Friday, April 13, 2007 

Hypocrisy and hysteria smother everything.

And what am I bid for this historic, traumatised headscarf?

For those who often, and on occasion quite rightly attack Polly Toynbee for her more vapid rantings, today's piece was one of those rare ones where she more or less gets it right. Sure, she overplays her hand in claiming we have the worst press in the western world when she should have instead said we have the worst "popular" press, as the broadsheet media is rightly seen by comparison as one which gives space to a wide range of different voices, whether you agree with them or not, but apart from that and the final paragraph which it could do without, there's little to quibble with.

It's always nice to have your suspicions confirmed, and to discover that the Daily Mail is indeed as hypocritical as you thought it was is uplifting, at least for a few minutes. If they hadn't tried to acquire Turney's story, as we know now for certain they did, then their anger which has been thrown towards the government would have at least had some legitimacy. Instead, the whole charade of making as much as possible out of the fuck-up just seems humourous, which is the attitude which ought to be taken towards the rag in the first place.

That said, equally amusing is how the Sun has now called on Randy McNob (© Alan Partridge) to defend both the newspaper and Turney herself. Some choice cuttings from this tale of woe are:

THEY volunteered to serve Britain by patrolling some of the world’s most dangerous waters.

This is complete nonsense. By the MoD's own admission, HMS Cornwall was mainly there to stop the smuggling of, err, cars. Truly a vital enterprise, and one which involves keeping your wits about you at all times, as Arthur Batchelor's angst about having his iPod stolen showed.

One of their most senior reporters offered a “very substantial sum” but Faye wanted to go with The Sun. The Sun is the Forces’ paper, the one most soldiers read. Many officers won’t even have the Mail in the mess.

Quite right, which is why the good people of ARRSE were referring to the Sun as the err, Scum.

I was in Afghanistan on Wednesday and the attitude of our troops there was, “Good on you, Faye.”

Yeah, well, I was in Basra on Tuesday and they all thought she was just grabbing the green.

In fact, it was the MoD who suggested Faye receive a fee for describing her ordeal in the first place.

Because the papers weren't already offering vast cheques to their families and relatives were they, one of the main reasons why the navy made the decision in the first place. Oh no, this is all the MoD's fault! The Sun was a mere bystander, the £60,000 just magically appearing in Turney's back-pocket without anyone so much as talking about payment.

It's times like this when you have to hand it to the Sun readers', or at least those that leave comments. They might come across as right-wing lunatics on some of the articles, but they can also spot a pile of excrement when they read it:

WASN'T MCNABBS BOOK BRAVO2ZERO LAUGHED AT ,BECAUSE IT WAS MORE FICTION THAN FACT?

Yes McNabbs book was more fiction than fact. In fact an ex SAS seageant fron the good old days of the Radfan battles, followed his footsteps and found out the truth from some locals, like one of the fire fights was an old bloke with an AK thought someone was trying to pinch his goats and started firing in their direction.


Andy Mcknob believes it's right for her to sell the story beacuse he did the same, though his stories ususlly involve magic beans & kingdoms far, far away.

It's hard not to sympathise with the Scum though when the Mail is printing such hysterical tripe as this from another ex-General they've bought off:

Leading Seaman Faye Turney and her 14 fellow captives were 'distinctly un-Nelsonic' in the way they failed to fight back and behaved as though they were on a 'Mediterranean cruise', he says.

Actually, there are more similarities between Nelson and Turney than you think. Both saw no ships, at least until it was too late in the latter's case.

'But as Wellington said, to live in disgrace is the worst thing of all. To die glorious is something to be envied.'

I'm more reminded of the old Italian man in Catch-22 who told Nately he had Zapata's quote backwards. He knew that it's better to live on your feet than die on your knees, as Rose would apparently have had the 15 sailors end their days for no discernible reason whatsoever other than "glory" or "heroism". There isn't anything noble about coming home in a body bag for Blair, as the families of those who did die last week know only too well.

We may have to wait a while for the Catch-22 of the Iraq war to emerge, although the madness of war, and especially this war, could not be more apparent when reading the tabloids tearing chunks off of each other because of the meaningless, moronic stories which they were prepared to pay far too much for. They'd rather regal us with those than actually act to bring the troops they claim to support home, instead only abusing their pointless deaths when it means they can bash the government over something inconsequential, especially to a war which has killed so many and done so much harm. As Toynbee said, death, particularly when it's not "ours", is boring. The screaming souls of Iraq are left to screech only to an empty sky.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007 

Pass the sick bags.

It's hard to judge just who is the most nauseating in the continuing battle over the selling by some of the 15 hostages of their stories to the tabloids. The Grauniad leader gets it mostly right by saying that nobody comes out of it well. It was always to be expected that a few days' long civil war would break out between the newspapers that were successful in getting the "exclusives" and those that weren't; it happens every time a big story like this comes along - remember how Paul Burrell was attacked after selling his story to the Mirror? Even by the usual low standards of our press though this is an abysmal trough.

If the hostages had told us anything, absolutely anything slightly interesting or insightful about their brief imprisonment, then maybe the obscene payouts would have been at least somewhat justified. As it happens, they've told us even less than was revealed at the staged MoD press conference last Friday. The closest Turney has come to telling us something new was that she supposedly had a more charged conversation with Ahmadinejad than that which appeared on the news. The treatment which they received, while not pleasant, was certainly not anything which they shouldn't have perhaps expected if they were to have been captured. The staged photographs on the front page of the Sun this morning, mother and daughter kissing, happy to be reunited, meant to make you feel pleased at the outcome of this whole sorry affair, instead leave a sour taste in the mouth. Some of the details just make you wince - that Turney will be keeping a doll given to her in the "goody bags" they received from the Iranians, but only after it was checked for explosives, as you can never be too sure about those extremist suicide bombing plastic Islamic warriors.

The Sun has then set about attempting to defend itself. Turney makes clear that the money is not going to be spent on her - it's instead going into a trust fund for her daughter, with some going to the HMS Cornwall benevolent fund, although she predictably doesn't reveal how much. It also launches an attack on two ex-army figures who went public with their concerns whom apparently received fees themselves for doing so, enlisting Andy McNab, who obviously won't be getting any money for his own appearance to denounce them. That the fees given to them will have been next to negligible, while Turney will be receiving a quoted £100,000 through her deal with the Sun and Tonight with Trevor McDonald, doesn't affect the Sun's righteous outrage.

All this said, it's hard to not feel somewhat sorry for Turney when you read the disgusting bilious reaction of everyone's favourite blowhard, Richard Littlejohn. Almost half the front page of the Daily Hate is given over to advertising his attack on Turney and the others, liberally sprinkling in insults about Blair and Labour in general, as if the Tories would have handled things differently if they'd been in power. I mean, does Turney really deserve this revolting passage from Littlejohn?

How long before the ludicrous Faye Turney pops up on Celebrity Fat Club? I bet they didn't let her get in the dinghy first. This is a woman who is capable of capsizing the Ark Royal if she shifts her weight to the wrong cheek.

Take that, you dumb overweight bitch! In fact, the whole of Littlejohn's piece sets out to belittle the whole incident. He doesn't criticise them for the contents of their interviews, except to make fun of Batchelor for being a "wimp", as if Littlejohn himself would dare to go out to Iraq in the first place, but for the whole selling of the story and their conduct while in captivity. If Turney had sold her story to the Daily Mail, then the boot would be on the other foot. As it is, Littlejohn is more than happy to oblige in attacking Turney for making the wrong choice. That the Mail was at the forefront of the why-oh-whying about Turney even being out in the disputed waters in the first place doesn't seem to have made them reflect on why she rejected them.

Littlejohn does have a point about emotion and drama being used and abused more than ever. This isn't the fault of the sailors, but the sensationalist media which Littlejohn himself works for which has created that very culture. He often makes mocking references to the cult which surrounded the death of Princess Diana, but the Mail was one of the chief culprits in elevating her from a flawed, ordinary woman who married a member of the royal family into a modern day saint purely because of her untimely death.

As a result, every news story has to be ever more hard-hitting, every death is always an avoidable tragedy, every mourning mother needs to have her anguish documented, otherwise no one will care. Turney's time in an Iranian jail is therefore an ordeal, her 13 days mental agony, or even torture. Words, as we know, are weapons. Simon Jenkins wonders, quite legitimately, how all this hate being directed towards Tehran is going to affect the chances of the only solution to their alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapons program, a diplomatic one.

Does Turney then deserve a medal, as the Sun's discussion board rather optimistically asks? Does she deserve to be called a fat ass by a man known disparagingly for the alleged shortness of his own appendage? It's hard not to reflect that this whole outbreak of mass idiocy wouldn't have occurred if we hadn't already dealt with the equal stupidity of staying in southern Iraq for no particular reason. Until then, I think I'm going to go sit in the corner with a sick bag over my head, just in case.

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Monday, April 09, 2007 

Those amazing exclusives in full.



Faye Turney:

Arthur Batchelor:

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