isn't news.
But this one is...breathtaking.
If he had any respect left for him in the profession, that'd be the end of it. But he doesn't. (So we're into negative respect, then).
In an ideal world, outraged letters would flood in from Sun readers.....but....
Hm.

You talk about "experiencing" drug addiction as if it is simply something thrust upon random people as an act of God as opposed to a wilful act involving the individual injecting themselves with a needle, sniffing powder up their noses etc. It is a choice to begin the cycle of drug taking, so youre damn right I cant enter the mindset required. I have too much self discipline, too much self regard, and too much strength of character to fritter away my time looking for cheap highs.

Littlejohn is not suggesting their deaths are any less relevant due to them being prostitutes. He is rebutting the myth that these women were some kind of street heroins. In the left wing press (ie most of the british press) these women have been elevated to a grandiose scale. Littlejohn is trying to kick this nonsense into touch. It was the Liberals that tried to make these prostitutes something they are not, it was not Littlejohn.

If the family and friends of the prostitutes did not know of their vices then that tells me just as much about them as if they had been their pimps. It made me sick seeing story after story from these prostitutes families claiming they are devastated by their deaths, that they just didnt know blah blah. If only they had paid their daughters as much attention when they were alive, as they paid the media now they are dead. For the record, of course they knew. I saw one of the prostitutes boyfriends on tv claiming he was devastated. They were about to have a baby and he thought this would help them sort their lives out. The immense selfishness of that statement, the fact that he was willing to bring a kid into the world when his "girlfriend" was a drug addled prostitute gives an indication of the kind of person we are dealing with. Of course they knew, regardless of how many times they say otherwise.

No one is denying how hard it is to get off crack. What Littlejohn is saying is its THEIR OWN FAULT THEY ARE ON CRACK IN THE FIRST PLACE. Its tough that its hard to get off a drug that you yourself chose to go on. But whose fault is that if not your own?

As for alternatives to the street, how about the glorious welfare system? They could live with their supposed loving families for an address, claim benefits and earn more than work could ever pay them. Remember the woman up north earning some £70,000 in benefits a year due to the amazing feat of producing vast numbers of children? Im sure thats a skill they could have put to good use.

Your cheap dig asking Littlejohn how he knows about saunas is easy to answer. Maybe he reads the law and applies factual arguments to a case. I could ask how you know so much about prostitution, but it would be a cheap retaliation.

"I have too much self discipline, too much self regard, and too much strength of character to fritter away my time looking for cheap highs."

I take it you've never so much as took a puff on a cigarette, got drunk at the weekend or so much as inhaled the wicked weed then? If so, I congratulate you and your high-mindedness, because I plead guilty to all three of the above. I'd also wager that the vast, vast majority of both the readers of this blog and of this nation have also done the above. It is a choice, you're right, and as humans we are weak, we are pathetic and we make mistakes. Cheap highs are what keep some of us from opening up our wrists. Are you going to damn the whole of the population for doing so?

"Littlejohn is not suggesting their deaths are any less relevant due to them being prostitutes. He is rebutting the myth that these women were some kind of street heroins. In the left wing press (ie most of the british press) these women have been elevated to a grandiose scale. Littlejohn is trying to kick this nonsense into touch. It was the Liberals that tried to make these prostitutes something they are not, it was not Littlejohn."

There's so much that's wrong with this paragraph that it's difficult to know where to start. Littlejohn was arguing that their lives were less relevant; he suggested that they were no great loss purely because of their lifestyles. That he was damning in one case a 19-year-old woman to death because of mistakes she had made, when she had her whole life ahead of her is completely despicable.

In the left wing press, which you claim is much of the British press, despite the fact that only three newspapers that can be truly defined as left-wing, the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror, which combined have a circulation of less than the Sun, there was no attempts to idealise these women or what they did; rather they were blunt and told the truth, instead of sneering at them and their fractured lives. Littlejohn was just being the heartless man he is; his hatred of the lower-orders is such that he can justify their deaths as an occupational hazard and as being no great loss. The "left-wing" press, and much of the right-wing press rejected this, except for the usual suspect columnists, instead recognising that these women had as much right to live as you and I do.

"For the record, of course they knew."

And you provide a whole one example to prove this. Sadly, families tend to fracture, prostitutes don't tend to tell close relatives of what they are reduced to, and putting on a false pretense is a lot easier when contact is made. As for the boyfriend being selfish for bringing a child into the world, your ignorance shows. When hospitals get involved with addicts about to give birth, they do as much as they can to help. It could have been just the chance they needed. Even if they had failed, the boyfriend could have brought up the child.

"No one is denying how hard it is to get off crack. What Littlejohn is saying is its THEIR OWN FAULT THEY ARE ON CRACK IN THE FIRST PLACE. Its tough that its hard to get off a drug that you yourself chose to go on. But whose fault is that if not your own?"

Believe it or not, it makes sense once these things unfortunately happen, and will continue to happen, for the state to provide services to help sort their lives out. These services, as I mentioned in the post, are just simply either not there or are hopelessly overstretched.

"As for alternatives to the street, how about the glorious welfare system? They could live with their supposed loving families for an address, claim benefits and earn more than work could ever pay them. Remember the woman up north earning some £70,000 in benefits a year due to the amazing feat of producing vast numbers of children? Im sure thats a skill they could have put to good use."

Nonsense. Living with their families would instantly reduce the amount of benefit they could get. If the women managed to get on income support for example, to start with the amount they get per week is around £55. That's not enough for the drugs for one day, let alone a whole week. The glorious welfare system could not have helped these women unless combined with drug treatment programmes. Springing out sprogs every 9 months is not something a prostitute can afford to do, even with benefits.

"Your cheap dig asking Littlejohn how he knows about saunas is easy to answer. Maybe he reads the law and applies factual arguments to a case. I could ask how you know so much about prostitution, but it would be a cheap retaliation."

I took a cheap dig in return for numerous cheap digs by Littlejohn throughout the article. I think it was more than justified.

I have never had a puff on a cigarette or taken any kind of illegal substance. I have however been drunk. Sitting here at a computer in my own house, being in full time employment and having just returned from the gym however shows me that occasionally being drunk is not equivalent to taking crack and ending up a street prostitute. Furthermore, I take full responsibility for having been drunk. If I had become an alcoholic, guess whose fault it would have been? Mine. So I would not expect liberals to hand wring for me about how tough I have made my own life. I would take it as condescending tripe from people who go out of their way to show how much they care for all of lifes wasters merely to demonstrate the size of their hearts. Then we can all look in admiration and say "wow I wish I could be as caring as you."
Therefore I dont damn any of the population that make mistakes. I do damn them when they try and pass responsibility for their own mess onto other people. I do when they then moan about the mess they are in. When it comes to things like heroin, its not exactly a bolt from the blue that it will mess your life up, unless the taker is totally moronic.

Littlejohn condemned no one to death. He kicked the situation into touch as I said. They arent a great loss to society. Most peoples deaths are no great loss to society. Painful for those who knew them yes, but do you honestly expect me to believe your heart bleeds for every single murder? You would never stop crying. We also never even hear about most murders (murders which, I may add, are happening somewhere all the time). It isnt because they are prostitutes. Its because thats life. There was nothing about these prostitutes lives that was courageous or a good example for anybody to live by. In fact, they serve as examples of how not to live, of how living for the moment and making one awful decision after another can end your life.

Who is saying these women do not have a right to live? Not I, not Littlejohn. Why do you have to look for things that are not there? They have a right to live. They also have a statistically greater chance of dying violently due to doing the "work" they chose.

Talking of the left wing press, I should have said Britain in general. To see how far we have gone the wrong way, hug a hoodie anyone?

Do you think the focus of having a baby should be on the "chance" it gives the parents? My ignorance does indeed show because I always felt both parents should be stable, together and thoroughly established in whatever it is they are doing in their lives to provide security for their future child. Not have a child as a gamble that then it will all work out. But then you have all the answers because if it DIDNT work out, the boyfriend could have brought the child up. Yes, the boyfriend who knew his girlfriend was on the game but did nothing, virtually acting as her pimp (unless they had separate bank accounts?) sounds like a brilliant role model to bring up the child in a fractured family where the mother is out whoring or dead. Is that how you were raised or is this another case of a Liberal patronisingly explaining away the behaviour of others that they would never allow for themselves. Do you think the above scenario is one that will give a child the best possible chance in life?

Again your language betrays your state of passivity. "Things" such as drug addiction do not just "happen". They are choices. Yes the state can provide services to help. The addict has to want to use them though and it is not the states fault that the addicts frequently fail.

Of course, welfare is not enough for a healthy heroin habit. So again, whose fault is it they are on the game? Whose fault is it they took drugs? Whose fault is it they almost all had children, yet none of them lived with them? What particular aspect of these womens lives do you think is noble or one that we should all adopt?

And you may have felt your cheap dig to be justified, but then the retort was just too easy so you left yourself open there.

And your point of the first paragraph is what exactly? Yes, if you were an alcoholic, it would be your fault, but what would you be able to do about it on your own? Nothing, except remain an alcoholic. This isn't about personal choices, this is about taking the opportunity to sort the wrong choices out once they've been made, or stopping them from being made in the first place. Your attitude suggests that you believe people should be responsible for everything they do and to hell with the consequences if they mess up. I disagree. This is not about caring about life's wasters, as you refer to them, it's about sympathising and wondering what can be done when things go horribly wrong. Instead, you're offering nothing other than condemnation.

"Littlejohn condemned no one to death. He kicked the situation into touch as I said. They arent a great loss to society. Most peoples deaths are no great loss to society."

Yes, and I dealt with this in the piece. Would you or Littlejohn suggest that the death of Sharon Beshenivsky was "no great loss" and that her death was an "occupational hazard", because that was certainly what it was. No, because that would be utterly heartless, and show a distinct lack of humanity. This isn't about crying over death, but rather the fact that someone felt that it was necessary in the first place to suggest that the death of anyone is no great loss.

"Who is saying these women do not have a right to live? Not I, not Littlejohn. Why do you have to look for things that are not there? They have a right to live. They also have a statistically greater chance of dying violently due to doing the "work" they chose."

And so do the police. So do the army. That the drug they chose to take meant they had to take "work" they way they did does not remove the right for their lives to be dismissed so arrogantly.

"Talking of the left wing press, I should have said Britain in general. To see how far we have gone the wrong way, hug a hoodie anyone?"

Oh yes, the thing that Cameron never actually said and which the right-wing press attacked him for doing. Good example.

"Do you think the focus of having a baby should be on the "chance" it gives the parents?"

No I don't, but surprise surprise, thousands of babies are born to couples who aren't ready for them, who don't have jobs, to teenage mothers whose lives are ruined as a result, not to mention the life of the child. This is called life. This is Britain in the 21st century. We adjust. We make do. We try to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.

""Things" such as drug addiction do not just "happen"."

Rubbish. Those without your apparent willpower have suffered them, and they do just "happen", sadly. Choices they may be, but damning the person and doing nothing else is not the answer.

"What particular aspect of these womens lives do you think is noble or one that we should all adopt?"

None, but this isn't what my original post was about. This is about Littlejohn damning and condemning, just as you are, while providing no solutions or not being open to them in the first place. Is there not a problem here? Simply saying these people had a choice is not good enough.

Oh, and I don't know if you're the same Anonymous which took exception to Mr Eugenides post, but I direct you there because you're making much the same arguments that have been dealt with there also: http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2006/12/memo-to-google-richard-littlejohn-is.html


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is an uncontrollable dependence on the highly addictive nicotine stimulant present in tobacco products. Nicotine alters the levels of certain chemicals in the brain that causes smokers to experience pleasurable changes to mood and concentration. When a smoker stops smoking they crave the nicotine effects and can suffer withdrawal symptoms such as anxiety, depression and irritable.

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