How not to persuade people to vote Ken.
However much you dislike Boris, you can't help but warm to him slightly when the Grauniad of all papers decides to run such a pathetic hatchet job on him as they did today in G2. Perhaps they were intending to level the balance somewhat with the Evening Standard's blatant propagandising for Boris, but it instead comes across as a last ditch, desperate effort to try to prop up Ken's campaign, something that isn't even necessary in the first place. Handing the entire piece to the execrable Zoe Williams, who when she isn't blabbering witlessly about her new baby or editing Wikipedia is writing such bilge as this pointless piece on Miley Cyrus was a bad move, but surely not as bad as one as asking such distinguished Londoners as Vivienne Westwood, Will Self, Bonnie Greer, Arabella Weir, Inayat Bunglawala and Mark Ravenhill why Ken not winning would be unthinkable. Just to top things off, it then lists everything that Boris has ever said or written that might be construed as offensive, including the numerous quotes that have grown so tedious that they'd be enough to almost make you thing Boris might have had a point in the first place.
There's no doubt that Ken is the least worst candidate that can win, but making out it would be the end of the world if Boris won, as well as smearing him as a racist when he is clearly not will have done nothing to help Livingstone whatsoever. Sometimes you have to wonder if the Guardian is so self-loathing that it almost wants everyone else to hate it.
There's no doubt that Ken is the least worst candidate that can win, but making out it would be the end of the world if Boris won, as well as smearing him as a racist when he is clearly not will have done nothing to help Livingstone whatsoever. Sometimes you have to wonder if the Guardian is so self-loathing that it almost wants everyone else to hate it.
Labels: Boris Johnson, Grauniad bollocks, Grauniad-watch, Ken Livingstone, London Mayoral election, Zoe Williams
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"...smearing him as a racist when he is clearly not..."
Have you eaten one too many pilchards today? If talking about "picaninnies" isn't racist, I don't know what fucking is! Oh, of course. He was just being postmodernly ironic! I'm off to take up postmodernly ironic terrorism, then.
Posted by
Bigglesworth Drive Resident |
Friday, May 02, 2008 7:13:00 am
Yes, the picaninnies remarks were offensive and spectacularly ill-judged. Do they make him a racist? No.
Posted by
septicisle |
Friday, May 02, 2008 11:49:00 am
Yes, the picaninnies remarks were offensive and spectacularly ill-judged. Do they make him a racist? No.
Call me naive, but what exactly do you have to do to be a racist? I mean, if making racist remarks isn't enough, what else would make one a racist?
Posted by
Richard Seymour |
Friday, May 02, 2008 12:09:00 pm
"There's no doubt that Ken is the least worst candidate that can win..."
Is there?
Posted by
anticant |
Friday, May 02, 2008 12:10:00 pm
lenin: A couple of comments, especially when they're not made entirely seriously even if they are obviously offensive do not a racist make. If we're going by the same standard, then the ludicrous claims of anti-Semitism against Ken would make him a racist also.
anti: Much as I dislike some of what Ken has done, when compared to Boris and his mostly completely laughable set of policies, it's clear in my mind who the least worst candidate is. You might well disagree.
Posted by
septicisle |
Friday, May 02, 2008 1:00:00 pm
A couple of comments, especially when they're not made entirely seriously even if they are obviously offensive do not a racist make.
These aren't just off-hand comments, they're part of a calculated polemic. The whole imagery of picanninies breaking into watermelon smiles after hacking and tearing at human flesh, to greet the British PM landing on his big white bird is not 'just' a light-hearted bit of whimsy. It contains a particular ideological charge, and in this case Boris was attempting to convey what he evidently saw as the impropriety of a British Prime Minister having something to do with such barbaric people. Moreover, it sits comfortably alongside his other bigoted stances.
Why are you using euphemisms if you're so sure that your claim is sustainable, btw? Why say 'offensive' when you mean 'racist'? I mean, offense is something anyone can take. Nude pictures of the queen might be 'offensive'. These comments were racist, in that they relied upon classic, explicit, grotesque, vilifying racist tropes. Why not just say that, and then explain why you think it's possible for Boris to have come out with this guff and not be a racist? Perhaps also it would be useful if you said what would actually be enough to make one a racist.
If we're going by the same standard, then the ludicrous claims of anti-Semitism against Ken would make him a racist also.
Come off it. What Ken did was compare someone working for the Standard to a kapo guard. He didn't even know the guy was Jewish, and even then it would be difficult to see it as an antisemitic comment (it's more like referring to someone as an Uncle Tom). If he'd said something like 'kike' and then evoked a sequence of classic anti-semitic imagery of the sort used in Der Sturmer and Jud Suss, then I would see your point.
Perhaps, because of Boris' combined air of upper class respectability and buffoonery you are being just a bit too kind to him, overlooking what would just be identified as utterly obvious, crass racism on anyone else's part.
Posted by
Richard Seymour |
Sunday, May 04, 2008 4:28:00 pm
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